Message in a Bindi doll
I was sitting in my dentist's waiting room recently and noticed a cute little girl of around 7 or 8 playing with a doll.
I might not have paid much attention except that the doll resembled Barbie, and Barbie has been on my mind a lot lately. She turns 50 this month - as all of Western civilization has recently been reminded - and I'd read somewhere that things weren't going so well for her in her advanced age. Barbie sales plunged 21 percent in the last quarter of 2008, and she's been criticized for years for her rampant consumerism, and accused of promoting anorexia among young girls.
I was sad to hear this, since Barbie was an important part of my childhood, a breakthrough toy for my generation. Finally, we got a doll who was free-spirited and ambitious, and not some boring inert diapered lump who needed mothering.
"Is that a Barbie?" I asked the girl.
"No," she said, then pressed the doll's stomach. "If you start now, the world will become a much better place," the doll chirped, and then went on, didactically: "It's easy. All you have to do is treat animals and nature the way you would like to be treated."
She pushed her stomach again. "I'd like to fly like an eagle," the doll said.
"Your doll certainly has a lot to say," I said. "What's her name?" I was starting to feel a bit guilty because I was setting her up to Talk to a Stranger. Maybe dispensation was granted for doctors' offices?
"Bindi!" the girl said, as though I should have known. There must have been something about my blank face that suggested I was hopeless, so she reached into her tote bag for a visual aid - a cardboard "Bindi" sign.
"What kind of doll is Bindi?" I asked.
"She's a real girl," the girl said, earnestly. "Her dad was killed by a stingray."
Got it. Her father was the Australian Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, who died in a freak underwater accident. Which accounted for Bindi's wetsuit, pet dolphin, and Australian accent. (She also says, "Crikey, let's go help wildlife" and "Extinct stinks.")
It was the end of our conversation, because I was called to see the dentist, but I've found myself thinking about Bindi a lot since then. Bindi doll really irked me. Not just because it's unseemly and exploitative to use a kid who just lost her father to sell toys.
But I also think toys should just be toys, not mouthpieces for social causes. Kids have little enough time to play these days: Do their dolls really need a moral purpose? And who needs a doll to preach? That's what parents are for!
Which brings me back to Barbie, for whom I had an undue affection as a child. Say what you will about Barbie, but at least she had free will and could decide on her own what she stood for. And she's quiet, unlike Bindi, whose soliloquies don't leave much room for a kid to improvise.
I credit my Barbie for helping me work out who I am today - and the answer isn't a hypersexualized anorexic shopaholic. For several years - when times were tough for my family - my Barbie just had one dress, the pert Garden Party Sundress, which cost $1.50 and was the one and only holiday present I got when I was 10. But did that faze her? No: She was fierce and proud, cloaking her embarrassment with clothes improvised from towels and my father's handkerchiefs.
Later, when things were better, my dad surprised me with a fur-and-brocade cocktail number, and a showy red velvet flared coat. Now I was embarrassed by Nouveau Riche Barbie, who dressed better than any of my friends' dolls. I invented a thrift shop for her to assuage her guilt.
I like to think Barbie was the starting point for a modest social conscience and some self-awareness. And - crikey! - she didn't have to tell me to save the world.
Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com. 
