Yes, it seems like everyone is celebrating Barbie. Or scrutinizing her. I got a jump on both in 1979, when I went to a cocktail party to kick off Barbie’s splashy 21st Birthday year.

An essential perk of my first reporting job for Toys Hobbies and Crafts was access to media events with free h’or d'oeuvres. Young reporters for this glossy trade magazine survived on meals served with toothpicks and little napkins.

Mattel was hosting a PR event in one of its corporate offices designed to excite the press about the doll’s major milestone. Sparkly cardboard signs declaring “Happy Birthday Barbie” were fastened to the neutral office walls. The perky guest of honor herself was relegated to a display case with her latest accessories. New princess phone. New fluffy mules. Attendees were mostly industry and business press, company executives, a few retailers, and a motley crew of Barbie doll collectors, forlorn-looking folks who each held fast to their own clutch of dolls. None yet spoke of Barbie as an investment. Or a trendsetter.

Being here was a culture shock. I’d just returned from Asia and eighteen months of roaming the globe. How could I have gone from passing barefoot villagers on dirt paths in the Himalayas to the hallways of this Manhattan penthouse suite with a pack of toy salesmen? A career in newspaper journalism was the goal. I’d already been assigned to cover the launch of Strawberry Shortcake “the miniature doll in the miniature world” that came with a free lunch of red meat, strawberry salad. And of course, the eponymous dessert. I was learning tell a counterfeit Tonka Toy dump truck from a real one. Now this! For the Barbie fete, at least, I was just a freeloading intern with no story deadline. I came for the cheese cubes, and hoped for lobster ravioli.

Aficionados from the corporate side and the public chatted excitedly about Barbie’s nuances:

“I love that page boy; are her sunglasses attached to her kerchief?”

“That navy striped dress is a perfect compliment to Skipper’s blouse.”

They boasted of rare editions and opined on Barbies’ next life move. Why so breathless over a doll, I fumed, naively unaware that the real subject was not Barbie’s hemlines or story lines, but her profit margins.

In this era shaped by feminism. and skepticism, I was brooding over what all the fuss was about. “She’s just a piece of plastic,” I whispered to a fellow reporter smearing Brie onto a cracker. Why did these people care about a brassy blonde plaything, who “lives” to keep buying new clothes to cover her sleek, genital-free form.

Internally wracked with indigence, while scarfing down our early dinner, we writers in the room were not much older than Barbie then. We rolled our eyes, nobly simmering twenty-something journalists eyeing all the corporate “sell-out’s” in the room.

Jack from Mattel - I remember his first name and forceful handshake - was a marketing exec with a mammoth grin and perfect tie knot who offered a big sales-y hello. He sensed my cynicism. And delighted in it.

“Oh come on,” he said. “Barbie has always been ahead of her time. She has her own Dream House and Dream Car. A career!” Astronaut Barbie had debuted way back in 1965. “Face it,” he joked. “She doesn’t even need Ken!”

His smile never sagged, even as he saw how stricken I looked. Did he know I aspired to be the Lois Lane or Hildy Johnson of the ‘70s? Would Brenda Starr attend a corporate event, and for Barbie? He went on about Barbie’s independence. Her moxie, her mettle. In essence, she was fierce, though that word had not yet entered the lexicon for formidable females.

Wait, what? Had he just positioned Barbie as a feminist role model? “Ridiculous”, I sniffed, holding my stuffed mushrooms and Chardonnay.

Jump to 2023, and the world seems to be all in with Jack from Marketing. He was right. Or at least prescient. His more than four-decades-old Barbie rationale could serve as the premise of the current, outsize marketing blitz. His isn’t-my-theory-cute description of Barbie and her personal and work life would survive. And thrive.

This summer a new generation of reporters and countless columnists are writing, and blogging and commentating non-stop about the big business of Barbie — Style icon. She-ro. Modern woman exemplar. The righteous minds in the media now support, not deride, her. She’s hailed for diversity, for worldliness.

Jack had been joking. But no, he wasn’t. Today’s Barbie narrative is a replay of his core themes - cultural impact, gender roles, power dynamics, social structure. Her meaning.

And of course, everyone is really still talking - a lot - about the money.