MARISSA BURR
Special to The Leader
In 1959, the world was introduced to Barbara Millicent Roberts who stood with raised heels at 11 inches tall and made of plastic—you may know her better as “Barbie.”
Billions are sold every year, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a large number of children who didn’t grow up with at least one Barbie doll in their house, whether it was their own or belonged to a sibling.
With clothes, accessories, playsets including the famous Barbie Dreamhouse, as well as friends and family of the doll, consumers have had a consistently rising number of products to choose from to create their own unique world for their Barbie.
I myself recall owning at least two dozen different dolls and an exorbitant amount of extras too. At one point, I even had a Barbie cruise liner that had a detachable pool that you could fill with water and have Barbie slide into while also drinking some sort of fancy drink. I’m sure that I spent hundreds of hours playing with it all, and because of that, I have so many fond memories of Barbie.
However, not everyone is as much of a Barbie-lover as I am. In fact, her entire existence has been controversial. According to a study conducted by Barbie’s creator company Mattel in the year prior to her release, mothers thought she had “too much of a figure.”
Despite this, Barbie was advertised directly to children. Her appearance has frequently been deemed too sexual for a kid’s toy—but that may just be the way we’re taught to see women. People who have an estrogen-influenced system can have the controversial features that the doll displays such as large breasts and a thin waist.
Society critiques Barbie for having these, yet they are often what is sought out when picking models, actresses and other spotlight careers. The doll was made in this image because that is what media-consumers have shown they’re most responsive to.
Yet, Barbie’s exact measurements have also been analyzed and put up for criticism. Finnish researchers found in 1994 that if a real woman had the same proportions, she would not have enough body fat to menstruate.
Through an average person’s perspective, her body may seem a little off when comparing it to our own. It seems reasonable to imagine her having a difficult time staying upright. Her legs are on the long side, the head a little large for her neck and let’s not even get to the pointed feet designed to let her easily slip into any of her plastic shoes.
So how has Barbie changed to reflect people’s discontent?
Mattel has changed her mold numerous times in an effort to make her more realistic. In the early 2000s, she was given smaller breasts, a wider waist and slimmer hips.
A little over a decade later in 2016, petite, tall and curvy dolls were released. These most recent changes were met with a mostly positive response according to a BBC article that year titled “How Does ‘Curvy Barbie’ Compare With An Average Woman?,” the curvy doll’s measurements would put her at about a size six in women’s clothing, and while that doesn’t yet hit the mark of where most curvier brands have to start their size ranging, it is an improvement from the original Barbie’s waist and hips that equate to a size two.
Progress is progress, and even baby steps should be appreciated.
What about Barbie being sexualized by the media? Honestly, in my opinion that isn’t really happening on Mattel’s end.
She’s a doll marketed towards young children, and her hobbies aren’t anything that a child wouldn’t dream of doing themselves.
Barbie hangs out with her friends, loves her sisters, plays with animals, and best of all aspires to have a variety of careers. Her occupations were quite modern when you look at the era she was produced in.
The fifties housewife persona was still heavily present, yet young girls were being given a doll who wasn’t a housewife, nor a mother. Barbie was a pilot, astronaut, doctor, athlete and even a presidential candidate as noted in an article from Britannica.
Her careers span as wide as her closet walls. She was purposefully designed to inspire children to be more than what they saw within their own home.
Using their imagination, Barbie—and hopefully themselves in the future—could be anything that they dreamed of.
Young girls who loved Barbies like myself who were born right after the turn of the century, watched the classic Barbie movies like “Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses” and “Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper.”
In many of these stories, Barbie was a character who then played the role of the protagonist as an actress. She went on adventures, made new friends, faced danger and usually got a new outfit by the end.
These were staples in my household when it was my turn to pick a movie, and I still can recite the words to many of the original songs. Because of this continued love, I ended up on the page of a Tiktoker named Jaysen (username @ezeekat) who was responding to requests by his followers to react to these iconic Barbie movies.
So, I’ve been following his journey and have both agreed and disagreed with some of his takes while watching them, and overall have just enjoyed this edition to my feed.
At the end of May, Jaysen made a video entitled “I Was Wrong About Barbie” where he starts off by saying how when he was growing up he remembered hearing all of these terrible things about Barbie. Yet, after diving into the Barbie culture he realized how wrong this all was.
He says, “In the Barbie movies I’ve seen so far, Barbie is smart, she is a creative problem solver, she is kind, she is confident and she puts her friends first.”
He’s not wrong, and I’m starting to realize those are some of the reasons I still love these movies at almost 21-years-old. She taught me how to stand up for myself yet still be a good person in an interesting way that I’d understand even as a preschooler.
There’s a home video of Christmas morning 2006 at my house where I’m bouncing off the walls because Santa brought me the four main character dolls from “Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper” in a horse drawn carriage.
That little girl could not have cared less what the body shapes of those dolls were; she was overjoyed to be playing with the Anneliese Barbie doll who in the movie was both a princess and a scientist who saved herself and her tutor (and true love obviously) from a collapsing mine shaft. Barbie is so much more than the anger that follows its design.
Margot Robbie, who both produced and starred in the 2023 Barbie movie, took a deep dive into the role she’d be playing, and didn’t limit herself to only looking at the bright spots in Barbie history.
She too analyzed why the doll was so controversial.
In an interview with Vogue Magazine, Robbie broke it down and said, “‘Okay, she’s a doll. She’s a plastic doll. She doesn’t have organs. If she doesn’t have organs, she doesn’t have reproductive organs. If she doesn’t have reproductive organs, would she even feel sexual desire? No, I don’t think she could’. Therefore: ‘She is sexualized. But she should never be sexy. People can project sex onto her.’”
The rocky public opinion of Barbie kept many other famous actresses away from playing the doll on screen, and even if they were willing to tackle the complex nature of a seemingly nothing-but-plastic character, it was difficult to get the project off of the ground.
Just like changes being made to the classic doll, new ideas were hard to release to the public because it was obvious they’d be met with multiple levels of opposition.
It comes down to what story they want Barbie to tell, and how important it is to them that the world hears it.
Barbie isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much people hate what they think she stands for. She’s as recognizable of a brand as Coca-Cola, and she’s a lot younger.
If you’re worried about a little girl getting false expectations for what their body looks like, don’t.
Teach them that whether they look like Barbie or not, they are beautiful as long as they are the same on the inside as she is.
After all, no firefighter/dentist/fashion designer/computer engineer could rock a black and white striped bathing suit without believing in herself.