Most girls our age played with Barbie dolls when we were little. We remember the ideal Barbie doll with blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect hour glass figure, the ideal picture of American beauty in the 1960’s. The Barbie doll creator, Ruth Handler, based Barbie’s body on a German doll called Lilli, a prostitute gag gift handed out a bachelor parties. When Handler introduced Barbie in 1959 at the New York Toy Fair, her male competitors laughed her out of the room saying nobody would want to play with a doll with breast. By 1963, a teen Barbie was sol with a diet book that recommended simply “”Don’t eat”. A 2006 study found that girls exposed to Barbie reported lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body. In 2016, Mattel created Barbie dolls with four different body types and seven skin tones, with 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles. In this new era, Barbie shows girls and women that we all come in different shapes, sizes and colors and to love ourselves as who we are.
This is a pretty interesting article. I remember as a kid I played with barbie dolls. But there wasnt a huge range. But now you have barbies with different skin tones and hair styles and even body shapes. I honestly love the new barbies and it makes me wanna play with them again.
I never really knew the history of Barbie, especially since I was more into Bratz as a kid. It’s nice to see how far the company has come as a whole by pretty much flipping the brand’s message into something more positive. Children being able to see themselves in their dolls is great so I’m glad Barbie was able to progress.