Barbie Doll Publicist With Manic Sexual History
Ruth Handler was the lady who designed and gave life to the original Barbie doll in her striped bathing suit, in March 1959. Barbie also known by the name Barbara Millicent Roberts, has been loved by millions over the years. She is a doll with an adolescent face, but adult characteristics.
Barbie, who now celebrates her 50th birthday, appears to have been originally popularized by a Yale-educated man. Jack Ryan was a swinger from the 70's, but he had a deep dark secret. He was driven by an insatiable sexual appetite.
Ryan's wives included such beauties as the delightful Zsa Zsa Gabor. A close friend and confidant of Ryan, Stephen Gnass, said to hear Ryan talk about Barbie, was to feel Ryan was talking about something sexual. Ryan is said to have paid high-class call girls and it was not unknown for Ryan to hold sex-orgies at his expensive Bel-air mansion. It was also reported that Ryan was a sufferer of the disease gonorrhea.
Barbie was portrayed to embrace a 'normal' kind of opulent lifestyle, with her pink mansions and extravagant cars. In 2004 Barbie even separated from her long time boyfriend, Ken Carson, as many couples were doing in real life. However, in February 2006 the couple were reunited.
About the only thing missing in Barbie's life were children. Barbie represented the up and coming professional women, who decided against a family. Instead, Barbie has owned over forty pets, from a panda, lion cub, cats, dogs, horses, to a zebra. She was employed as a flight attendant, held a pilots' license, become an astronaut and a doctor, to mention just a few of her many occupations. An Islamic Barbie, called Fulla, was created, alongside an African and Hispanic Barbie.
By the late 1990's, the term 'Barbie' however, came to symbolize any woman who is considered, by the majority, to be frivolous and empty headed. Perhaps this was an unconscious flow-on from the 'blondes have all the fun’ syndrome of the 1980's. The harshest and most realistic criticism thrown at Barbie, was her out-of-reach body shape. This presented the ever present and very real danger of promoting anorexia in the young girls. According to the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, any girl striving for a shape like Barbie, would be missing 17 – 22% body fat, which is needed for her to menstruate. The Barbie mould was eventually given a new design in 1997, when a few inches were added to her waist. In keeping with the signs of the time, in 1997 there also came a friend of Barbie, in a pink wheelchair.
A 2005 survey revealed that in an effort to rid themselves of their 'Barbie Days', some girls would go through a 'hate Barbie' stage. Barbie would end up decapitated, or melted down in a microwave oven. Yet it is claimed that 90% of fanatical Barbie doll collectors, of well over 100,000 women, are over the age of 40. They buy more than 20 Barbie dolls each year, with over 45% of them spending an average of over $1000 a year.
The original Barbie sold for $3 in 1959. In October 2004 the same Barbie, in a mint-condition box was sold for $3552 on eBay. The highest price ever to be paid for a Barbie was at Christies in London, for nine thousand pounds sterling. This was a Barbie dressed in Midnight Red from 1965, which had been part of a private collection of 4,000 Barbie dolls. She was sold by two Dutch women, Ietje Raebel and her daughter Marina.
To celebrate her 50th birthday, the original striped bathing suit Barbie, from 1959, has been reproduced.
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