I'm still influenced by Barbie. I occasionally love to look at the vintage clothes. I had a Barbie long before there were houses and cars and blond Barbies and careers. I had the brunette model in the stripe knit bathing suit. Strangely, I don't remember anymore what clothes I had for her and I truly wonder if I had any. When my mother cottoned to the fact that you could keep buying outfits, she said absolutely not. And I didn't have an allowance. My mother, who could sew professionally and could drape and copy clothing instead of using patterns, did not suggest to me that I make doll clothes myself.

I never liked baby dolls and didn't understand the draw of playing with them. I also didn't have any brothers or sisters or any close family with small children.
My grandfather gave me an Esther the Queen doll when I was a toddler and I did love her. She had a gold and silver brocade long gown.

Otherwise, I loved books and a little trucks and a tiny train set my grandfather gave me. My mother frowned on these boys toys but I disregarded her. I also loved to drum on the oatmeal box but I wasn't allowed to have drums. I could have an accordian but I didn't want one.

What I loved about the Barbie clothes (that I didn't have) is that in that era they seemed designed for going places, leisure. I would not have liked Barbie's career costumes because I would have seen them as constraining.

My sister and I had Barbies but, as several have mentioned, I really don't think it occurred to me that I should look like her. I was more into building her elaborate stages and houses to live as far as I can remember.

OMG, I totally forgot I still have a Barbie. My daughter gave to me about 20 years ago. She is the My Fair Lady Barbie. I just dug her out from the top of my closet.

Nope. I didn't play with Barbie. My parents were too poor to afford an imported toy (India - back in the 80s). Which toy was I influenced by .... Hmm.... None.

ETA - I did beg to them for a Barbie toy for years and years and years, because my friends had it. But nope I thought I would satisfy my craving by buying my daughters all sorts of Barbie. And as luck would have it .... I got two boys instead. So now I play with Ben 10 and trash packs o_O

No way! For a time my only interest was cowboys and Indians. Then I became a bookworm, then a geek. Somehow I remained blissfully unaware of Barbie, for which I give my parents much credit.

Like Diana and others I was much more interested in horses. I'd play wild horses with the neighborhood gang of kids (as the oldest kid I was the stallion, Iol I never saw a contradiction). I had plastic horses too and I'd sew and craft saddles for them and once made an Arabian costume with some leftover fringe. Mostly they just splashed around in the stream in a ravine near my friends house.

I had one Barbie who was part of the nationality series. She was from India. She had very long black hair, caramel skin, and a bindi. My mother who had lived for awhile in India showed me how to wrap a sari on her and I made sari's out of various bits of cloth. I still think a sari is one of the most beautiful forms of clothing and I thought that Barbie was beautiful. She rode side-saddle on the horses.

My mom made the most gorgeous hand-knit outfits for our Barbies. I remember my little sister had Skipper and I felt satisfied (at around age 6) that I was Barbie and she was Skipper, lol!

I had a Barbie. I was grounded for cutting my hair - never admitted to my mom that I had given Barbie a buzz cut, the hair she found in the trash wasn't mine. I knew she would be twice as mad! Barbie stayed hidden until years later mom found buzz cut Barbie. She was mad - I knew it. My Barbie was the mid-late 70's variety but my grandmother had a couple from the 50's that I played with regularly. I do remember thinking I wanted to look like her Barbies. She had awesome clothes that grandma had made her plus some of the originals. She was glamorous. I thought the dark haired Barbie was exotic. I have lots of fond memories of dressing the Barbies with grandma BUT my 2 girls do not have Barbies. It is a different time.

I LOVED my Barbies. My Granny made all her clothes. In fact, they are the only toys I kept from my childhood. You should see the funky outfits Granny made in the late 60's and early 70's!

Oh, and my brother would wait in his room for me to call and tell him that Barbie was ready.....and then GI Joe, with the Kung-Fu grip, would drive over in his Jeep to take Barbie for a spin! Ha Ha!

I had Barbies, but never really any specific Barbie, if that makes sense (no career-based barbies or anything). This was in the late 80s or so. Mostly my best friend and I would dress tham up and then they would go on adventures. So I don't think they had much an effect on my body image at that age.

Wow I step away for a few hours and lots of responses! It doesn't seem like any of you were negatively impacted by Barbie. TBH Iwoukd be much more likely to buy a Barbie than a Brat doll or a knockoff. My daughter has a few and never plays with them, but she sure did like getting them there for a while.

