Cancer Barbie?

A fascinating controversy has been brewing on the internet for the past few days: the idea of creating a bald Barbie doll.

The whole idea gained some publicity a few days ago (at least, that's the first I had heard of it) when the Amarillo Globe-News published a piece called "Mattel Pressured to Produce a Cancer Barbie." I think the title is a little strong, but it describes a Facebook page called Beautiful and Bald Barbie! Let's See if we can get it Made, created by some folks who want Mattel to make a bald Barbie doll, "to help young girls who suffer from hair loss due to cancer treatments, Alopecia or Trichotillomania." They feel like the dolls could help girls with medical hair loss cope better, and they also think Mattel should create scarves and hats to go with it.

I'll be honest -- when I read the article yesterday, I wasn't all that excited about the idea. I certainly get that girls would like to have a doll that they can identify with (I can see that in my own daughter, just with the regular dolls she has always enjoyed playing with). But it seemed more gimmicky than anything, I guess. I couldn't imagine it would really have that great an audience.

But then this afternoon I read a piece on Salon.com by Mary Elizabeth Williams called "Why Barbie Should Go Bald." I really like Williams as a writer, especially as someone who writes about cancer from a patient's perspective. She brings up some excellent points about the Beautiful and Bald Barbie, particularly that Barbie is such a powerful symbol -- something that I, as a man, just didn't get.

In the brief time I have been writing this post, the Facebook page has added about 800 Likes, with just under 100,000 total. Clearly, I underestimated the number of people who would be interested in such a doll. It's obvious that a Bald and Beautiful Barbie would go a long way with not just little girls, but probably with lots of cancer patients, especially women, who grew up with Barbie and see her as that kind of symbol of perfection that Williams talks about. A Barbie who is bald -- and yet, still unavoidably perfect -- would be very powerful indeed.

The big question is, would Mattel ever see it that way? Would they be willing to gamble with Barbie's image?

I like to think this is not something that's going to fade away in a week. It will be fascinating to see how Mattel reacts (beyond the polite reaction that Williams reports on). Their reaction will say a lot about a lot of things: cancer, our cultural notions of beauty, and the power of social media. Stay tuned....