Barbie Doll Was Modeled After German Hooker

The Mattel Barbie doll -- more familiar to us as Barbie -- has, in the last four decades, taken on a life and persona of her own. In 1994, an unofficial biography revealed that Barbie was modeled on a German cartoon character, an ambitious hooker named Lilli. At a 1995 exhibit, "Art, Design and Barbie: The Evolution of a Cultural Icon" at New York's Liberty Street Gallery, Lilli's role in Barbie's evolution was heavily underplayed. This subterfuge was part of a larger controversy, in which columnists and curators accused Mattel Inc., the sponsor, of being excessively meddlesome. While Mattel purged the exhibit of certain works of art inspired by Barbie, the company also did its best to camouflage the doll who had inspired the creators of Barbie. To understand why this was inevitable, we must put ourselves in Barbie's shoes, and follow the progress of a very hard-working plaything. Until recently, few Barbie owners were conscious of Barbie's true age -- or of the life this all-American prom queen once led in another land, under another name. But Barbie's first playmates are now old enough to handle the truth. M.G. Lord, the author of "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll," is one of those women. In "Forever Barbie," Lord reveals that Lilli -- "an eleven-and-a-half inch, platinum ponytailed" German doll -- was the pre-American Barbie. The Lilli doll was the three-dimensional version of a popular post-war cartoon character who first appeared in the West German tabloid Bild Zeitung in 1952. A professional floozy of the first order, Bild Zeitung's Lilli traded sex for money, delivered sassy comebacks to police officers, and sought the company of "balding, jowly fatcats," says Lord. While the cartoon Lilli was a user of men, the doll (who came into existence in 1955) was herself a plaything -- a masculine joke, perhaps, for West German males who could not afford to play with a real Lilli. A German brochure from the 1950s confided that Lilli (the doll) was "always discreet," while her complete wardrobe made her "the star of every bar." The Lilli doll who made it into the "Art, Design and Barbie" show was dressed in her most (perhaps her only) demure outfit. This was a literal cover-up. Easily overlooked by anyone who didn't understand Barbie's history, Lilli was dressed like a prostitute who didn't want to be noticed -- lost among the other non-Barbie dolls who were provided for educational purposes. It seems fitting that Lilli dolls were manufactured in Hamburg, a city where government-approved, licensed prostitutes are a fact of life. In the United States, where legal hooking is virtually unheard of, Lilli had to tone down her act. (Perhaps she changed her name in order to get around a U.S. immigration law barring prostitutes from becoming residents -- but that is just conjecture.) While it is still unsafe for a foreign prostitute to reveal her trade in the United States, Barbie -- decades later -- is no longer foreign. She is more American than many Americans, and perhaps even more hypocritical. As you can imagine, Lilli did not become Barbie overnight. Like Vivian, the awkward streetwalker in the movie "Pretty Woman" (who transmuted into a social swan), Lilli "cleaned up really nice." But her transformation from adult hussy to quasi-virtuous teenager was a painstaking miracle of art and science. Jack Ryan, a Mattel designer with a Yale engineering degree, worked on making the doll look less like a "German streetwalker" by changing the shape of her lips and redoing her face, says Lord. When the ex-hooker's body was recast, her incorrigible nipples were rubbed off with a fine Swiss file. Although she submitted to corporate mutilation, I do not regard Lilli as a victim of prudery -- or of capitalism. She was up to her own perverse tricks, an agent of her own future. To get to the American public, Barbie had to capture the buyers at the annual American Toy Fair. Working the 1959 Toy Fair as a respectable ingenue did not come easily, and the Sears buyer, a man, didn't fall for this makeover. While we have no reason to think he had known her as Lilli, it's clear that Barbie's sexiness betrayed her, for he refused to stock her. This initial rejection didn't prevent Barbie from overcoming her scarlet origins and selling herself into the hearts and lives of America. Barbie's not the first canny harlot to have shaved four to seven years off her mileage, or to have changed her name. But compared to other enterprising trollops who delete whole decades in a day while renaming ourselves every other week, Barbie is quite restrained. She has changed her name only once. Over the years, millions of people have found her respectability utterly plausible. Now, Barbie's past has returned -- not to haunt her, but to be flaunted. The disclosure of her history was perfectly timed. Heidi Fleiss, Norma Jean Almodovar and the Mayflower Madam (aka Sydney Biddle Barrows) have paraded their collective, commercial past on television talk shows, making it trendy for Barbie to open the closet door. Activist hookers like Margo St. James (whose bid for a San Francisco Supervisorial seat was supported by many gay Democrats) have politicized the prostitute's image, making Barbie's past appear more wholesome. In this era of Sex Worker Chic, Barbie the ex-hooker is no symbol of shame. Instead, she is "the girl who got away with it" -- a role model for ambitious women who will have their cake and eat it, too. You can't keep a good pro down, and the success of Lord's "Forever Barbie" has turned Barbie's hidden past into an official piece of our country's social history. Marketed as a harmless plaything for 35 years, the all-American prom queen turns out to have been a foreign whore on the run. Somehow, the kind of girl your brother couldn't take home to Mom became a role model for million of young girls. How did this unthinkable change occur? Picture a little girl on Long Island (or in Westchester) openly playing with a facsimile of the New York call girl her suburban father secretly visits during his lunch hours. If I am startled, shouldn't middle America be horrified? More amazing is the thought that this whorish facsimile could be a gift from her parents. But that is exactly what has happened -- and what continues to happen -- in homes all over North America. Barbie has become one of the family, and nothing can stem this tide. Even the most committed feminists have been known to buy Barbie dolls for their daughters, as have fundamentalist Christians. She is everywhere, even in the enemy's nursery. Is Barbie a sneaky trollop who hid the truth when it was convenient, revealing it now to keep up with the Zeitgeist? Or was she, perhaps, one of the great powers behind this cultural shift, helping to make prostitution more acceptable? During the 1980s, Western Publishing was marketing Barbie's Dream Date, a board game that Lord says could easily be called The Hooker Game. Players find ways to make Ken spend "as much money as possible" before the clock strikes 12, then "tally their date and gift cards." (Could this make her a role model for hookers who need to get their beauty sleep?) "What I objected to in this game was its covert prostitution," Lord told me. In "Forever Barbie" she suggests that it's contradictory to market Barbie's Dream Date alongside We Girls Can Do Anything, a Barbie game in which girls strive to become doctors and designers. But the covert behavior makes perfect sense to me. Like many women who use their bodies to pay the rent, Barbie has had to have a straight cover. Almost every successful call girl I know has a customer who can only get it up for a part-time pro with a cute, respectable career -- as an interior decorator or journalist, perhaps. A smart hooker's entire Rolodex may be composed of guys who think they are helping out a Good Girl who has temporarily lost her way. In adult magazines, phone-sex ads entice jaded callers to chat with a "blonde coed," as do the not-very-pristine stickers plastered strategically (next to the tow-truck stickers) on public phones. As I write this, one of the few remaining peepshows in New York's Times Square area still attracts business with this neon message: "LIVE MODELS WORKING THEIR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE." In the adult entertainment classifieds of many publications, men are regularly tempted by "non-professional" talent. Nobody would seek out, or feel good about paying, an amateur dentist. But a private stripper's "amateur" status is often a selling point, as is a prostitute's. Purity is a hot commodity in the sex industry. I have been told by clients and colleagues alike that my great allure is that I "don't look like a hooker." Friends who have seen Bombay's notorious "cages" tell me that a whole section of Bombay's sex district is devoted to "virgins" (who presumably have no repeat customers). Source: Salon.com

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