Dan Pashman: Hello? 

Auntie Meryl: Hello? Oh, there you are! 

Dan Pashman: Hi, Auntie Meryl!

Auntie Meryl: Hi!

Dan Pashman: I wanted to call you because I'm getting ready to record an episode of my podcast that I think I couldn't do it without talking to you.

Auntie Meryl: Oh, this is exciting. What is it? 

Dan Pashman: We're doing an episode about Barbie. 

Auntie Meryl: Oh! For real? Oh, wow!

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] So first of all, how old were you when Barbie came out?

Auntie Meryl: Okay, let's see. Barbie came out in '59, so I was four. I just remember playing with Barbies. That was like my go to entertainment. 

Dan Pashman: So fast forward to today, Meryl. 

Auntie Meryl: Uh-huh. 

Dan Pashman: Approximately, how many Barbie dolls do you own? 

Auntie Meryl: About 700.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Auntie Meryl: But these are newer, special Barbies. I have a lot of one of a kind Barbies. They're really like works of art. 

Dan Pashman: What was it about Barbie? Because there were, a lot of dolls before Barbie and there were other dolls around, you know, in the ‘60s when you were playing with Barbie, but like what made Barbie special? 

Auntie Meryl: She was a grown up lady. You got to play with a lady. Baby dolls were just boring, but Barbie was a woman and she wore fancy clothes, and she had different jobs, and she could be a princess, and she could be a nurse — she was a flight attendant. She just did everything. She was so special. 

Dan Pashman: What was your impression of like Barbie and food? Did you ever think of her as cooking or being in the kitchen? 

Auntie Meryl: No, not really. She was too busy working and doing all of her important jobs. I really never thought of Barbie as cooking. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Auntie Meryl: Or in the kitchen or eating. She didn't need food. 

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies it’s for eaters, I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. And I'm lucky to have not one, but three Barbie experts in my family. You already heard from my Aunt Meryl — she was born at exactly the right time to become a Barbie obsessive — and she did. And as she said, she never thought of Barbie cooking or eating.

Dan Pashman: Fast forward to today. I wanted to talk Barbie and food with the other two aficionados in my family: my daughters, Becky and Emily, ages 12 and 10. They have perfect recall when it comes to Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse, a 2010’s era addition to the Barbie canon that I gotta say is legit one of the funniest shows on TV. So I asked them: do you ever see Barbie eat? Here’s Emily:

Emily Pashman: You do see her eat sometimes. She has like these huge hot dogs and Ken's like, "Let me just get like the silver thing," which I don't understand why you need like silverware for a hot dog. And so then he like turns his back for a second, and then you hear like munching sounds when he comes back. Barbie just has like ketchup on her face, but the whole entire big hot dog is gone. 

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: So she did eat a hotdog, but you didn't see her eat it. 

Emily Pashman: Yeah.

Becky Pashman: Yeah, it was like a jumbo hot dog. It was meant for two people and she just ate the whole thing in two seconds. Like, it was kind of was gone.

Emily Pashman: Yeah, you just like heard munching sounds.

Becky Pashman: I think that she seems to like cooking and eating, at least in the show that we watched. I don't really know, like, Old Barbies from 1959 or whatever when she first came out. Like, in the shows nowadays, Barbie does seem to do a lot of cooking and eating and enjoys it. They never really made a big deal out of it. It was just like part of the — like, they never really had a whole episode centered around her eating. It just kind of like happened, like it was normal. 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: When Barbie’s first Dreamhouse came out in 1962, it didn’t have a kitchen. It was a bachelorette pad. Barbie had shelves full of books, a record player, and a closet full of the latest fashions. She was too busy building her careers by day and going out at night to cook. 

Dan Pashman: Since then, Barbie’s relationship to cooking, and eating, has changed a lot and the ways it’s changed tell us something about food culture, body image, and so much more. 

Dan Pashman: Let's just like begin at the beginning, like, what was your relationship with Barbie growing up? 

