She's Got Barbie Roberts Eyes

To the uninitiated, a Barbie is a Barbie. To see one is to see them all. Collectors know better, and can recite the subtle variations in features that distinguish Barbie #2 ("brunette or blonde ponytail, blue irises, curved eyebrows") from 1967’s Twist N Turn Barbie ("bendable legs, twist waist, rooted eyelashes"). Other variations include eye shadow and lip color, and painted versus rooted eyelashes. Aside from iris color (Barbie #3 was the first to have colored irises), though, the eyes themselves remained the same.

But in 1971, twelve years after her introduction, Mattel made a more dramatic change to Barbie’s face – her eyes would now face forward, a change from her original more "demure sideways glance."

Demure? Really?

The original Barbie’s eyes are not demure. They are coy, sneaky, and just a touch contemptuous. "You think I’m the plaything," she seems to be saying, "but I’m the one in charge. Wait and see."

Desperately Seeking Curls

I have spent my entire life – nearly five decades now – looking in the mirror and seeing what isn’t there. The ears that went unpierced, for example, because my mother wouldn’t give her permission and Leggett – the downtown department store that in the ’70s was the only place to get one’s ears pierced in my hometown – required parental permission for anyone under sixteen. I felt the sting of intact earlobes whenever my friends exchanged earrings for birthdays and at Christmas. "You’d look so cute with pierced ears," they’d say, and "Your mother doesn’t let you wear make-up?" for that was something else I never saw in the mirror.

In junior high, a girl in my PE class, a girl I didn’t even know, asked to borrow my eyebrow pencil. (Her brow color had apparently evaporated due to the rigors of badminton or volleyball or square dancing.) "I don’t wear eyebrow color," I had to say, thinking, "But I wear the shame of its lack every day."