Lieutenant Ken rubbed his cheek thoughtfully (stubble crackled) and lit an e-cigarette. The case looked really complicated.

"Stacey? Get me the police chief, please. Immediately."
"Barbara Roberts, how can I help you?"
"Barbie, I mean, Chief… They disappeared into thin air."
"Did you check everywhere?"
"Of course, Chief, the usual: hospitals, mortuaries, airports, dark rooms and graduate seminars of the cultural studies departments. Not a trace."
"And digitally?"
"Of course! Chelsea and Theresa are in contact with the border services and BND [The Bundesnachrichtendienst i.e. foreign intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany]. We have also obtained permission from the spokeswoman of the data protection office to access the missing person's Instagram profile and we are checking their Tinder login. All activity ceased three days ago."

Chief Barbie bit her (pretty) lower lip thoughtfully. Tomorrow she will have to brief the minister. Meanwhile, DC-073, known as Riley, whose fate increasingly worried the public, was still missing. They practically disappeared.

Suddenly, Stacey burst into the office with a tablet.
"Chief, I just got a link. Here, in T-online… Read, please."

Despite so many years of experience, the words of an interview conducted on February 1 by Frederike Holewik and Heike Vowinkel swirled, as is commonly said, before Chief Barbie's eyes. At first she felt surprised, then relieved. And also, disappointed…

She tapped her hybrid fingernail against the energy-saving screen again. Yes, the words of Sebastian Trischler, the head of the Mattel company for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, left no doubt. "The gender-neutral doll was a logical development of our company's strategy and is a good indicator of how advanced society is. However, we had to realize that German society was not ready for them yet. The doll did not sell well. They are no longer available in shops."

"Are you still there, Ken? Call off all the patrol cars and bring your men in. We have no case. We're done. The action is finished."

Doll in a cave

Dolls have been accompanying humanity probably since the dawn of time. They are one of the most fascinating subjects of anthropological research because of the multitude of social and cultural functions they fulfill. When it comes to a sword, a bowl,  even a sacrificial stone, the issue  is relatively straightforward. A sword is a sword, it has to be sharp and fit well into the hand. A shaman's drum is supposed to summon spirits effectively. But a doll, stuck in the flickering twilight of childhood, is both a fairy tale and the truth, a sublimation of dreams about perfection that are inaccessible to us, and an apprenticeship to the prose of life.

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  The oldest doll known today was found almost twenty years ago on the island of Pantelleria and named by the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera "Barbie from the Bronze Age". She had features delicate as a baby grown beyond its age: a tiny upturned nose and round eyes. At the archaeological site, a miniature pot was found alongside the doll, proof that a several-year-old "mother" used to cook porridge for her "daughter" out of cereals cut with a sickle. Clearly, this doll was to be followed by many others, dolls that were dancing, dueling, horse-riding, walking, baby dolls, dolls wearing armour…

Of course, the material used for making dolls and doll-making techniques have been constantly evolving. For example, the technique of creating movable joints, common in the Greco-Roman world, was only rediscovered in 17th century Germany, somewhere between Nuremberg and Bamberg, with the establishment of the first puppetry guilds.  In the Renaissance, wooden dolls were covered with paper pulp, or even wax. This allowed for softening their features and silhouettes. The eighteenth century was to usher in the time of porcelain while in the mid-nineteenth century the triumphal procession of plastics begins, initially from celluloid to (a century later) the plastic mass production known to us today. Contemporary dolls walk, purr, sing, blink, comb their electrifying, cat-like hair, shoot from the hip, or, in case of baby dolls, even pee to the applause of their several-year-old mothers!

Porcelain beauties

Interestingly, their, so to speak, emploi and the social roles assigned to them have also been evolving. The First Doll from Pantelleria and her younger sisters excavated in Athens, Syracuse or near Rome are in the vast majority miniatures of children, intended, as one can imagine, for babysitting. There are also figurines of gladiators or legionnaires but one cannot be sure whether they were the toys of little patricians or if they were intended to serve only a decorative function. Statistically, the majority of dolls have been portrayed always as children. However, in the 18th century, there were also dolls that resembled "adult beauties", with dazzling porcelain-made curls. Come the 19th century, tin and celluloid bourgeois dolls carry milk, forge horseshoes, shoot, bake bread and, of course, cuddle children.