Helene Siegel: So you know, she was introduced in 1959 and I was nine-years-old. And so I never had my own Barbie because according to my mother, I was too old to play with dolls. 

Dan Pashman: This is Helene Siegel. She's a writer based in L.A., and in the '80s and '90s she worked for Mattel writing Barbie books for kids, including The Barbie Party Cookbook. But long before that, Helene was growing up in the Bronx, when Barbie first hit the scene. Helene may not have had her own Barbies, but she admired Barbie from afar, because Barbie was totally different from any doll she'd had.

Helene Siegel: I had baby dolls. You know, we had like Betsy Wetsy, they were little chubby dolls and you were supposed to be the mommy and, you know, put them to bed and blah, blah, blah. And then there was like an in between stage of girls who were maybe almost teenagers, but nobody had breasts and they were all chubby around the waist. So they were more like girls. And this was a woman.

Dan Pashman: Barbie wasn’t just a grown woman. She was also successful and independent.

Helene Siegel: Creation of Ruth Handler, who invented her in 1959, and Ruth was not a stay at home wife/mother, she was a businesswoman. So there was a really sharp line, I think, back then, about career versus being in the kitchen. And, you know, when we saw all those housewives on TV in the 1950s sitcoms that I grew up with, and they're always like wearing high heels, pearls, an apron, and they have a vacuum cleaner in one hand. [LAUGHS] And they're packing lunches in the other hand. But I think that Mattel, or Ruth, wanted to make a complete break with that. So when the Dreamhouse and the car — I mean the car looked — it all looked amazing and it also looked like the future that I wanted for myself. 

Dan Pashman: How so? 

Helene Siegel: Well, because I knew I would be — have a big career. [LAUGHS] And in the day that was a little weird, you know? But I knew I'd have a big career and also my dream, you know, like people who grow up in the boroughs, was to live in the city in Manhattan in a penthouse and go out every night and wear a mink stole. 

Dan Pashman: In that era, the fact that Barbie owned her own house and car was a big deal. This was at a time when many women in America still couldn’t get mortgages or even credit cards without a man to co-sign for them. It was also a big deal that Barbie wasn’t married and didn’t have kids. Everything she owns is hers alone. Yeah, there's Ken but as my aunt Meryl put it, Ken is an accessory. As Helene says …

Helene Siegel: He's eye candy, but who really needs him? 

Dan Pashman: Right, right. 

Helene Siegel: [LAUGHS] Maybe to carry your luggage? These days I could use someone for that.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

[LAUGHING] 

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: In the ‘70s, Helene did move to Manhattan, but her job in publishing didn’t provide the glamorous life she'd imagined. She lived in a studio apartment instead of a penthouse, and there were no mink stoles in her closet. Eventually, she ended up in California. While there wasn't much of a publishing industry there, there was great food. So Helene got into cookbook writing.

Dan Pashman: This was the '80s now, right at the beginning of the first wave of celebrity chefs, which included the California chef Wolfgang Puck. Helene ghost wrote a cookbook for him, among other chefs in the area. But it wasn’t always steady work.

Helene Siegel: Every once in a while, because I was a freelancer, I would like, well, I wouldn't get another gig and I would freak out, so I would take a job.

Dan Pashman: One of those non-cookbook jobs was at Mattel. They hired Helene to oversee a series of Barbie story books for girls. And the images in these books weren't illustrations. They were photos of actual Barbie dolls, elaborately staged in miniature scenes. Mattel had designers who would make beautiful, tiny, special-occasion dresses, and a whole team of hair stylists.

Helene Siegel: So you go into a room, and you see a lot of heads just on sticks. And then you could open these sliding drawers where there were heads. [LAUGHS] I mean, just a wide variety. They're all Barbie heads, but maybe different skin tones and a million hairstyles that they had done in the past. But you know, they did custom hairstyles. Like for our shoot, they would make custom wigs. It was cool.

