
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 29, 1993                   TAG: 9305290026
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ANN ALEXANDER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`MONDO BARBIE' LIVES UP TO ITS TITLE

My name is Ann, and when I was a tender, sweet-young-thing I had a Barbie, a Ken, a Barbie tent, a Barbie camper and a couple of packed Barbie wardrobe boxes, courtesy of Aunt Edith in Ohio, who often sent tiny outfits sewn by her friend the nun.

Admission is the first step to doll-trauma recovery, implies a wild new collection called "Mondo Barbie: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry" (St. Martin's, $12.95). Andy Warhol's portrait of America's sweetheart fills the book jacket, setting the tone for these 42 pop-culture reflections, printed on pink pages.

It's mondo, all right. Barbie is alternately mourned as America's original little victim and vilified as America's original little bimbo.

Either way, that's giving Barbie too much credit.

Some pieces are written from the dolls' point of view, but in the best -- and, not coincidentally, most unpretentious -- stories, they remain dolls. In "That Night" by Alice McDermott, a teen-ager and a younger girl who idolizes her talk about life and love while deciding what dress Barbie should wear on a date. In "Barbie-Q" by Sandra Cisneros, two poor girls pick up smoke-scented Barbies at a bargain after a fire at a toy plant. In "Floor Show" by Julia Alvarez, a young immigrant girl turns an awkward adult situation to her advantage.

The best piece in the bunch, "The Barbie Murders" by Hugo and Nebula award winner John Varley, is a mystery. In the future exists a sect that lives uniformly. Its androgynous adherents undergo plastic surgery to meet the sect's physical code, all becoming Barbies. A detective must find out which one is a killer, and why.

Most of the rest of the contributions, most of them by unknowns who have written for publications such as Big Cigars, you can toss out. This book should have been a lot of fun, but it's spoiled by too many tirades.

And some contributions are redundant, especially when the angle is sex. Granted, a generation of us figured out the big facts by examining our Barbies, despite Ken's deformity. But the subject is worn out after Ken gets a sex change, Barbie comes out, a lesbian uses Barbie to tell her lover she's got a boyfriend, and a Barbie owner's brother has an affair with her doll.

From their grim photo on the book jacket, the editors, Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole, appear to be members of what my husband calls the A&E crowd (for Angst and Ennui). That would explain a lot.

I can't remember what happened to my Barbies, and so far I've managed to suppress any feelings of inadequacy Barbie might have seeded in my subconscious. Or maybe I knew, even at that tender age, that she was just a toy.

Ann Alexander is ideas editor for the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record.

by CNB