The evolutionary lines gradually diverge. By the middle of the 20th century, on the one hand there are small figures of soldiers and astronauts (perfect for arranging battles, throwing them down and tearing their heads off!); while on the other, miniature adult tools such as electric pots, drills, stethoscopes, irons, and revolvers feature, allowing children to play different roles in various games. At the same time, dolls underwent a process of secondary infantilization, with the vast majority of them looking like babies or, at best, small children. More often than not they were girls, smelling of plastic, with cute cheeks and big blue eyes that closed when laid on their backs in miniature prams. Some of them would even say "Ma-ma!"

And then enters Mattel, wearing a black and white striped bikini.

It was March 3, 1959, when Barbie made her debut at the New York International Toy Fair. From the outset, she had a turbulent history. Her close cousin was Bild Lilli, brought from Germany by the designer Ruth Handler. But this was to become a kind of family secret, settled by a patent court judgment in 1963 and sealed by Mattel's purchase of the copyright from Greiner & Hausser a year later.

Barbie from Wisconsin

This is not a place for the history of the company's stunning success (Mattel claims that in times of economic boom three of their dolls are sold every second globally) or to relate the genealogy of the aforementioned Barbara Millicent Roberts, who, as we know from the numerous films, books and comics about her, was born in fictional Willows in Wisconsin. A graduate of the Manhattan International High School, her parents George and Margaret are in excellent health while she has numerous siblings and friends (Theresa, Midge, Christie e.g.). For a long time, she dated Ken, then she broke up with him. They got back together on Valentine's Day in 2011. Now, they are just "good friends".

What draws attention is the huge success of the Mattel company, which has been responsible for at least two revolutions in the world of toys. The first was the very appearance of the adult Barbie in the world of toys for girls, which, as we mentioned earlier, had been ruled by babies previously. Given the advent of Barbara Roberts, with legs up to her neck, a wasp-like waist and a bust Marilyn Monroe might envy, the doll was, so to speak, returned to its "apprenticeship to adulthood" function. In a different dimension than before, however. This was neither a maternal nor a kitchen adulthood, but an adulthood that was supposed to be fun, and a time of eternal flirting.

It was also supposed to be a time of personal independence, both in lifestyle as well as in financial terms. It is striking that Barbie would purchase her first house (i.e. houses appeared in Barbie kits) at a time when not  all US states allowed women the formal right to have their own bank accounts. And at the same time, she was the princess almost every girl wants to be at some point in her life (or, as any gender studies freshman would snarl, she thinks she wants to be because she's been told so by oppressive cultural patterns). It's just that Barbie was not the princess wearing a crown, but the one in high heels.

Marilyn’s bust, wasp waist

Thousands of battles have been fought about Barbie’s body. To start with, some parents were indignant about her Monroe-like bust, then the anthropologists spoke out about her unrealistic figure (indeed, in order to have a waist as thin as that in the first model, Barbie would have had to have three ribs removed), and finally she was a target for nutritionists, who rightly accused her of promoting anorexia. Indeed, according to researchers at a hospital in Helsinki, a woman of Barbie’s proportions would be considered dangerously malnourished, and her evident lack of body fat would have interfered with a normal menstrual cycle.

Also, what is anatomically shocking, is that while Barbie always had a large bust, it wasn't until the 21st century that she got... a belly button. This probably resulted from the natural contradiction between the two social roles assigned to the doll -- that on the one hand she was supposed to be a reflection of real life while on the other, no less than a projection of dreams.

For me, however, even more interesting was the second revolution Mattel launched in the mid-1960s. From then on, the company’s dolls were not only supposed to reflect existing, age-old behaviors and social models -- a kind of materialization of stereotypical dreams (such as a Princess or a Cowboy with a Laser Sword!) – they were now designed with the aim of reinforcing  desirable behaviors and supporting social evolution.

Little girl from Santa Fe

But is it the truth? In the early years of Barbie, Mattel made no such statement. Admittedly, the company was facing a huge dilemma. The blue-eyed, blond Barbie might have resembled the daughters of plutocrats from Boston, but not girls from the Bronx, or Santa Fe or Savannah. So, in effect, the dilemma for the Barbie doll producers resembled that so brilliantly verbalized by Marek Hłasko in "Beautiful Twentysomethings" [NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 2013, transl. by Ross Ufberg], where he asks if the way spies are portrayed in films (with their hands in the pockets of long trench coats) resembles those in real life or is it rather the other way round.