I think my sister and I had a couple of Barbies and also the small dolls. (Isabel: was Angie part of the Dawn doll line? I remember Dawn.)
I don't remember having Ken or the car or the houses or anything. I do remember my sister cutting off the hair and drawing on Barbie. Don't remember much about the fashion.
So the dolls were there but no real impact up or down. (I had a basic baby doll and also a Lazy Daisy doll (who fell over and slept!)). I think at about age 8 I was done with dolls for good.
What I remember much more was (1) playing kickball with the neighborhood kids until dark just about every summer night, (2) playing Harriet the Spy in the rhododendron bushes, (3) reading reading reading, and (4) playing office with my sister. I think I was more tomboy/nerd.

I never had name-brand Barbie, only the less expensive copycat fashion dolls. Anyone remember Triki Miki? How about Dawn?

And no extra clothing, as I recall -- just whatever they came wearing. Kind of suggests that my mom didn't really understand the concept of fashion dolls, but by the time I had a sister, years later, my mom sewed all kinds of clothing for her (name-brand) Barbie.

As the fourth and final child, my sister was indulged a little more than the rest of us. For one thing, by the time she came along, my parents were tired.

For another, she understood the power of the tantrum.

I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer because of Barbie. I used to make her clothes. I think I was 10 at the time, maybe younger. My proudest achievements were a two-piece tweed suit and a wedding gown and veil. I wish I had kept them! I had a bag full of clothes that I made for her...

I don't remember ever wanting to be like her, though. My sister and I, and sometimes our neighbor, did a TON of play-acting with Barbies. Sometimes we let Jem/Jerrica join in. Truly outrageous!

I had Barbies and loved playing with them. I actually still have the collection -- including Ken, who's arm fell off in such a regular occasion that my friend Wendy and I wrote a song called "Oops, My Arm Fell Off" in his honor. They are packed away in my very psychedelic paisley circa 1972 childhood suitcase down in my basement, along with the Barbie wardrobe case full of doll clothes. They were all still in my mom's basement when she passed away, and I haven't had the heart to get rid of it. As a child, I never really thought much about how Barbie was shaped, etc., I just enjoyed the hours of costume changes and playing out some kind of silly scenarios that I can't even remember now.

I was a pretty bookish kid, but I loved dolls and also building toys like Legos and Lincoln Logs, and creative toys like Spirograph and Lite Brite (yes, I still have the Spirograph too, but mom threw out the Lite Brite for some reason *sniff*). Yeah, I know, I'm sentimental.

Great topic! I had tons of Barbies and the Barbie dream house, pool, Corvette and other stuff... Oddly enough, I turned out to be someone who isn't overly obsessed with looking girly, or even going full makeup on most days. But yeah, Barbie influenced me, I guess, in thinking about what a woman's body is like. I remember being kind of fascinated by her plastic, wierd breasts and lack of bellybutton. I do think we worry too much about the effect Barbie has on girls. I mean, those dolls called Bratz don't look anything like a real little girl either, so what's the difference?

Not at all. I had one...everyone did, but I don't remember playing with it. I was always outside playing at that age. We always had pickup football games going in my neighborhood. I was the only girl that played. (We played tackle.) I remember being devastated when my mom told me in 5th grade that I could no longer play.
Served me well though... my son's friends were very impressed at my ability to throw a perfect spiral I still love to go outside and throw the football around...hell on the manicure, tho.

Barbies were big in my neighborhood group of friends growing up back in the 1960's. I read IK's blog comment on Inge's post about Lammily, and mostly agreed with her take. But I do remember a girl that I played with, who was a year older and she had an older sister (I only had brothers), so Grace was way more "sophisticated and worldly" in my eyes LOL, and I recall her telling me that Barbie herself was more beautiful than the other Barbie dolls in the collection because she had blonde hair and blue eyes. I had brown hair and brown eyes so that kind of bummed me out at the time. I totally forgot about that memory until reading through this post. Maybe that comment subconsciously played in the back of my mind, then was reinforced by the media in the culture of the time.

Mostly I was tomboy, obsessed with horses and animals. My favorite things were art supplies and arts and crafts kits and stuff, though.

My sister and I spent countless hours playing with our Barbie dolls. Our grandma used to make the most beautiful clothes for them, including a wedding dress with veil and a maid of honor dress. Now that I think about it, that must have been a lot of fun for her.

No, Ironkurtin, I don't think my sister or I aspired to look like our Barbies. But I do wonder how/if they effected boys' opinions of what girls should look like.

