
STITCH IN TIME
WERE SHE INCLINED TO SPEAK, the doll would be capable of narrating all of history. In the second half of the twentieth century, Barbie Millicent Roberts soared to become the beau ideal of midcentury femininity and commercialism, her proportions nonviable and mass-produced. Raggedy Anns and Andys, peddled alongside accompanying picture books, demonstrated early the profitability of pairing literature with merchandising. The Cabbage Patch children, with their interchangeable moon faces, incited riots in 1983, inaugurating the American grotesquerie that would become annual Black Friday sales.