Obviously, this question is not about agents, it is about creation. Which comes first, nature or imagination? Does art only reflect the existing world (as realists would like) or does it create new patterns?

The origins of Barbie's evolution were humble. In 1967, the so-called Colored Francie appeared. However, she was really not much more than a clone. A little more pigment was added to the plastic mass from which the fair-haired Barbies were cast, and that was it... A year later Christie, officially recognized as the first African-American Barbie, hit the market. The issues of "race differences" are, of course, delicate, not to say anathematized. The Mattel company maneuvered between Scylla and Charybdis, being simultaneously attacked by advocates of "African American realism", demanding the similarity of dark-skinned Barbies to their teenage owners, and first-generation feminists, criticizing" racial stereotyping."  

The next incarnations of the African-American Barbie (that featured, to put it boldly, changes in the texture of her hair, the shape of her mouth, the profile of her nose and even the distance between her eyes) appeared every few years. The same approach was taken when it came to Latin American, Far Eastern and Eskimo Barbies. Currently, the company's commercial offer includes 22 skin tones, 94 hair colors, 13 types of irises and five body profiles: from the curviest to the athletic.

134 420 Barbie

You can already see the dilemma faced by the company. Yes, Barbie should reflect reality, but in how much detail and what proportions? Twenty two skin tones is really a lot, and 22 x 94 x 13 x 5 adds up to 134,420 possible image combinations. Does this really reflect the complexity of the social fabric of the modern world?

The company decided to go a step further. The direction it chose inevitably reminds me of the famous "History of the Minotaur" by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. It is a short, bitter, and brilliant apocryphal work about the son of Minos and Pasiphae, who grew up into a strong and melancholic dummy. How to entrust the throne of Crete to such a man? "So Minos called Daedalus, a fashionable Greek engineer who was also the founder of the famous direction of pedagogical architecture. This is how the maze was created. Through a system of corridors, from the simplest to more and more complicated, through the difference of levels and the stairs of abstraction, Daedalus was supposed to introduce the prince Minotaur to the principles of correct thinking."

If Daedalus created the pedagogical architecture, Mattel created the pedagogical puppetry.

And here there were maze-like dead-ends. For example the wheelchair-bound Barbie-like Becky, launched in 1997, was discontinued when it turned out that her wheelchair did not fit through the doors of Barbie dollhouses. Never mind the door. The real question is what a few-year-old girl, who is ill and in a wheelchair, wants. Does she dream of herself as an adult -- also in a wheelchair, but in a crazy pantsuit, or rather -- riding, like one of the other Barbie's incarnations, a Harley? And how many girls who don't have leg problems will want to play with Becky?

Freckles and capital

Market and image issues, capital and compassion are intertwined in this question. I can't answer it but Mattel can since in its offer there are still different types of Barbies -- in wheelchairs, on crutches, with hearing aids, or with all kinds of skin discolorations (from cute freckles to more serious vitiligo). Here you can see a certain convergence of the evolution of the world of dolls and the world of models who jointly seem to expand or redefine the understanding of beauty, sometimes in a really peculiar way.

However, the pedagogical trend is much more important when it comes to social attitudes. As I said, Barbie is one of the first ladies in the United States to begin to buy houses and cars. She easily obtained her driver's and pilot's licenses (although she also earned a living as a flight attendant). She stepped on the moon four years before Neil Armstrong (the 1965 "Miss Astronaut Barbie" kit). She is a doctor and she participates in car races. Already in 2002, the British weekly The Economist included in her impressive resume such professions as: surgeon, Olympic athlete, downhill skier, aerobics instructor, reporter, veterinarian, rock star, doctor, air force pilot, diplomat, musician, presidential candidate, baseball player and scuba diver. Seemingly, the only thing Barbie has never tried is motherhood.

In 1963, however, there was a red-haired and freckled Margaret "Midge" Hadley Sherwood, advertised as Barbie's best friend, who married Alan in the "Wedding Day Midge" collection. Midge had five children, including twins, and in two different kits was even sold "pregnant", with her newborn baby being taken out of a magnetic womb. Her children had grandparents and one could even buy children’s playgrounds too. Soon Midge was withdrawn from the shops, apparently because although she was married and wore a wedding ring she was giving rise to a controversy that Mattel supported teenage pregnancies. When she did return to the market in 2013, Midge was childless and single.

