Lee Randall: Pears and apples as positivity pointers

Published on Tuesday 16 March 2010 18:06

HAVE you seen the new Mad Men dolls, celebrating the popular television show?

As far as I can tell they're just bog-standard Barbies fitted out with retro 1960s wigs and fashions. Having studied the image, I can't escape the suspicion that this is just an ingenious way of emptying an over-stuffed warehouse crammed ceiling high with outdated heads and costumes.

My very own 1960s-era Barbie doll wore identical dresses, and sported the same injection-moulded, over-mascaraed eyelashes – which, come to think of it, probably explains my lifelong addiction to Maybelline's Great Lash.

Notice anything missing? Their Joan Holloway doll is as slender as their Betty Draper doll. This reinforces my controversial reuse theory that the "new" line (available from July for about 50 each) was cobbled together from leftovers. Because if there's one thing we know about Joan and the actress who portrays her, Christina Hendricks, it's that she is a collection of big, beautiful earth-goddess curves.

Mattel has been criticised so often over the years about Barbie's aerodynamically impossible physique, that it seems a shame they missed this blatant opportunity to rectify their mistake. They should have leapt at the chance to create a plastic woman with proportions aligned to reality (and bodacious reality, at that!).

Even if they were keen to sell off the old bodies, how tough would it have been to pad the costumes, giving "Joan" the A to go with all that T? These are collectors' items, not playthings, and don't need to stand up to a lot of rough and tumble. So is this corporate fatism or laziness? Either insults the consumer.

It takes a lot to stop me mid tirade, but my flow of toy-related invective dried up when I spotted a headline asking: "Can talking to an apple help you become more beautiful?"

It was not, as I half-hoped, a story advocating that those of us shaped like pears should go out for cocktails with gals shaped like apples in order to cheer each other up with a bit of much-needed perspective. Along the lines of: "You think youhave trouble buying clothes – let me tell you what I'm up against!"

The reality was more bonkers still, reporting on an experiment conducted by Nikki Owen, who is described as a neuro-linguistic programming expert, a telly commentator, and "Britain's leading charisma expert".

(I am reminded of a school chum who never lived down the report in which she informed us that General Garibaldi's success was less a case of strategic brilliance and more about his tremendous charisma, which we misunderstood as a dirty word.)

Owen took two jars. She labelled one "Love", the other "Hate". Half an apple was placed into each jar. For a week she whispered sweet nothings to the love apple, and heaped calumnies upon the hate apple. After seven days, hate was considerably worse for wear than its better-treated half.

Owen concluded that this was proof that "being mean-spirited can create rot and decay". Allegedly, hundreds of others have replicated the experiment and achieved identical results.

Had I only known about this before being asked by a pal, recently, "Do you talk to yourself much? Out loud?" I might have said: "Yes, but only because I'm updating my pineapples about today's weather."

All jokes aside, the message is another reminder about the power of positive thinking. As Jackie Collins recently tweeted: "I have never considered myself glamorous, but I have been told that I am – I think it's because I have a great deal of self belief."

She is, and she does, and it works. Negative thinking will seep into every nook and cranny of your existence. But if, as I've said before, you think you're fabulous, you'll convince yourself that you really are.

When we treat ourselves with pride (no matter what we look like or weigh), it can only inspire others to treat us with the same measure of respect.