Dan Pashman: In one book Helene remembers in particular, Barbie was an astronaut. They put her in a spacesuit. They thought it'd be cute to have her hair standing on end in the photos — you know, because she was in space, zero gravity. But when Mattel saw the photos, they weren't happy. 

Helene Siegel: They were like, you know, "What are you thinking? First of all, re-shoot this and let me tell you something that girl's bangs never come off her forehead. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Helene Siegel: So we don't care what's happening, but you keep them down. [LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: In addition to showing Barbie in the proper light, Helene says she and her team had to get the hang of writing in Barbie’s voice.

Helene Siegel: One of the keys is there's never a depressing day for Barbie. 

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS] 

Helene Siegel: And you know what? That was what I liked. My life wasn't like that. But whenever I slip into Barbie, it's just —you know, she's happy because everything turns out well for Barbie. There's never a problem she can't solve. And I mean, I think that the writers who had the hardest time getting the voice were there people who probed too deeply and thought too much.

Dan Pashman: Mattel paid Helene well and she enjoyed working with Barbie, but some of her friends felt otherwise.

Helene Siegel: My friends, as you can imagine, they're very, I don't know, they're very lefties and — well, they're granola eaters. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING]

Helene Siegel: And so — [LAUGHS] and so I literally had my women friends, like, raising their eyebrows, like, how can you work for her? [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: How can you work for Barbie? 

Helene Siegel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, because first of all, they were raising their daughters to not play with Barbie. They were judgmental, I think, about the whole messaging, which you know, the very serious feminists wrote these treatises about, the bad body image — the body image, obviously, of thinness and busyness. And what will happen to your daughter if she plays with these dolls, kind of thing. So it was just like, she's a bad influence on the children ... 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Helen Rosner: You know, why are you doing that? 

Dan Pashman: Helene considers herself a feminist. But among feminists in the '80s there was a growing fault line. On one side were women like Helene, who admired Barbie for her careers, and her independence. On the other side were women who didn’t see that as groundbreaking anymore. By this time a lot of women had careers, and a lot of career women were also moms. It wasn't one or the other. The women on this side of the debate critiqued Barbie for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards. They thought Barbie would create issues with body image or disordered eating for their daughters. 

Dan Pashman: And they pointed to a 1965 doll, "Slumber Party Barbie", as proof. This Barbie came with a scale that was permanently set to 110 pounds, and a miniature book titled How to Lose Weight. Inside, there were just two words: “Don’t eat.” And while Mattel hadn’t done anything remotely so egregious since then, by the '80s critics were saying that they were still promoting this idea, implicitly, just because of what Barbie looked like. More recently, researchers have shown that if a real woman with her proportions existed, her waist would be about 19 inches.

Dan Pashman: In discussing this issue, both Helene and my Aunt Meryl said that even as kids, they never felt like they were supposed to look like Barbie. They understood she was just a doll. And that idea isn't limited to women of their generation. I asked my daughters what they thought about Barbie's body:

Emily Pashman: Well, she's made out of plastic. 

Becky Pashman: She's a doll. You can't judge her on her body. She's not a real person. 

Emily Pashman: Yeah, plastic can’t get bigger or smaller.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Regardless of Mattel’s intent, or how girls interpreted Barbie’s body, it’s a fact that for decades after Barbie was introduced, Mattel resisted putting her around food or in the kitchen. Helene remembers in the '80s, pitching a story for one of the Barbie kids books. She wanted to base that would be based on Mrs. Fields, the cookie entrepreneur. Mrs. Fields was a real person, who had built an extremely successful business. Helene wanted to fictionalize that story.

Helene Siegel: It was like a perfect Barbie story. And not only that, Mrs. Fields was very pretty and she kind of looked like a Barbie, with brown hair. [LAUGHS] And so I wanted her to be a little home baker and then she opens a bake shop and blah, blah, blah. And they killed the story. [LAUGHS] It's the only story that got killed because of this executive decree that she will never get her hands dirty. They literally told me that, "Barbie would never get dirty." She would never dirty her hands. She will never sweep. She will never wash a pot. So she won't do anything, but they were so strict then. Anything around food was really a no go. 

