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95 4. Fashioning Identities Kente, Nostalgia, and the World of Barbie The problem with prefabricated nostalgia is that it does not help us to deal with the future. —svetlana boym, The Future of Nostalgia Mattel’s Princess of South Africa (2003) is dressed as Martha Nomvula was dressed in the Sports Illustrated (SI) photograph with Kathy Ireland. Meticulously researched, this Barbie’s costuming pays homage to Ndebele culture. In keeping with Ndebele styles and traditions, this Barbie’s hair is short-cropped; she is dressed in colorful, plastic bands (representing the beaded bands Ndebele women wear) around the head, neck, and wrists; yellow plastic to evoke brass bands around the legs and neck; and a multicolor , striped Middleburg blanket around her shoulders (these latter two indicate she is married). Like SI before it, Mattel chose Ndebele culture to represent all South African indigenous cultures, and, more generally, to represent South Africa as a whole.1 Whereas I contend that Ndebele dress in the context of the SI swimsuit issue could be read as both reductive and as empowering, in the context of Mattel’s world of Barbie its empowering capacities largely diminish. The intent of dolls such as the Princess of South Africa is positive, as were the swimsuit representations employing African visual culture. Certainly the presence of Ndebele visual culture in the SI and Barbie worlds exposes large audiences to Ndebele culture. But as I assert in this chapter more generally, this exposure does not adequately balance the problematic issues this Barbie and its companion dolls manifest. The Princess of South Africa was the most recent addition to the line of African Barbie dolls offered by Mattel: Nigerian Barbie (1990), Fashioning Identities: Kente, Nostalgia, and the World of Barbie 96 Kenyan Barbie (1994), Ghanaian Barbie (1996),2 Moroccan Barbie (1999), and the Princess of Nile (2002). And although analysis of this Princess of South Africa could reveal a great deal about racialized identities, the analysis of Ghanaian Barbie offers even richer insights. I focus this story, therefore , around this latter Barbie, though I return briefly to the Princess of South Africa in the concluding chapter. I came across Ghanaian Barbie in December 1996, five months after returning from Ghana, my first trip to Africa. Five months had been long enough for me to forget the culture shock I had experienced, and I was, in fact, feeling nostalgic for Ghana. But bringing Mattel’s Ghanaian Barbie home from the store turned out to be more than an act of individual nostalgic reverie. Indeed, examining the cultural information on the back of the box, and all the various elements of her costuming, I became aware of a larger, cultural nostalgia at work.3 Studying Ghanaian Barbie (and subsequently her other African counterparts) suggests that clothing is critical to any analysis of her. Barbie is, after all, a fashion doll. Ghanaian Barbie’s clothing is based on the Asante textile kente and evokes a cultural/national heritage that promotes a reductive, essentialist notion of identity.4 Mattel also presents kente in an outfit marketed for Asha, the African American friend of Barbie; here kente is not reductive or restrictive. In both instances, kente embodies notions of identity, yet the possibilities these dolls present for understanding the world are very different. This chapter considers the nature and implications of these identities. Not only does the costuming of these dolls address identity, it also helps fashion a nostalgic worldview and reveals promotion of U.S. domination in the world. While I discuss the costuming in detail, Mattel, unfortunately, would not give me permission to reproduce my own photographs of the Barbie dolls in my collection. Therefore I cannot offer the visuals here as part of my analysis as I do with the other popular culture forms in this book. Interested readers can find photographs of Ghanaian Barbie and Asha in the exhibition catalog Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity ; the Princess of South Africa is reproduced on its designer’s Web site.5 Ghanaian Barbie is part of the “Dolls of the World” series. Begun in 1980, and changing to the “Princess Collection” in 2001, this series’ dolls represent over fifty countries from Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America.6 Yet the “Dolls of the World” is just one in a series of Collector Edition Barbies offered by Mattel. For instance, along with representations of many of the world’s cultures, one...

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