trauma of becoming independent, of losing the blissful, boundariless connection to Mom.
This, says Winnicott, is where transitional objects come in. They are, for a child, his or her first "not me" objects. The
child imbues them with elements of the self and the mother; and they symbolize, for the child, that relationship, which is
coming to an end.
There aren't hard and fast rules about transitional objects: They can be as stereotypical as Linus's security blanket in Peanuts or as idiosyncratic as a piece of string. Nor are there rules about the age at which children appropriate them. Sometimes
a baby will attach itself to a toy in its crib; sometimes an older child—such as Linus—will endure the ridicule of schoolmates
rather than renounce his object. But the objects, Winnicott has pointed out, aren't fetishes; having them, for kids, is normal
behavior.
Significantly, though, the transitional object "is not just a 'not me' object, it's also a 'me' object," said Ellen Handler
Spitz, who has written on the phenomenon in Art and Psyche. "If she loses it and is put to bed without it, she may have a tantrum and be devastated. Like the transitional object, the
Barbie doll leads the child into the future by enabling her to detach, to some extent, from the mother. At the same time,
because the doll is a little woman, it represents the relationship with the mother." A transitional object can also be a child's
bridge to future aesthetic experiences. This is because the child often sucks, strokes, and mutilates it into "a highly personal
object," the way an artist fashions artwork out of clay.
LEGALLY SPEAKING, THE BARBIE DOLL IS A WORK OF ART. Mattel copyrighted Barbie's face as a piece of sculpture, not because the doll was intended to be a unique object, but because
it wasn't. The manual processes in Barbie's creation—the sewing-on of hair, the painting of lips— might permit a variation
or two; thus hair and makeup were not copyrighted. But the duplication of the doll's body was mechanical and, therefore, uniform;
hence the registration of the sculpture.
In 1936, when critic Walter Benjamin investigated the idea of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he focused principally on photographs, which in his view satisfied the masses' craving "to bring things 'closer' spatially
and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction."
In the case of Barbie, however, the reality is the reproduction. Human icons—Elvis, Garbo, Madonna—can only be possessed through
film or audiotape; there either was or is an "original" somewhere that forever eludes ownership. But Barbie herself was meant
to be owned—not just by a few but by everybody. Issued in editions of billions, she is the ultimate piece of mass art.
Benjamin was writing at the dawn of the age of mechanical reproduction, two decades before the post-World War II boom in synthetics
that made Barbie possible. He wrote before the era of plastic, the revolutionary material that did for objects what film did
for images. Plastic is a key to understanding Barbie: Her substance is very much her essence.
Hard, smooth, cool to the touch, plastic can hold any shape and reproduce the tiniest of details. It is not mined or harvested;
chemists manufacture it. Nor does it return to nature: you can throw it away, but it will not vanish— poof—from the landfill.
Time may alter its appearance, as it has with some of the earlier Barbies—dolls with white arms on coral torsos with oily,
apricot-colored legs.
To a poet or a child or anyone given to anthropomorphizing, such dolls are victims of vitiligo, the disease from which Michael
Jackson claims to suffer. But to a chemist, they are evidence of an inadequate recipe. Never mind the beads of moisture on
their mottled thighs, old dolls, a chemist will tell you, don't sweat. But their "plasticizer" (the
This, says Winnicott, is where transitional objects come in. They are, for a child, his or her first "not me" objects. The
child imbues them with elements of the self and the mother; and they symbolize, for the child, that relationship, which is
coming to an end.
There aren't hard and fast rules about transitional objects: They can be as stereotypical as Linus's security blanket in Peanuts or as idiosyncratic as a piece of string. Nor are there rules about the age at which children appropriate them. Sometimes
a baby will attach itself to a toy in its crib; sometimes an older child—such as Linus—will endure the ridicule of schoolmates
rather than renounce his object. But the objects, Winnicott has pointed out, aren't fetishes; having them, for kids, is normal
behavior.
Significantly, though, the transitional object "is not just a 'not me' object, it's also a 'me' object," said Ellen Handler
Spitz, who has written on the phenomenon in Art and Psyche. "If she loses it and is put to bed without it, she may have a tantrum and be devastated. Like the transitional object, the
Barbie doll leads the child into the future by enabling her to detach, to some extent, from the mother. At the same time,
because the doll is a little woman, it represents the relationship with the mother." A transitional object can also be a child's
bridge to future aesthetic experiences. This is because the child often sucks, strokes, and mutilates it into "a highly personal
object," the way an artist fashions artwork out of clay.
LEGALLY SPEAKING, THE BARBIE DOLL IS A WORK OF ART. Mattel copyrighted Barbie's face as a piece of sculpture, not because the doll was intended to be a unique object, but because
it wasn't. The manual processes in Barbie's creation—the sewing-on of hair, the painting of lips— might permit a variation
or two; thus hair and makeup were not copyrighted. But the duplication of the doll's body was mechanical and, therefore, uniform;
hence the registration of the sculpture.
In 1936, when critic Walter Benjamin investigated the idea of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he focused principally on photographs, which in his view satisfied the masses' craving "to bring things 'closer' spatially
and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction."
In the case of Barbie, however, the reality is the reproduction. Human icons—Elvis, Garbo, Madonna—can only be possessed through
film or audiotape; there either was or is an "original" somewhere that forever eludes ownership. But Barbie herself was meant
to be owned—not just by a few but by everybody. Issued in editions of billions, she is the ultimate piece of mass art.
Benjamin was writing at the dawn of the age of mechanical reproduction, two decades before the post-World War II boom in synthetics
that made Barbie possible. He wrote before the era of plastic, the revolutionary material that did for objects what film did
for images. Plastic is a key to understanding Barbie: Her substance is very much her essence.
Hard, smooth, cool to the touch, plastic can hold any shape and reproduce the tiniest of details. It is not mined or harvested;
chemists manufacture it. Nor does it return to nature: you can throw it away, but it will not vanish— poof—from the landfill.
Time may alter its appearance, as it has with some of the earlier Barbies—dolls with white arms on coral torsos with oily,
apricot-colored legs.
To a poet or a child or anyone given to anthropomorphizing, such dolls are victims of vitiligo, the disease from which Michael
Jackson claims to suffer. But to a chemist, they are evidence of an inadequate recipe. Never mind the beads of moisture on
their mottled thighs, old dolls, a chemist will tell you, don't sweat. But their "plasticizer" (the
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