I have a confession to make. I have been playing around with a statuesque blonde this week. Not just this week in fact, but for years now. She's in her forties I believe, although she doesn't look it (I strongly suspect she's had plastic surgery) and she happily lets me take her clothes off. My daughter approves of her, and even my wife doesn't mind that much - she often sends me upstairs to play with this 'other woman'.

There's not one amongst you is there, who is for a moment fooled by this supposed admission of marital infidelity because I refer of course not to any real person but to the Barbie doll. Even if it wasn't obvious that I would be hardly be exposing my affairs on the world wide web, the column title would certainly have blown the gaffe before the first sentence had even rolled past your eyeballs. I could have used a less-revelatory title perhaps in order to rack up some suspense, but since it is known that stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the galaxy, it was in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the identity of the 'lady' was revealed in advance. (For anybody unsure, that was another unexpected Douglas Adams pop-up. Fear not, I have booked my therapy session for a couple of weeks time, in an attempt to stop these constant references, or steals if you prefer, from HHGTTG. My therapist-to-be has promised me excitement, adventure and really wild things. And that's just the bill.)

So yes, of course, I am referring to Barbie, to the divine Miss... erm. Actually I'm not sure what, if anything, Barbie's surname is. Most likely she is of sufficient stature not to require one, like Cher or Prince, or Eddie and Lou on "The Simpsons". She is the blonde I am continuously (should that be continually? I know there's a key difference - let's hope I remember to check the dictionary before Friday) playing around with. And I really have been for several years, ever since my daughter became a Barbie fan. She's been around (Barbie that is, not my daughter) since the 1960s as far as I know, and of course most of the time I end up having to take her clothes off - albeit, only in the cause of then dressing her up in yet another stunning ensemble. As for my wife sending me upstairs - well, upstairs is where the toyroom is, and she's only too keen to send me up there with our daughter since the alternative is that she would have to go herself!!!

Being male, and perhaps more to the point, a male growing up in the still fairly traditional seventies, and having one brother and no sisters, my own childhood was gloriously (I use that word with hindsight - sadly I was not aware of it at the time) free of Barbie. We did (and indeed still do) have a female cousin who is a couple of years younger than me, and she did have a Barbie collection. But we tended to avoid that pretty much - indeed the only thing I can recall of that collection is a very tall, very pink (of course!) Barbie house, with an elevator up the side. I was reminded of this house in the most dramatic fashion eighteen months ago when my daughter got the selfsame house second hand for a fiver! Granted it was sans elevator, but it certainly served, and serves, as an excellent base for Barbie and her army of, erm, of Barbies, to rest between dramatic, and of course glamorous, adventures.

I think what alarms me most about playing Barbies with my daughter is the amount of intimate (I have really struggled to find an alternative word, but I hesitate to use the phrase 'in-depth' for fear of setting off the double-entendre-o-meter) knowledge I now have of the blond'un. My daughter's toyroom closely resembles the village in the Stepford Wives (except when it's not been tidied, when it more closely resembles the Somme) in that it is largely inhabited by virtually identical blonde women with glazed expressions. Most of the dolls were bought new as Christmas or Birthday presents, some have even been self-procured through saved-up pocket money, but she also has a few older dolls bought second-hand here and there, and this range of dolls allows one to (and to set the scene, I can feel myself switching into a David Attenborough voice about now) chart the development over time of this most magnificent of creatures.

The earliest Barbie is by today's standards rather crude. She has only rudimentary joints, at hip and shoulder. There are no working elbows or knees, certainly no ankle movement. Additionally the taper from chest down to waist is a very dramatic drop, almost a 45 degree angle. As for the chest itself, that appears to have been formed by attaching two barrage balloons to the front of the doll.

Considering that the oldest of my little girl's Barbies are probably from the seventies they actually are surprisingly simple affairs. In contrast, my brother and I had an Action Man each around 1976/77 (my brother had a soldier and I had a sailor, make of that what you will) with bristly, crew-cut hair, and unmoving eyes. But I'm sure they also had bending elbows and legs, and those eerie gripping-fingered hands. Compared to that degree of flexibility, the older Barbies are very stiff things indeed. Maybe there was a reason for this, based around what was required of the dolls, but I can't particularly see that. However, if anybody wants to knock up a thousand words on 'Is Getting Into A Ballgown Easier Than Operating A Machine Gun In the Design of Toys of the Late 20th Century' please feel free.

Oh, and since it always, always comes up when discussing plastic dolls - the older Barbies don't have anything in the groin department, no. As for our 1970s Action Men I'm afraid I don't know. I genuinely don't think I ever checked - the Soldier looked like he wouldn't have allowed that sort of thing, and the Sailor looked rather too much like he would.

