It was her breasts that betrayed the Queen of the Elves. Where once folds of white gossamer covered a bosom as ambivalent (perhaps even manlike) as the dread sovereign, now fairy spandex strained to the point of laddering against unmistakably optimistic 36Cs.
Her waist, too, had changed. Gone was the slim but assertive trunk of fey womanhood, modestly hiding a womb equally capable of nurturing warrior kings and effete two-legged Borzois with a penchant for homo-erotic heroics and awful dialogue. In its place was the tortured isthmus of leathery meat that forms the midriff of the athletically malnourished. She might have been able to give birth to a Vienna sausage, but it would have been a squeeze.
It seemed too macabre to be true, but the box in the toy shop told no lies, and neither did its three-digit price tag: Tolkien had been hijacked by Barbie. Indeed, her consort, looking fiendishly dapper in a neighbouring box, confirmed one’s worst fears. Ken — for it was he — smiled oafishly through the plastic, a natty Elven cape draped over his deltoids. His hands, fixed into that strangely masturbatory claw that all buff action figures sport, seemed eager to unsheathe a gay blade and embrace the sweaty ectasies of single combat.
It was an awful moment, to see Middle Earth trampled by Middle America, and for a while one was tempted to buy the dolls just to goad some vicious pet into chewing their heads off. Middle-class pets such as dogs and cats and hamsters wouldn’t do; it would have to be a catfish, or a particularly grim tortoise, its gums sharpened on 50 years of slate and disappointments. It seemed catastrophic. What hope was there now that Barbie and her eunuch had breached the last defences of quirky individualism provided by literature, and now felt entitled to flaunt themselves, sans nipples, through-out any great book they wished?
And then the practical realities of Lit-Barbie sank home: the devils are breeding readers. Not intentionally, of course, but still. And not just any readers. We’re talking about readers who engage with texts as obsessively as they comb Barbie’s hair, who devour narrative as insatiably as they demand the updated, special edition maternity frock with matching waffle-iron for Married Pregnant and Oh So In Love With My Beau Barbie®. We’re talking widely read consumers in thrall to the sanctity of literary theory and the hetero-sexual nuclear family.
Of course it won’t always be an easily digestible combination. The Marquis Ken de Sade figurine may confuse more traditional children with his professed love for candlelit dinners, long walks on the beach and pelting naked nuns with chestnuts dipped in melted chocolate as a preamble to the animalistic deflowering of visiting Bishops. Likewise Lady Barbie Chatterley®, with specially articulated thighs and battery-operated Quivering Loins® attachments might unsettle those more used to the coy chest-rubbing and face-butting practised by Ken and Barbie in the privacy of their three-walled Malibu apartment.
Naturally, sex is nothing new to the doll, whose makers have been edging towards a more educational approach that purports to enlighten girls about their rights as strong independent women. The My Body’s Nobody’s Body But Ken’s® range might not have taken off, but one hopes that they will persevere, catering to as wide a range of tastes as there are women, from Live Alone and Like It Barbie® (cat and flannel pyjamas sold separately) to Use Me Like the Filth I Am Barbie® with matching revolving waterbed equipped with pop-out stirrups.
But children will have had no gentle introductions to more difficult aspects of literature, and things could get ugly when seven-year-olds are given Disgrace Barbie® for Christmas and ask their parents why she’s got torn clothes and is crying, and what to do with the small plastic dog carcass supplied. Who would be a parent when explanations are demanded for why the new Waiting For Godot Barbie® box set includes nothing but two Kens sitting facing each other on a black stage?
It won’t be all bad, of course. Heart of Darkness Ken®, supplied with three porters and a bottle of quinine tablets, will go a long way in blurring outmoded gender lines, just as The Naked and the Dead Barbie® with detachable bowels will make a strong anti-war statement. But, as Things Fall Apart Barbie® will point out, the centre cannot hold. Fear and Loathing in Malibu Ken® will give way to Holy Bible Barbie®, with children able to accessorise with either the Ten Fashion Commandments tablets or the Fish, Loaves and Prada Handbags kit.
At which point the chewing off of heads begins in earnest.