Dan Pashman: In 1991, Mattel’s position on Barbie and food started to change. They weren’t ready to let Barbie cook, but they did want her to be cooking adjacent … in the form of a Barbie cookbook. They asked Helene to ghostwrite it. The final product is called The Barbie Party Cookbook. 

Helene Siegel: This is the idea, like a children's cookbook for girls who are having a party — the slumber party, a birthday party, a Christmas party. You know, they're good recipes, I will say, [LAUGHS] because I did that. But they're simple and Barbie is never cooking and she's never talking about food. 

Dan Pashman: And so what is Barbie's role in the book?

Helene Siegel: Well, let's put it this way, she is definitely on the cover. 

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS] 

[LAUGHING] 

Helene Siegel: Because Barbie sells books and she's brilliantly pink. Like, the art direction for this book is so over the top and crazy. Elaborate hair. I'm looking at it. She's in evening garb to have — she's doing a garden tea party and she's wearing, like, a sort of Joan Collins purple, you know, strapless mini dress with veil and puffy sleeves. So, you know, she's there as a picture, but her voice — she does not write the recipes, it's not coming from her. 

Dan Pashman: In fact, the recipes came from Helene.

Helene Siegel: My recipes — I based it on stuff I would make with my children. You know, they're easy but they're really good. I mean, just teaching kids how to make real chocolate — you know, hot fudge sauce? 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Helene Siegel: There's a few recipes I'm really proud of. When I look back, there's an Italian ices, what we used to call granita when I was a foodie. 

Dan Pashman: Right, and that's still what they call it in Italy. 

Helene Siegel: I was doing Italian cookbooks, you know?

Dan Pashman: Yeah. 

Helene Siegel: And you would make it — I mean, it's so easy because it's lemon juice, water, and sugar, and you just put in a pan and just keep scraping it in the freezer. And so I felt like if I made a contribution, you know, to all of America, it was that they could make granita, a.k.a. lemon ices. 

Dan Pashman: The same year that The Barbie Party Cookbook came out, Mattel also released its first Barbie chef outfit. It was part of the "Cool Careers" series. The outfit included a pink lace apron and chef’s hat. So what happened to bring about this change?

Helene Siegel: Well, I think, you know, everything changed regarding food in America. With food TV, everything exploded.

Dan Pashman: At the same time that Barbie was dipping her toe into the kitchen, execs elsewhere were laying the groundwork for America’s first all food and cooking TV channel. Food Network would launch two years later. In the decades that followed, Mattel introduced twelve different Barbie chefs, from "Pizza Chef Barbie" to "Pancake Chef Barbie" to "TV Chef Barbie":

["PIZZA CHEF BARBIE" PROMOTION CLIP]

Dan Pashman: To "Pancake Chef Barbie" ...

["PANCAKE CHEF BARBIE" PROMOTION CLIP]

Dan Pashman: To "TV Chef Barbie" ...

["TV CHEF BARBIE" PROMOTION CLIP]

Helene Siegel: And now, there's your show, there's food bloggers. But back in the day, like when she was introduced, the interest in food culture was really for the elite. It wasn't for the masses, and remember Barbie's for the masses. 

Dan Pashman: So what you're saying is that the job of chef in the past few decades has become glamorous. 

Helene Siegel: Well, it's become glamorous, and it's also become attainable and popularized. So now, for a young woman to aspire to be a pastry chef is cool, right? I mean, to own your own cupcake shop? And so, it's something that parents love. In fact, I read some of the reviews online of the product, the pastry chef product, and parents said, "Oh, my little girl loves this because she wants to be a pastry chef when she grows up." It's a real different world

Dan Pashman: Yeah, and the other thing that happened is that it used to be that sort of women cooked in the home and men cooked in restaurants, and that's obviously changed.

