The disturbing story of Malibu Barbie, the doll nailed to Sharon Tate who turns 50

Malibu Barbie turns 50 this summer and is pretty much the same as ever. Barefoot, tanned, in a bikini, relaxed, fine. Mattel has even celebrated that anniversary by launching a few products in collaboration with other brands. A makeup set with Colourpop, a line of swimsuits with the signature L'Space, inflatable mattresses with Funboy and hair straightening irons with CHI, in the same aquamarine color that her swimsuit had in 1971.

The doll was born that year, as an attempt by Mattel to recover a market that was losing. Barbie had been launched in 1959 with a very different look than it does now. The original doll had a sort of sideways gaze and pin-up look, similar to that of Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Elizabeth Taylor's publicity poses in swimsuits. Although the house had already been launching different models –in 1967 Twist Barbie was created, which moved from the waist up, as if to dance rock'n'roll and in 1970 there was a rather glam Barbie, with a metallic coat–, by 1971, sales had dropped significantly. It was already considered a somewhat old-fashioned toy. Barbie was then given a complete makeover. Her hair grew longer, thicker, and blonder, she lost her ponytail and began to show her teeth in her permanent smile and look straight ahead. The Malibu Barbie was born, a doll with much more tanned skin than the previous one and who wore as accessories a swimsuit, purple sunglasses, a small yellow towel and a surfboard, but no shoes. On the scale of Barbie's evolution, the Malibu is much more like any Barbie still sold in stores.

Sharon Tate and Tony Curtis on the set of 'Don't Make a Wave'. Photo: Image via Redditt

There is a theory that resurfaces on the internet from time to time, never confirmed by Mattel, that the inspiration for that doll was Sharon Tate. The actress, who was brutally murdered by Charles Manson's cult/squad when she was eight months pregnant in 1969, had her first major film role a couple of years earlier, in 1967, with a character named Malibu, in the movie Don't Make a Wave. This sitcom with Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale served as an excuse to take out Tate and many other boys and girls in swimsuits, since most of the action takes place on a beach frequented by bodybuilders and surfers, including the blonde Malibu, from which Curtis's character inevitably falls in love with after she performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him. The opening credits are beautifully animated and include an original Byrds song written by their frontman, Roger Mcguinn.

Although that was the third film that Sharon Tate shot, it ended up being the first one that was released, so it is considered her debut in the cinema. The studio behind the film, MGM, tried to squeeze the most out of this new star, despite the fact that the protagonists were two much more famous actors at the time, such as Curtis and Cardinale. They made life-size cutouts of Sharon Tate in a bikini and took them to theaters as promotional material. In addition, a parallel campaign was mounted in collaboration with Coppertone, the sun cream brand.

Sharon Tate in a moment of 'Don't make waves'. Photo: Getty

The reviews of the film were quite negative, because the film was halfway between the beach farce, the genre that had triumphed in the sixties with films like Gidget, and the parody of the beach farce that it was intended to be, but it still served to launch Tate, who would also release The Valley of the Dolls at the time.

In the film, Tate wears an aquamarine bikini, just like the one Barbie would later wear, and her hair is long and straight, codifying the Californian style that she has worn without changing much since then. If Ruth Handler, the inventor of the doll, whom she named after her daughter Barbara, and the rest of Mattel's executives were inspired by Tate's character, or even by the actress's off-screen aesthetic – sexy, but not intimidating; she American, like apple pie–, obviously they couldn't say it after having been murdered in a massacre with Satanist overtones that also generated all kinds of symbolic readings.

On the left, Sharon Tate in a Coppertone ad about Ella's Malibu character in 'Don't Make a Wave'. On the right, above and above the image, a 1978 Malibu Barbie. Photo: Coppertone/Amazon

The curious thing is that in the film about Barbie that Greta Gerwig will direct (the script, of which nothing is known, is being written by four hands with her partner, Noah Baumbach) who will play the doll is Margot Robbie, who precisely played Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

It's hard to find an authentic 1971 Malibu at a collectibles auction, though its price still doesn't reach the figures for "vintage era" (1959-1966) or "mod era" (1966-1971) dolls. What Mattel does do is sell replicas of its mythical models, aimed at the adult market. The Malibu, which was an entire set that included Ken and Skipper, Barbie's youngest friend, and her cousin Francie, were produced between 1971 and 1984 and were hugely popular. They generated a whole range of products that included coloring pencils and in successive launches they added accessories that always referred to the Californian beach lifestyle, such as roller skates and beaded necklaces. For Barbie collectors, the Malibu is a turning point towards decadence.

In the book Barbie: the First 30 Years, Stephanie Deustch writes: “Sadly, they mark the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Vintage Barbie. Later, mass-produced, low-budget dolls lacked the quality – appliqué eyelashes, haircuts – and charm of the early ones.” Mattel, however, was marked the way forward. The market was for dolls of unreal proportions that adhered to a very specific standard of beauty. Things remained more or less the same, with an emphasis on the "Career Barbies" of the 1980s (if the 1970s bestseller was a hedonistic beach doll, the 1980s was Day and Night Barbie, who transformed her suit executive in a disco dress in a single gesture), until in 2015 the company decided to give its star doll a supposedly feminist twist. For the first time, the mold was changed so that it had flat feet and not arched enough to wear heels and more than one hundred models of all skin tones and with a certain diversity of bodies were generated, including a "curvy Barbie" that would wear a size 42 approx. The Rosa Parks Barbie and the Frida Kahlo Barbie were launched. There was even a line of non-binary dolls, with interchangeable male and female stereotypical clothing. The response was quite positive. After chaining five years of declining sales between 2012 and 2017, Mattel registered increases of 10% and 14% in its flagship product.

According to Aurora Sherman, a psychology professor at Oregon State University, author of several studies on the impact of the toy on girls, “much of the material that Mattel posts on their networks and on their YouTube channel is still problematic. It has a different wrapper, but it's the same old thing." One of the latest videos on that channel also shows Barbie on the beach, very much in the Malibu spirit, but instead of surfing and sunbathing, she's giving facts about the state of the ocean and tips on eco-efficiency. The video is dedicated to marine biologist Sylvia Earle. After her, Barbie, wearing a pink swimsuit, sits on her pink towel, takes out a book and a camera from her pink backpack and recommends her followers to take a detox day to disconnect from the social media.

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