‘I’m a woman in my 50s with 300 Barbie dolls’

Monica Costa, a 55-year-old writer and editor, has a somewhat subversive dream: to play Barbie dolls with her friends.

“[It] may sound ridiculous,” she says, “but also quietly radical. Barbie, after all, has always been about projection: who we were, who we wanted to be and who we’re still allowed to imagine ourselves as.”

Costa already has the necessary goods: 300 Barbies she’s collected over the years and stashed away, ready for playtime.

London-based Costa played with Barbie when she was a child and, when she found out she was going to become a parent, looked forward to playing Barbie again. However, she had a son, who, though she presented him with Barbie dolls (“just to be politically correct”, she jokes), made it very clear he wasn’t interested in what she calls “the Barbie business”.

Costa, resigned, packed away the few Barbies she’d bought, thinking that would be the end of it. It was, until she spotted a Hawaiian Barbie, resplendently sitting at a stall at a summer fair she visited when her son was four. She had to buy it.

That Hawaiian Barbie doll, the catalyst for the hundreds that followed, was, she says, “the most beautiful doll I’d ever seen”. It cost just £3, although now she estimates the same doll, in immaculate, boxed condition (which hers isn’t), would cost around £100.

“And you know what happens with collections,” she says. “Once you start, you trigger some part of your brain, and then it becomes a ‘thing’ without even realising.”

Costa’s dolls aren’t all on display. The majority reside in cardboard boxes – 10 of them – tucked up with the few obligatory Kens she’s collected along the way. A few dolls have made it to the shelves; Costa rotates them so none are left out. She says she’d love to give them all a “day out” one day, perhaps in the form of a photo-shoot or even tell their story in a book.

Her collection is, by her own admission, somewhat random: she has scoured fairs and eBay for Barbie dolls she recognises from her own childhood. Her favourite is Malibu Barbie. “I grew up in Italy, and there was this big dream of California,” she says. “So the Malibu Barbie became a little bit of a symbol of that kind of lifestyle.”

Unlike some collectors, Costa has not been especially precious about what she has bought. She estimates she’s spent about £500 on her collection, and the most she’s splurged in one go was £100 on three Barbies from the 1960s, including some of the original outfits.

It’s obvious, she says, that most of her dolls have already been “played with”. It means her collection won’t be worth much, at least not monetarily.

“The very, very valuable ones, they’re sold for crazy money,” she says. “Those are in immaculate condition. Mine are not.”

Something to aspire to

Costa and I speak in the same week Mattel announces the launch of an Autistic Barbie. Although she thinks it’s “a great move”, she is also sceptical. “I’m against labelling in general. We should uphold our society’s core values and teach children to be respectful and kind. Rather than [saying] ‘this child is autistic,’” she says. “Obviously, Barbie is commercial. They want to sell more dolls.”

Of the other controversies that surround Barbie dolls – that they are too thin, too beautiful, too unrealistic – Costa scoffs. “I’m not skinny, but I’ve always played with skinny Barbies,” she says. “That was an aspirational model. I wanted to aspire to be someone beautiful and well dressed, but not to be skinny.”

Barbie, in a way, has always been about aspiration. The doll, she says, was created in the 1950s to appeal to a “new kind of woman” after the war. “There was this [idea] that the woman could free herself from being a housewife and become an astronaut if she wanted to.” That’s the core Barbie message, according to Costa, and it remains today. “The founder created this [doll] to prove to her daughter that you can be whoever you want to be.”

Over the years, we’ve seen Pilot Barbie, Scientist Barbie, Teacher Barbie, Fashion Designer Barbie and President Barbie. Many of these featured in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film, “Barbie”. Costa says she loved the movie and spent the entire time pointing out the Barbies she had at home.

When it comes to what her friends and family make of her collection, Costa says her son is “not into it, obviously”. Her mother, a minimalist, doesn’t even know about her Barbie booty – “She would think: ‘Oh my God, what’s wrong with you?’” says Costa. Some of her friends, on the other hand, are more Barbie-curious. “A friend from Italy is a big fan,” she says, seemingly already dreaming of the play-date.

If the time came that she had to give her dolls up, if she ran out of space, for example, she’d consider giving them to her friends. “I’d think of the Barbie that suits that person,” she says. She doesn’t say whether her friends would be happy to receive such an endowment, but I can tell she’s excited about the prospect. “My friend who’s an artist, I could give her the artist; my friend who’s a dancer, I could give her the ballerina,” she says.

Her son, who wants to be an aircraft engineer, may yet be co-opted into the Barbie business and entrusted with Pilot Barbie. She chuckles at the thought.

It’s then that I realise: this is Costa’s Barbie world, and we are all just living in it.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]