Helene Siegel: That's true. [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: And now women are also celebrity chefs. 

Helene Siegel: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: And so that change opened the door for Mattel to say like, okay, now, now this is a glamorous career. You know, Barbie, before she was an astronaut, you know, now she can be a chef, and so they changed their — as the culture changed there, the rules around the doll changed, 

Helene Siegel: That’s right.

Dan Pashman: I got to look around. Hang on. I'm getting up for one second, Helene. I'm going to see if I can find ... 

Helene Siegel: Okay.

Dan Pashman: Cause I have, I have a newer Barbie cookbook here that my daughter and I've cooked from. Let me see if I can find it. I should've had it ready. Let me see ...  

Dan Pashman: In 2020, a new Barbie cookbook came out — nearly 30 years after Helene's Barbie cookbook. And this newer one, is very different.

Dan Pashman: Here it is. All right, so I've got Barbie Bakes: 50 + fantastic recipes from Barbie and her friends. 

Helene Siegel: Right. 

Dan Pashman: Barbie is on the cover holding a pie ... 

Helene Siegel: [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: And with oven mitts on. So she ... 

Helene Siegel: She has oven mitts. 

Dan Pashman: She seems to be the one who took the pie out of the oven, which suggests she is cooking. 

Helene Siegel: I'm very proud of her.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: And my daughter has put post it notes on all the things that she wants to make. 

Helene Siegel: Aw, that's cute.

Dan Pashman: To me, my biggest criticism of this book was that the recipes seem very complicated. Like they're ... 

Helene Siegel: Oh, really? 

Dan Pashman: Like they're very elaborate. 

Helene Siegel: No. 

Dan Pashman: It's like, they look gorgeous, but it's like not anything that I'm going to spend ...

Helene Siegel: Right.

Dan Pashman: And there's no time estimates on the recipe. My daughter looked through these things and she's like, let's make this. Like, they all look amazing, you know, but it's like these — you know, you got a cupcake with like four different colors in the frosting ...  

Helene Siegel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Dan Pashman: And they're somehow piped on top to make a perfect swirl. Like, I don't know how to do that. Like ...

Helene Siegel: No, well, that sounds like ...  

Dan Pashman: Barbie's making me feel bad, Helene. I can't cook like she can. 

Helene Siegel: No. [LAUGHS] She shouldn't. And she shouldn't be judging. She'd never be judging. 

[LAUGHING]

MUSIC

Helene Siegel: I don't think food has ever been a priority for barbie. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Helene Siegel: You know what I mean? It's just that it's a big thing in the culture now. But my hunch is that she does not eat a lot. Like we never have her eating in any of our stories. You know, it's not like, oh, then I sat down with my friends, my best friends, and we gorged ourselves on ice cream.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Helene Siegel: Like no. That is not part of this perfect universe.

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: That’s Helene Siegel. Her blog is The Pastry Sessions, which has recipes for children and adults, and she also writes a column for the Jewish Journal on food, travel, and aging.

Dan Pashman: Coming up, I get about as close to entering a real life Dreamhouse as possible when I go to the pop-up Malibu Barbie Cafe in New York. I dine there with food writer Helen Rosner, and we debate whether a breakfast burrito is Barbie food. Stick around.

MUSIC

 

+++ BREAK +++

 

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman and I have some big pasta news to share. As of this month Sfoglini's cascatelli is now in Whole Foods nationwide! And remember it's also in many Wal-mart locations now, so you can get it there too.

Dan Pashman: On top of that, more new! Our newer shapes, quattrotini and vesuvio, are now in The Fresh Market — that's 170 locations across the eastern half of the U.S.. And quattrotini and vesuvio are also all locations of Texas's own Central Market! 

Of course, you can always get all my shapes including the variety pack direct from Sfoglini at Sfoglini.com. So go get your pasta!