Janet--high five for SpiroGraph! I loved it as a kid and snapped up a vintage, unopened set at an estate sale a few years ago. DS doesn't get it. Oh well.

I had both Barbies and normal big dolls that looked like girls or babies. I played with those when my female friends were around. But I was also friends with boys and with those I played pirates or other adventure stuff. All in all my parents encouraged us to play (with) very different things and we could always do what we were interested in. I played as much with Lego and Playmobil as with my dolls. So I wouldn't say I was influenced very much by Barbie. And my sister was never interested in dolls at all because she was nearer in age to my brother and always played with him.

I don't think Barbie is that bad actually, IF you offer your child alternatives and don't go overboard with it. When I was a child a lot of the girls played with Barbie, but we had other stuff too. Nowadays I feel like girls get those other options less and less. It's all about the pink, glitter etc.!

Ladies, so many great memories!

Two thoughts:

Funny how some of consider playing sports and climbing trees to be "tomboy." I loooooved climbing trees...

Wind chime wonders if Barbie affected how *boys* think of girls. I never thought of that. Good point.

I always found Barbie a pain to sew for. She is stiff and tiny and my little hands could not handle such fine work. Was not a Barbie fan at all.

I dunno, I had brothers and they had GI Joe action figures and I don't remember them ever picking up my barbies, merging them together and playing house with them or anything. They basically just ignored my "girl" stuff and anything that wasn't traditionally "boy." Like my brothers, I wonder if most boys paid any attention to them or if they even registered with them at all?

Kind of a tangent here, but I remember reading a magazine article that was a woman's Ph.D thesis where she became a stripper for a brief time to observe and write about the men who go to these clubs and the women who strip. She was very surprised to find that the men liked and appreciated ALL kinds of real female bodies, not just the "perfect" barbie/modelesque women. (As an interesting sidenote, it was also revealed in her paper that in the stripper industry, the ones that received less tips were ones with short hair, and so the women that kept their hair short in real life would wear wigs with long locks when performing). So my point with this is maybe women are more hung up on this Barbie image than men?

Claudia, if the men were tipping the longer haired strippers, doesn't that suggest they are the ones hung up on the Barbie ideal? They may say they appreciate all body types, but money talks. I doubt the short-haired strippers are wearing wigs to feel more womanly; I will bet they are smart and know how to get bigger tips.

Coming back to add that I've always found baby dolls WAY more creepy than Barbies. I'm sorry, but IMO 5 year olds should not be pretending to take care of babies. Beyond the fact that it's just not something small children should do, I find this far more anti-feminist than Barbie personally. Especially those ones that cry and have to be changed, etc. Does anyone remember the baby doll that PEED and you'd have to change it?

I'm pretty sure my mom felt the same way, as we had lots of barbies and other things, but never any baby dolls. Also, I know my mom thought that Cabbage Patch Kids were the ugliest things ever.

Sorry about the rant, and I hope I haven't offended anyone.

I had at least one, and the Dream Van that my parents told me they spent hours affixing decals to, for me only to lose interest in it in about a week lol. I remember most cutting my dolls' hair. I had my waist length hair cropped into a Dorothy Hamill wedge (not my choice) and did the same to all my dolls.
I did love to play with clothes in my own closet, but not so much with dolls.

Fun thread.

I played with all kinds of dolls, including Barbie. But I never wanted to look like Barbie. She was ridiculous. What was fun about her was the clothes (many hand-made by the mothers of friends or my own mother, and eventually, by me) and making up and directing fun and absurd dramas for her.

It was sort of like Mad Men for kids.

Viva, the body type didn't matter, nor did thinness, nor did height, also it didn't matter if the long hair was straight, curly, or a particular color, so there is only the slimmest Barbie overlap IMO on short vs. long.

And yes, the whole reason they donned the wigs was to get the bigger tips.

I had many Barbies, and enjoyed dressing them. I played with them as if they were puppets, and made up entire soap operas around them. I'm not sure I was ever influenced by Barbie regarding my self-esteem (I've never wanted to be blonde, and i already got the boobs at 12, so...) but I was kind of mean to the headless Barbie (you know, the one whose head was reattached and therefore lacked a long neck). She was always 'the bad girl' in my stories. I tended to have my pretty new Barbie be the protagonist, and the other ones relegated to minor roles. The ugliest would always be the evil one. I think that's because of Disney though, not Barbie.

so interesting to read. like many others here. i played with barbie (in the late 60's. early 70's), and what i envied was her wardrobe and her varied careers. that's what i wanted...i don't ever remember thinking, wow this is what a grown up women looks like....