Sheroes

But never mind motherhood. In 2018 Mattel officially launched "Barbie Role Models", also known under the catchy neologism as "Sheroes" (she + heroes), on the market. The series started with names such as Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, Iris Apfel, but it is worth noting that every year new Sheroes appear and they are from various countries. The first Polish shero was the journalist Martyna Wojciechowska. And in 2021, she was joined by the hammer thrower Anita Włodarczyk!

However, this is not the end. After the multitude of irises, professions and BMI, the company decided to go further and in 2019 kits of dolls formally not belonging to the "Barbie family" appeared in several markets. They look like Barbie’s twins both in execution and style, but they are shorter by about one and a half inches and are marketed under the "Creatable World" label. Anne Polak, the spokeswoman for Mattel in Europe told the TVP Weekly these kits were sold, among others, in France, Great Britain and Spain, but above all -- in Germany.

"Creatable World" dolls don't have names. The first kit included five figures, titled DC-619, DC-073, DC-725, DC-220 and DC-826. The second, eight-figure kit was supplemented with DC-414, DC-965 and DC-319.

DC dolls, as you might guess, are perfectly androgynous. They have neither Marilyn's bust nor Ken's massive shoulders, not to mention his jawbone, Adam's apple or any similar details. Their big, baby eyes have a characteristic Mattel pattern (insiders say that they most closely resemble Barbie's friend Holly from the "Ever after High" series); eyelashes are gently mascara’d and lengthened, but eyeshadow is abandoned.

Antinous with a set of wigs

Similarly, traditionalists would probably describe their lips as "girly" since they are covered with a light, matte lipstick. The eyes are large and the head is proportionally slightly larger than Barbie's (as in the case of a few-year-olds). However, the rest of their bodies (hands, forearms, feet, legs, shoulders and hips) is that of a slim, muscular teenager. All in all, they look like Antinous [the Greek youth of delicate beauty who was the lover of Emperor Hadrian] but with a set of wigs.

And not only wigs but also outfits, glasses and shoes (three pairs in the basic kit). In addition, there is a handbag and hat and six changes of outfit: from tracksuits and unisex T-shirts, through clothes customarily "male" (tracksuit, pants with pockets, aviator jacket), to apparel customarily "female" (ball gowns, two-piece beach suit, mini). Of course, you can find much more complementary clothing sets and accessories on the market. The DC dolls are supposed to transform themselves in a protean way and constantly change (as the packaging clearly and graphically suggests) clothes and hair, flowing like mermaids through the turbulent currents of identity.

And that's what, it seems, the poor Minotaur couldn't stand. As Herbert wrote: "The unfortunate prince, pushed by the preceptors through the corridors of induction and deduction, wandered around, staring blankly at the illustrative frescoes. He didn't understand any of it.

"Having exhausted all means, King Minos decided to get rid of the blemish of the family. He brought (...) the skillful murderer Theseus. And Theseus killed the Minotaur. On this point, myth and history agree.

"Through the labyrinth -- a primer no longer needed -- Theseus returns carrying the large, bloody head of the Minotaur with goggled eyes, in which for the first time began to sprout the wisdom -- which experience usually gives".

The death and resurrection of DC Doll

In fact, poetry and market practice are incompatible here. It was not the Minotaur (i.e. the society that had to be educated) that was killed, but the DC Dolls. "German society was not yet ready [for them]. The doll did not sell well and is no longer available in shops," stated Sebastian Trischler.

Of course, that’s just for now. Senior company official, Richard Dickson, unequivocally told the weekly magazine Stern on February 4: "[DC Dolls] are no longer for sale. But that doesn't mean they won't come back."

They will come back, for sure. However, while observing both the efforts of the German branch of the Mattel company and its commitment to progress in the field of social pedagogy as well as Sebastian Trischler's clear, though malely hidden regret, I am compelled to quote Bertold Brecht’s famous poem "The Solution" written in 1953:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

  – Wojciech Stanisławski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

  – Translated by Agnieszka Rakoczy