Happy 50th Birthday Barbie - Bet Madonna & Britney Spears wish they'd look that good!

March 9, 8:30 PMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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She was one of the defining images of the American women of the 20th century and, on her 50th birthday today, Barbie looks to be taking on the 21st century with as much fresh faced verve as she did the last one.

Times may be tough but the joint will be hopping tonight in Malibu tonight. That's because Ms. Barbie is going to wrap herself in her famed beach front incarnation and head out to what toymaker Mattel hope to be a star studded & Paris Hilton too birthday party at the 3,500 square foot Pacific Ocean pad interior decorator Jonathan Adler has been working on for six months. It will be everything the modern woman and Barbie needs - just think lots of cupcakes, lots of hairspray, an Andy Warhol portrait and lot and lots of pink.

Click here to take an inside look at Barbie's Malibu Dream House

You can follow Barbie's birthday and her party tonight on Barbie's very own blog by clicking here

There's a lot of Barbie in the air of late with Angelina Jolie going blond, at least part of the time while shooting her upcoming spy thriller Salt on the East Coast, and that bottled blond Eminem announcing that on May 19 he'll be releasing Relapse, his first new album in over four years. Of course, not all  Barbie in the mix is good. After all, if Barbie had an evil stepsister and a demon daughter they would be Madonna and Britney Spears.

Click here to take a look at how Madonna, who is also 50 years old, has really been trying too hard of late ... spread eagle & all

Click here for the awful truth on the opening night of Britney Spears' new tour & how the formerly troubled Pop Princess might not, no matter how hard she tried to imitate Madonna, be out of the rehab woods yet

In their own ways, both Madonna and Britney have staked a claim on what it is to be blonde and a woman of artifice and creation. Madonna, like that other blonde on the scene Hilary Clinton, has had almost as many incarnations as Barbie. The same of course can be said for Britney, but not in a good way. 

It is telling of the way our culture has shift that Barbie has been reinvented as sweet nostalgia and empowerment. Just a few years back she was the object of feminist derision and terminally square in a way that leaves Leave It to Beaver mom Barbara Billingsley in the buffon dust. Today, Barbie has her own runaway show at New York Fashion week, a newly opened six-story House of Barbie store in Shanghai and, for the Suicide Girls crowd and the men who love them, the newly released Totally Stylin Tattoos Barbie, which comes with over 40 tiny tats you can stick anywhere on the doll of a doll.

Plus, as was announced just the other day, Barbie isn't the Barbie we all knew anymore. Mattel has given the former buxom cheerleader haired doll a new more modern look. It's "a more natural look, including a thinner jaw line, more almond-shaped eyes, fuller lips and a softer makeup palette," says the keepers of the Barbie flame. 

Is it just me or does that sound like Angelina Jolie?