Dan Pashman: Okay, back to Barbie.

[CAFE SOUNDS] 

Dan Pashman: I love that we’re the only two people who wore black to the Barbie pop-up.

Helen Rosner: Yeah. 

[LAUGHING] 

Helen Rosner: It’s, like, a good memoir title.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: This is Helen Rosner, a food writer at The New Yorker. We met at the pop-up Malibu Barbie Cafe in New York City on a recent Thursday morning. And the way it works at the cafe is that when you make your reservation, you also order your food: You pick one entree and a side.

Helen Rosner: Did you know that we put in exactly the same order? 

Dan Pashman: You're joking. Helen Rosner: No, I ... when I emailed my order, I said, "And if Dan happens to be getting the same thing ...", to use my back up order. And she replied, "She was like, "Dan ordered exactly the same thing." 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Helen Rosner: [LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: I invited Helen not just because she has impeccable taste in food ordering, but because I wanted her to train her critical eye on the cafe, the food, and the whole idea of Barbie. 

Dan Pashman: So just look around Helen, set the scene for us. What do you see? what captures your attention?

Helen Rosner: Well, we’re in a very sort of sunlight filled space that has been painted in bright magenta and turquoise, and it’s really decked out in a Barbie surf vibe. It’s an Instagram opportunity with a meal included. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Helen Rosner: And the crowd is really interesting. There are, I think as you would expect, a lot of young girls, most of whom are wearing various shades of pink. But there are a surprising number of adults in here, childless adults. 

Dan Pashman: Yes. 

Helen Rosner: There might actually be a first date happening over at the bar.

Dan Pashman: Oh my God.

Helen Rosner: Do you see that? But it’s cool! Oh my God. Oh wow, this woman just walked by wearing the coolest outfit. She's — like a light pink top and a long magenta skirt, and these shoes that look like butterflies. She’s a real life Barbie. Look at her!

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Helen Rosner: Oh! 

Dan Pashman: Oh, things are already coming! 

Helen Rosner: Cool! Amazing. 

Dan Pashman: Thank you. So this is beet hummus. Okay, nice and pink … 

Dan Pashman: We started in on the beet hummus. It was fine. We gave it points for it being a naturally pink food. We waited for the rest of our meal: a club sandwich, breakfast burrito, wedge salad, fries, and steamed broccoli.

Dan Pashman: I mean, my expectations of the food coming in were admittedly low. So they can only impress me. What was your relationship with Barbie growing up?

Helen Rosner: Covetous, obsessive. I had a few Barbies. I didn’t have nearly as many as I wanted. The other really powerful Barbie memory for me is the Barbie aisle at the toy store. It was a tunnel of pink. You know, and imagine being three feet tall and walking through this, what feels to you, like, a cathedral of tiny flawless women, wearing the most extraordinary outfits you’ve ever seen in your lives. Anytime we would go to the toy store to pick up a present for a friend’s bday party or whatever it was, I would ask to go through the Barbie aisle and I would look at them like I was in a museum. It was just incredible. Like the ... even as a chubby kid I don’t think I ever had that sense that I was supposed to look like Barbie. It was very fantastical. It was a form of deeply covetous, deeply capitalistic, incredibly joyous feminine fantasy, and it’s still totally there. 

Dan Pashman: Our food’s here. The breakfast burrito, wedge salad. Thank you.

Helen Rosner: I love a wedge salad.

Dan Pashman: I know you do, that’s why I ordered it!

Helen Rosner: Oh my gosh! Thank you, I feel so seen!

Dan Pashman: Well, let’s dig in here.

Helen Rosner: Oh, these are good fries. They taste like McDonald’s. 

Dan Pashman: They have that crisp.

Helen Rosner: I feel like the salt level and the fryer oil composition, that is a McDonald’s fry.

Dan Pashman: Mmm. 

Helen Rosner: Do you taste that?

Dan Pashman: But they’re a little more done.

Helen Rosner: Yeah. They're more golden.

Dan Pashman: They’re a more deep golden brown.

Helen Rosner: Yeah, if you were gonna buy in McDonald’s fries and then take them back to another restaurant re-fry them, this is what you would get.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Right. Kinda genius.

Helen Rosner: This is really good.

Dan Pashman: Some of these things feel like they go with the idea of Barbie more than others. 

Helen Rosner: Tell me more, yeah. 

Dan Pashman: The pink beet hummus, I get it. The wedge salad, I get it. Even the club sandwich. It feels like I could see Barbie being at a country club and ordering a club sandwich.

Helen Rosner: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: I don’t know how many mammoth bacon egg and cheese and avocado breakfast burritos Barbie is gonna house.

Helen Rosner: I think what you’re running into is a really interesting distinction between Barbie the brand and Barbie the person. So for me a breakfast burrito makes a lot of sense of who Barbie is because she’s a California surfer girl and a breakfast burrito to me is in many ways the ultimate California surfer food, right? So Barbie eats a breakfast burrito but Barbie doesn’t eat pink food that says Barbie on it. Barbie eats California surfer girl food. So the pink hummus on the table, that’s not Barbie eating that pink hummus, that’s us eating Barbie. But the breakfast burrito, this is what Barbie eats.

Dan Pashman: All right, let's try this breakfast burrito.

[SILVERWARE CLANKING]

Helen Rosner: What do you think the mysterious pink is? Do you see that?

Dan Pashman: Yes, it’s a little tiny pink dot inside the breakfast burrito. I’m gonna guess that that’s a sprinkle from the pancakes. 

Helen Rosner: Yes! I bet you're totally right. 

Dan Pashman: … that fell in and dissolved. 

Helen Rosner: It's n my scrambled eggs. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah. 

Helen Rosner: I love it, I think that’s exactly the kind of fortuitous and exciting thing that happens in Barbie’s life!

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Yeah! 

Helen Rosner: That's good. 

Dan Pashman: I happen to be a sucker for anything wrapped in a flour tortilla.

Helen Rosner: Oh, yeah.

Dan Pashman: But this is good. 

Helen Rosner: It’s like, surprisingly good.

Dan Pashman: It's interesting to me that you think Barbie, the person, would eat a breakfast burrito and I understand your — I think your logic makes a lot of sense. But one of the things I’ve been contemplating an in talking with other folks, is like — so there was this moment when being a chef became glamorous, then it was okay for her to be in the kitchen, when it was a career. But they still even then were very careful about showing her eating. I actually quizzed my kids because they’re avid viewers of Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse. So they said they do sometimes — the Barbie does eat sometimes on that show. 

Helen Rosner: Okay. 

Dan Pashman: But from what I understand it’s still even more recent, it took a long time and still only very recently that was Barbie allowed to be depicted eating.

Helen Rosner: Huh? So, do we think that this is a body image thing, a domesticity thing, a Barbie isn’t allowed to get dirty thing, or something else? The easy answer is that Barbie is famously very slender and we have to acknowledge that one of the ways that you can get and remain that way is by never being seen eating. [LAUGHS] But that’s a little disordered. So I don’t know, what do you think?

Dan Pashman: It’s hard for me to imagine that some people sat in a board room and said that. Said like, we can’t have her eating because she's — has to be —

Helen Rosner: It has to be narratively plausible that she’s this thin.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right. 

Helen Rosner: Right. 

Dan Pashman: I mean, I think that the part of Barbie that to me feels a little more potentially worrisome because a lot of women I’ve talked to from my kids up to my 60-something-year-old aunt who has a 700 Barbie — collection of 700 Barbies ...

Helen Rosner: Ugh, my dream.

Dan Pashman: ... said, "She’s plastic. We never thought we were supposed to look like that."

Helen Rosner: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: But there's — the other thing is that in all other respects Barbie is always perfect.

Helen Rosner: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Maybe it’s less about body image but it's more about eating is something that real people do. 

Helen Rosner: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: And it's sometimes messy. We don’t always look our best when we’re shoving food in our faces.

Helen Rosner: Right. Like, there’s not "Medical School Barbie". There’s just "Doctor Barbie". You know, you don’t see the Barbie who’s worked a 24-hour on call and has been cramming for the MCATs and has been doing whatever. You see Barbie when she is in the most poised, professional, in control, structurally and aesthetically perfect mode of her life.

Dan Pashman: Right. And so I think them not wanting to show her eating is more about maintaining that.

Helen Rosner: Yeah. I think that makes sense. I think it’s totally possible that there’s an element of insidiousness to it but I don't, it seems a little far-fetched to me. 

Dan Pashman: And then came the crown jewel of the meal, dessert.

Dan Pashman: Oh my God. Oh my God.

Helen Rosner: Oh my God. This is fantastic!

Dan Pashman: This is the ice cream float. It’s literally a plastic pink car, like a Barbie mobile. And in the driver's seat is a glass jar of Jarritos strawberry soda and in the passenger seat is a big glass full of vanilla ice cream.

Helen Rosner: This is — they’re on a date!

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Helen Rosner: They’re gonna make out at lookout point! 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Helen Rosner: Thank you so much. I’m gonna make them kiss, like classic Barbie style.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Helen Rosner: Ready? Every kid who’s owned a Barbie knows how to make the Barbies kiss.

[GLASS CLINKING]

Dan Pashman: Wow. 

Helen Rosner: I mean, really, if I were properly doing this ... 

Dan Pashman: It’s not even noon, Helen. Take it easy.

Helen Rosner: Well, I’m not making them do you know what. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Helen Rosner: That’s a full smash, but ... 

Dan Pashman: I poured the strawberry Jarritos over the ice cream, and we went in for a taste …

Dan Pashman: Mmm! [GLASS CLINKS] Oh my God.

Helen Rosner: That is strawberry soda poured over vanilla ice cream.

[LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: I mean, first of all, it's serving some real Nestle Quik Strawberry Quik vibes. 

Helen Rosner: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Which, I love. 

Helen Rosner: This is pure childhood. 

Dan Pashman: I also have to say, I feel like, of all the dishes we’ve had here, an ice cream float feels to me like, just absolute perfect for Barbie. And I feel like it’s a dessert that unites both Barbie the brand and Barbie the person.

Helen Rosner: Yes! I think that’s absolutely true. This is really awakening childhood stuff in me right now, playing with this car. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Helen Rosner: I never got to have any of the larger Barbie accessories. I just had the dolls and the clothes. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Helen Rosner: And of course, I coveted a Dreamhouse or coveted the Barbie mobile. I might cry. This is a big moment for me … 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Helen Rosner: I really love the car.

Dan Pashman: Helen’s hugging the car.

Helen Rosner: I’m hugging the car, but like sincerely. I need to talk about this in therapy.

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Dan Pashman: Well Helen, excuse me while I finish this ice cream float.

[LAUGHING]

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Dan Pashman: That’s Helen Rosner, she’s a staff writer at The New Yorker. You can follow her on Instagram where she has a link to all her writing, she’s @HelenR.

Dan Pashman: The Malibu Barbie Cafe is open until September 15, it’s located in the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. And there's another pop-up cafe in Chicago that also closes then. 

Dan Pashman: Next week on the show, I talk with indigenous poet Tommy Pico about learning to cook so he could make his own new food culture. We also talk about his love of junk food and he reads some of his poetry. That’s next week.

Dan Pashman: While you’re waiting for that one, don’t miss last week’s episode all about ice cubes. I talk with the guy who pioneered a way to make crystal clear ice. Plus, we break down Starbucks’ recent announcement that they’re changing their ice cubes. There's a lot going in the world of ice, right now. Ice is hot. We're covering it all on The Sporkful. That one's up now.

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