Barbie Flexes Her Muscles For Womankind

Women have the brains, brawn and more opportunities than ever to make it as engineers or mechanics, and in other so-called “manly” jobs.

Sometimes they just need a gentle shove from Barbie to show them the way.

Dump Truck Barbie, anyway.

Mattel’s leggy, torpedo-chested doll is hardly a feminist icon. But that was before Jan Polek held a contest to transform the wildly popular toy from bimbette to workaday object lesson.

Polek is an administrator at the Community Colleges of Spokane’s center for women’s programs.

A few weeks ago, she bought 15 “Hot Wheels” Barbies and handed them to the faculty and staff. They were told to use their imagination and turn the dolls into role models, light-years removed from the pampered glamour-babe image Barbie is famous for.

Off went the sexy jumpsuits. On went overalls and hard hats.

When it was over, there was Harley-riding Barbie, underwater-oil-rigger Barbie in flippers and mask, scientist Barbie with a briefcase, veterinarian Barbie, Barbie the Amish farm woman, sawmill foreman Barbie and Barbie the football-playing Dallas Cowperson.

The winner, determined Tuesday by a panel of judges, was Barbie sitting in the back of a dirt-filled dump truck.

No diamond tiara or furs for this gal. She had a shovel next to her. In her hands was a book titled “Real Men Play With Barbies.”

“I don’t think we’ve done anything that has sparked our students’ interest more than this,” Polek says. “Women need to know that they can go where the boys are, to the nontraditional jobs where the dollars are.”

Polek’s quirky contest wasn’t merely a game. Giving Barbies gritty make-overs is the center’s latest creative attempt to help liberate struggling women - predominantly single mothers - who are trapped on welfare rolls or in menial jobs.

Nationally, the numbers are depressing:

More than 12 million American families are maintained by single moms. Yet women make up nearly 60 percent of workers earning only $5 to $6 an hour. Two-thirds of all part-time workers are women.

“Our goal,” Polek adds, “is to get more of these people from being tax-dependent to being taxpayers.”

You’d have to look hard to find a more noble pursuit.

Located in a rustic log lodge across from Spokane Falls Community College, the women’s programs center is often the first step to earning a livable wage.

All the intensive classes and workshops are free. Women who sign up are given step-by-step, realistic instructions on how to become independent and productive.

Some of the success stories are truly amazing.

Two years ago, Sherry Uppman was trying to raise two kids alone on public assistance. The center helped her chart a plan to go to college and become a fluid power technician. She was hired before graduation by a Michigan firm and now earns $30,000 a year.

“The most exciting student to me is completely open to new ideas,” says Suzanne Bettinger, Dump Truck Barbie’s creator, who also works with the center’s Transition Skills for Technology program. “She gets in here and one day says, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can be an engineer.”’ There is a lot of hope in the center’s current crop of about 30 students.

None of these women live in a Barbie fantasy land. Nearly all hands go up at the question of how many are single parents.

“Time is something we don’t have a whole lot of,” explains Ann, one of the few students who is still married, but who has four children under 8. “Motherhood pretty much takes care of that.”

A cocktail waitress, Ann dreams of a career in the communications field. “I don’t want to be a cocktail waitress forever,” she says. “But if I don’t do something about it now, that’s exactly what will happen.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo