It is quite rightly incumbent upon us all to celebrate the life-affirming cinematic reinvigoration represented by the new Greta Gerwig movie. However, somewhere in all the hullabaloo, pinkness and Kenergy, a fundamental truth has been obscured by Barbie revisionism.
In a consumerist sense, Barbie is iconic, of course. She’s probably the most recognisable children’s toy in the world. With an estimated 100 dolls sold every minute and more than a billion dolls in circulation since her launch in 1959, Barbie clearly rules. But for many of us – by which I really mean British women born between the late 60s and early 80s – Barbie is not the true doll. No. The name of the true doll is Sindy.
Completely lost in the bubblegum-tinged excitement of recent weeks is the fact that the now-discontinued Sindy herself has a significant anniversary. Sindy launched in 1963 and is currently celebrating “60 iconic years”. But while the Barbie doll has close to 20 million followers on social media, the Instagram hashtag #Sindy has only been used 112,000 times. No matter. The truth is the truth. And as a child I could see for myself which of them was real and which was fake.
It wasn’t an idea purely of my own invention, aged five or six, but by the late 1970s I had acquired the understanding – by social and parental osmosis – that there was something “off” about Barbie. She was vulgar, American and very possibly a bit up herself. (The very worst things a female, whether doll or human, could be, we imagined.) I realise now that this was all really to do with what these dolls looked like naked: Barbie’s boobs were obvious, pneumatic and borderline pointy; Sindy’s boobs were more demure, subtler, almost self-effacing. Barbie represented something unapologetic and very possibly sexual. Sindy was safe and wholesome.
Also: Sindy did not have weird arched feet. Her feet were flat and she could potentially walk like a normal person. The whole point at the time was to have a doll who could get a boyfriend and I thought Sindy would need to be able to walk in order to achieve this. I don’t remember knowing anyone who owned a Ken doll – available from 1961 – so I did not know what one looked like. But I knew this for sure: Sindy looked good with Action Man (available in the UK between 1966 and 1984) and Barbie did not. At the time this was because I thought Barbie was “too tall”. But I’ve looked up the stats and it turns out all three dolls were exactly the same height. However, something in my tiny child’s brain already understood that Barbie was less realistic as a woman compared with Sindy. In real life, Barbie would have a waist of 18in (46 cm). Sindy – because of her subtler boobs – was far more realistically proportioned.
In her heyday, Sindy’s world was vast and joyous, filled with Mary Quant outfits, accessories, furniture and holiday kit. Sindy’s main activities were keeping house, changing outfits and getting ready for dates with Action Man (she ignored the red flag of his swivel eyes). I had a ballet Sindy, who had legs that actually bent at the knee and proper ballet shoes. There was an equestrian Sindy who came with a miniature riding hat and an anatomically vague horse. You could get battery-operated kitchen appliances: a Sindy washing machine which made washing machine noises; a Sindy cooker that came with a frying pan containing eggs and bacon that actually sizzled, and a kettle that actually whistled. This was the AI of 1978.
There was something refreshingly innocent about Sindy. She was a British-made product specifically designed to be a younger, simpler and less glamorous version of Barbie. At her peak in the 1980s, Sindy had 80% of the UK’s “fashion doll” market. But successive redesigns failed to capture the American market and by the late 90s the brand was crushed.
Ageing Sindy fans now find ourselves in an awkward position. I want to defend and champion Sindy and the significant role that she played in the lives of British girls. I will always have a place in my heart for her. The trouble is, as an adult woman, I would now very happily be regarded as the worst kind of Barbie: vulgar, up myself and happy to be mistaken for an American. In fact you are probably doing something wrong in life if you are not open to these accusations. I suspect this is the sentiment that Gerwig’s version of feminism is trying to grapple with. Sometimes the thing you don’t want society to say that you are, is the very thing you should embrace.
