During Holidays, Even Barbie Gets the Blues

It’s uncanny. Every Christmas season I’m in some shopping mall and I bump into my old friend, Deputy Mayor Barbie.

This time it was the Glendale Galleria, inside the FAO Schwarz toy emporium. I was already edgy with a case of Santa Claustrophobia when a talking dinosaur--definitely not Barney--tried to hustle me.

“Psst. Yeah, you. Wanna spend Christmas with something soft and cuddly?”

Mom told me never to talk to strange dinosaurs. I decided to get out of there quick. Dodging shoppers, I felt my right foot strike something small and hard.

Next thing I know, there’s Deputy Mayor Barbie flying like an extra point over a mean-looking checkout line. She crashed head-first onto a shelf stocked with Flying Hero Barbies. Quite a coincidence.

She ignored my apologies as I rushed to her aid. “Well that’s a fine how-do-you-do,” she cracked.

This Barbie, Mayor Riordan’s chief deputy for damage control, is one tough piece of plastic. Riordan met her back when he was making a killing as he restructured Mattel Inc. He exported jobs to Mexico and, after his election, imported Barbie into his administration.

Talk about poise. Despite the accidental boot, Deputy Mayor Barbie never stopped smiling. But then, she never does. She wasn’t bruised or scratched, her gray business suit was unwrinkled, her blond coiffure was just so.

But when Barbie realized precisely where she was, surrounded by hundreds of cousins still trapped inside their cocoons of cardboard and cellophane, terror flashed in her baby blues.

“Get me out of here,” she hissed, scrambling onto my right shoulder and clutching my ear. “This place gives me the creeps.”

I hurried out the door and into the main concourse.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I used to be so proud to be a Barbie. I used to love arguing with those feminists who hated us because we’re beautiful. I mean, talk about shallow.

“I would point out how we evolved, how we grew from being mere playthings to fine role models. We’re doctors and astronauts and soldiers and just anything a girl might want to be.”

She gazed through the window at boxes and boxes of Barbies.

“I read somewhere that we’re sold every two seconds,” she continued. “It really is sick, isn’t it? . . . I used to say, ‘Barbiehood is powerful.’ Now I’m starting to think we’re too powerful.”

This wasn’t sounding like the Barbie I knew at all.

“Flying Hero Barbie,” she sneered. “What the hell is that? And Shopping Spree Barbie. Now there’s a fine role model.”

Pet Doctor Barbie was in plain view, but the deputy mayor ignored her.

“Wish I could cheer you up,” I said. “Is it that you can’t find a good gift for your boss? Must be tough, Christmas shopping for a multimillionaire.”

“Well, I can’t. But that’s not it,” Barbie said. “I don’t know. . . . You hear about that San Francisco store selling Trailer Trash Barbies and Big Dyke Barbies? And those Drag Queen Barbies that are really Kens in my clothes and wigs?”

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” I reminded her.

“And you know people always make fun of us in newspaper columns and stuff.”

That I hadn’t noticed, but I nodded anyway.

“God, it’s become such a cliche,” she said. “Anyway, it got me thinking. And you know what? Sometimes I really do just feel like a phony. . . . Deputy Mayor Barbie, hell. They should have called me Political Hack Barbie.

“You know what I need right now? A drink. A drink as tall as me. Tonight I could be Stinking Drunk Barbie. Or maybe Cheap Floozy Barbie, then One Night Stand Barbie, then Morning After Barbie. . . .”

This was, obviously, a cry for help.

And just then a mall Santa walked by, offering a burned-out “Ho, ho, ho.”

Suddenly, I understood.

We expect so much of Barbie, the way she always seems so cheerful. But more people get depressed over the winter holidays than at any time during the year, and since Barbie is always, always in the limelight, always “on,” the stress must really get to her.

I offered her my diagnosis. “Even Barbies get the blues,” I said. “Hey, you’re only human.” It would be, I assured her, a temporary condition.

I told her to “keep a stiff upper lip.” A little joke. She smiled like she got it--but then, she always smiles.

“Now grab an ear,” I said, “and let’s go find that gift.”

We walked all over the Galleria. When we asked where we might find new police chiefs or city charters, all we got were blank stares. We considered a Lionel train set but figured that the mayor couldn’t get anybody at the MTA to agree on how to put it together.

We left the mall and drove to a little Haitian botanica across town.

When Deputy Mayor Barbie explained what she had in mind, the proprietor said it would be no problem: Of course he could make a Tom Hayden voodoo doll.

And just like that, Barbie’s blues were gone.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Calif. 91311. Please include a phone number.