Three faces of Barbie a snub to Asians

The makers of the nation's top-selling doll swelled with pride this month when they unveiled the new, enlightened "Barbie for President 2000" doll. What she lacked in anatomical correctness, this Barbie would make up for in political correctness, waving a Girls' Action Agenda aimed at empowering her young audience.

And, despite her politics-as-usual plastic smile, she seemed sincere in her message that you don't have to be a white person to aspire to the White House. Mattel made "Barbie for President" in three types: Caucasian, African American and Latin American.

But what about the Asian American version?

It was somehow eliminated, or perhaps never got on the drawing board to begin with.

This snub from Mattel Inc., the nation's largest toymaker, has angered many Asian Americans, who already feel overlooked in many spheres of U.S. life despite being the nation's third largest minority.

AnnieJoy Abbott shows off her "Kira" Barbie dolls, the only Asian "friend" Barbie has. The 5-year-old says: "I like this one because it has black hair. It looks like me."Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe

It also has triggered soul-searching within the Asian American community as to why there are so few Asian faces on doll-store shelves. Aside from exotic-looking collectibles, such as Barbie's "Fantasy Goddess of Asia," Asian American features are rare among dolls, giving Asian American girls few choices of dolls whose faces and clothing styles resemble theirs.

Now, as the nation's second largest toymaker, Hasbro, prepares to market a major new doll that is available in different races -- but not Asian -- members of the Asian American community are wondering what they have to do to get attention, even in this small world of dolls. They wonder, too, what effect it has on the impressionable minds of Asian girls that they are portrayed in toy stores as kimono-wearing foreigners.

"When there's an omission, it reinforces the image that you don't exist," said psychologist Jean Lau Chin, who practices near Boston. "Or, if you do exist, it's only exotic."

Mattel's reasons for offering other minority presidential dolls but not an Asian apparently had little to do with the fact that the 11 million Asian Americans (4 percent of the U.S. population) are a smaller market than the 35 million African Americans (13 percent) and 32 million Hispanics (12 percent).

Instead, company officials said the decision had to do with the impression that Asian girls don't care that much about a look-alike Barbie. While offering no figures to support the claim, a Mattel spokeswoman said Asian girls tend to choose white dolls instead of Asian ones.

"That particular community has not expressed interest in a doll that reflects their ethnicity," said spokeswoman, Julia Jensen.

However, she acknowledged that the African American and Hispanic communities never lobbied for a Presidential Barbie in their likenesses either, but Mattel chose to be "pro-active" about it.

On the face of it, the omission strikes many Asian Americans as callous to the girls in their community who adore Barbies as much as other American girls. It's particularly galling, they said, given that Mattel is based right outside Los Angeles, which has one of the fastest-growing Asian populations, and many of the dolls are made in Asia.

"It's just such an outrage," said U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, a 72-year-old Hawaii Democrat of Japanese descent. "How are these girls supposed to buy Asian dolls if there are none to buy?"

For the record, Mink isn't just reacting out of ethnic solidarity: She was actually the first Asian American woman to run for the U.S. presidency. In 1972, Mink was on the Democratic ticket in the Oregon primary.

Some Asian Americans worry this is another instance of Asians being too politically passive, making it easy for institutions to ignore them.

"It's part of a larger pattern in which Asian Americans are left out of the discussion," said Michael Liu, president of the Boston-based Asian Pacific American Agenda Coalition, which supports Asian American political candidates.

In fact, it is somewhat ironic that Mattel should overlook Asian Americans, too, since the company has made more effort to be inclusive in its selection of dolls than many companies. After years of criticism that Barbie projected a dumb blonde stereotype, Mattel has turned Barbie into an umbrella for a wide range of backgrounds and aspirations, offering Barbie in a wheelchair and as a basketball star.

Mattel also recently bought the Pleasant Co.'s popular mail-order line of American Girl dolls, products that enable girls of different races to create their own look-alike dolls, though at a hefty price tag of $80 or so. Barbies each cost roughly $10 to $15.

In the Barbie world, Asian-looking dolls are confined to the adult-oriented collector edition with an international focus or the second-tier "Friend of Barbie" collection.

Barbie has one Asian "friend" named Kira. While not heavily promoted, Kira has been a hit among some Asian American girls, such as 5-year-old AnnieJoy Abbott of Dedham, Mass., who has five of them.

Among the more heavily marketed mainstream Barbies, said Mattel's Jensen, "Barbie has not been produced as an Asian." And other toymakers don't appear poised to buck the trend. Hasbro hopes to make a big splash this fall with the introduction of "My Real Baby," a doll with high levels of artificial intelligence. Again, there's no Asian, though there's a Caucasian, African American and Latin American version.

In explaining the Asian omission, Hasbro spokeswoman Audrey Basso said there simply aren't enough Asians to justify it.

Beyond numbers, of course, there is the issue of political clout, and Asian Americans have been less aggressive in sensitizing the consumer-product and entertainment industry to their needs than Hispanics or African American leaders.

Psychologist Chin adds that Asian women may also have an emotionally charged reason to keep a particular distance from doll issues. She said they have long tried to escape the shadow of the pervasive "China doll" image here, suggesting Asian women are simply delicate and docile romantic objects.

"Perhaps there's some ambivalence about giving us more China dolls," she said.

In truth, Barbie tends to blur racial distinctions. The black and Hispanic versions of Presidential Barbie look much like the Caucasian version, except with different shades of tan, different hair color, and barely detectable facial-feature changes.

Still, even the most obvious racial markers -- such as hair color or skin color -- appear to matter to some Asian children. When Abbott, a little girl adopted from China, was asked at a Dedham toy store to look at three collector-style dolls of the same model that represented Caucasian, African and Asian looks, she went instantly for the Asian one.

"I like this one because it has black hair," she said. "It looks like me."

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