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  • Dusty, the Dyke Barbie
  • Regina Buccola (bio)

In 1974, Kenner, a now defunct subsidiary of General Mills,1 manufactured a pair of dolls, Dusty and Skye, who were roughly the height of Barbie dolls (11 1/2" tall) but resembled them in no other particular. Their waists were rather thicker than the average Barbie, their chests considerably smaller, and their feet flat, rather than form molded to accommodate stiletto heels2(fig. 1). Instead, Dusty and Skye wore platform sandals, tennis shoes, and cowboy boots. Their waists and wrists were jointed; their hands were molded to hold tennis rackets, golf clubs, and fishing gear3(fig. 2); and the knees in their rubbery, realistically slender legs were bendable to facilitate the various sports around which their accessories revolved. In addition, the dolls featured "springloaded" action in the right arm and waist, which permitted whacking the tennis ball, swinging vigorously at the golf ball, etc. It is probably no coincidence that these dolls hit the market shortly after Title IX of the Education Act Amendments (1972) opened up the full range of academic-based athletics to girls and young women (Lamb 190).

These dolls and their accessories seemed designed to confront head-on the issues of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation that surged through 1970s American culture.4 They appeared a mere six years after the watershed year 1968, "the year of student revolts and liberation movements, the year that Kate Millett filed Sexual Politics as her thesis, and the year that led the Gay Liberation Movement up to Stonewall" (Doan and Prosser 14). In 1973, "gay and lesbian activists were successful in finally having the American Psychiatric Association remove homosexuality from its official manual of mental diseases" (Terry 367). The late 1960s and early 1970s were thus marked by crises of gender, race, and class as the women's movement gained momentum, Civil Rights legislation began to take serious effect throughout the nation, and the Vietnam War turned increasingly cynical scrutiny to class [End Page 228] privilege.5 Dusty stands as a fascinating cultural object for materialist feminist analysis, since with this doll Kenner attempted (unsuccessfully) to challenge the cultural stereotype of the "female gym teacher" (Slater, "Dusty") as an identity synonymous with lesbianism, and made an admittedly half-hearted attempt to challenge white hegemony with Dusty's black gal pal, Skye, who, unfortunately, was almost always promoted merely as Dusty's sidekick.6


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Figure 1.

Dusty and Skye by Kenner, photo by Aaron Gang.

Dusty was sold in a dark blue bathing suit and Skye in a pink bathing suit. So, Dusty was sold in the color coded "boy" and Skye in the color coded "girl"; both of them, however, have gender-ambiguous names. There was a prototype male companion for Dusty and Skye named Cliff, but none of the collectors that I have contacted has found any evidence that this doll was ever marketed.7 Far from being an accessory to a man herself, Dusty didn't even need a male as an accessory. Sue-Ellen Case labels the lesbian roles of butch and femme "a dynamic duo" which, in her view, offers "precisely the strong subject position the [feminist] movement requires" ("Toward" 283). While some lesbian feminists have lodged objections against this dyadic construction of female homosexuality on the grounds that it is based in [End Page 229] heteronormative relationship paradigms,8 it is a fitting label for the first female "dynamic duo" on the action figure scene.


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Figure 2.

Skye hand close-up, photo by Aaron Gang.

In claiming "dynamic duo" status for Dusty and Skye, like Case, I do not intend to suggest that lesbian relationships reify hegemonic husband/wife roles. Nor in using her tomboyish good looks and inherent athleticism as markers of her dyke identity am I attempting to promulgate the notion that these are necessarily lesbian traits.9 Rather, I wish to highlight the ways in which the mere perception that these dolls inhabited a subject position identifiable via stereotype as "lesbian" served as a death sentence at the precise cultural moment that the path to social...

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