I must admit though that the more recent Barbies, and we have many, are much more sophisticated creations. They have elbows and knees for a start. Mind you, this can be a bad thing - my much-beloved Star Wars figures to a man (indeed, to a Wookie) had no elbow or knee joints either; but when at around the same time Disney released some tie-in figures from "The Black Hole" they were fully equipped in this department, thanks to very obvious metal screws through the relevant limbs. This had the unfortunate effect of making all the characters look like they had been put together by Baron Frankenstein, and it also made the limbs rather too loose and free-moving, with the result that they would very rarely stand up. Maybe they were just being very very witty in the design department, since it did mean there was now a readily available action figure of Antony Psycho Perkins with a flexible knifing arm...

But back to Barbie's supple limbs: the 'mechanics' of the elbow and knee joints on the new dolls is not outwardly visible, being under the smooth skin layer. Some of the very recent ones have a similar capacity for movement around the waist, allowing Barbie to take part in many a hula-hooping contest (making, I suppose, a nice change from all those limbo-dancing ones she's been winning all these years). It can be slightly unnerving seeing a Barbie who can shake her booty in such a way, though.

Oh, and since it always, always comes up blah blah blah... the new ones have built in knickers, thus effectively satisfying both nature and discretion (but thankfully not perversity). And if it is of any interest whatsoever the much-advertised "Swan Lake Barbie" from Christmas 2003 has pink knickers, as opposed to the usual white.

Movement is not the only change in the modern Barbie. The zeppelin-raid effect on the chests of yesteryear is now toned down somewhat, so that the 21st century Barbie has a bust that is more... I think the most appropriate word is 'achievable'. Similarly she doesn't go from a double D cup to a 3 inch waist, but now has a much more gentle decline to the waist. All in all, much more convincing. Mind you to be fair, I wasn't around when the original Barbie came out; maybe women actually used to look like that. A frightening thought indeed!

Well so much for the lady in question, what about the daughter? Well, for some reason she has latched onto me as the parent to play Barbie with. I can only conclude that my wife overdosed on the blonde one's charms during her own childhood. Ah well. There is some fun to be had from it, I suppose, in a somewhat mischievous way on my part. With apologies once again to the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri (per last week's frosty column) another Doctor Who reference is coming up.

Back in the 1960s "The Web Planet" pitted the Doctor against a race of giant ants (stop laughing now please) and aided by a race of giant butterflies (I said stop). The ants were called Zarbi, and the Menoptra (the butterflies) had a rather distinctive pattern of speech, in which they would shrill, "Za-a-a-arbi!!!" My daughter has never seen "The Web Planet" but when I say to her about playing, "Ba-a-a-arbie!!!" her eyes roll and her mouth twists into a groan, and she knows I'm referring to Doctor Who. And yet she still asks me to play with her, even though (as I'm sure you knew I would) I do my Zarbi/Barbie 'gag' every single flippin' time.

Playing Barbie with my daughter is, well, it's an experience. I've never played Barbie with anyone else (honest guv!) so maybe all girls are the same, but my littl'un has it seems something of the Cecil B DeMille or the Steven Spielberg about her in that she likes to direct everything that goes on. We have many an exchange along the following lines:

Daughter: (pointing at Barbie held by Daddy) That one says to mine, "Hi - I like your dress."

(Silence)

Daughter: Well say it.

Daddy: (first time genuinely puzzled, but nowadays naughtily winding her up) But you just said it.

Daughter: Say it!!

Daddy: But you did.

Daughter: (through gritted teeth) Just say it!

Daddy: (in most uncharacteristic girly voice) Hi - I like your dress.

And so it goes on. It doesn't just apply to random lines of dialogue either, the same strict instructions are given regarding what 'my' Barbie wears, whether she wins anything (we seem to have quite a lot of athletic competitions for some reason, and mine is only ever allowed to come second), even what her favourite colour is. To drop in another Who reference, my daughter seems to disprove Jon Pertwee's famous line that, "Free will isn't an illusion after all".

To be fair to my daughter (which I suppose I ought to be, having teased her mercilessly so far) I think she does create her 'scenarios' to try and appeal to me, as the token man, as well as to her. By which I mean we get comparatively few games of 'Barbie goes to the shops' or 'Barbie enters a fashion show' or 'Barbie goes horse-riding'. We get a lot more along the lines of 'Barbie's sister is kidnapped' or 'Barbie's horse is stolen' or 'Barbie - Police Woman'. All very exciting, although whether anybody outside of Charlie's Angels would go hunting criminals in a full cocktail dress and, bizarrely, no shoes, is perhaps a little debatable.

So there you go. If you read this when it goes up over the weekend, just take a moment to consider that at this very moment I am probably trapped in a toyroom somewhere assisting Officer Barbie in an urgent change of clothes prior to arresting her horse-rustling doppelganger. If Sartre really thought hell was other people, then he was wrong - hell is surely other people's dolls.

As a final word, and since I like to try and give a balanced view on things (or at least when I can be bothered) let me admit that Barbie isn't all bad. True she may have inspired certain types of people to try and mimic the same blonde, pink and empty-headed lifestyle for the past four decades, thus putting the women's movement back by centuries. But on the other hand, she was and remains a pioneer for clothes that are only held together by a strip of velcro up the back. My wife hasn't fully embraced this fashion revolution as yet, but I live in hope!!!

7th February 2004