I’m the ultimate Barbie fan, with 68 dolls – here’s why she’s the ultimate feminist icon
A SMILE crept across my face upon seeing the trailer for the upcoming Barbie film, and I’m not surprised it immediately went viral.
The live-action movie based on the world’s most famous doll, with Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, isn’t out until the summer but the buzz is building.
Director Greta Gerwig has a track record for female-focused films and Barbie looks set to be no exception, with the tagline “Barbie is every-thing and he’s just Ken”.
At last, Barbie will be seen for who she truly is — the original feminist.
It’s taken a long time for the world to give her the respect she deserves.
I’m a lifelong Barbie freak.
Growing up in America, as the only girl in a big Midwest family, with three brothers, I had 68 BARBIES.
Too cramped to fit in my Dream House, they resided in a boot-box extension, with my mother’s sanitary towels serving as bunk beds.
When I was four, my mother saw my doll kingdom spread out on my pink carpet and yelled: “No man is going to marry such a slob.”
No problem, I remember thinking — I didn’t want to have a husband and four kids in the suburbs like my mother did.
While feminists diss Barbie, she was a modern girl’s dream mentor, who taught me life lessons.
There were six Susans in my second-grade class at school, which caused two to run home crying, but not me.
Talking Barbie, Tropical Barbie and Color Magic Barbie showed me that many girls have the same name, and you’ll be known for what you do best.
Female partnership was essential, and a shortage of men wouldn’t ruin any party.
But with Ken as the only escort, I stole my brothers’ GI Joe for double dates with Midge.
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Since Barbie was a hip teenager with her own apartment, job and car, she showed me you didn’t have to be a conservative wife and mommy, cleaning and taking care of other people all day long.
Mirroring her independence, I begged my parents for the Olds-mobile Cutlass car that cruised me to college at 16, where I too lived with female roommates.
Barbie has had more than 200 jobs, proving that it’s cool to have varied careers.
I joke that she paved the way for my stints as an unpaid intern, receptionist, failed poet, editorial assistant, paperback book critic, author, broke freelancer and part-time writing teacher.
Researching my 2019 book, Barbie: 60 Years Of Inspiration, I was fasc-inated to learn all about her creator, trailblazing businesswoman Ruth Handler.
After she married, she was bored as a housewife with two kids — Barbara and Ken, whose names became the inspiration for her future doll franchise.
Ruth, who set up toy firm Mattel Inc. with her husband in 1945, noticed her son had numerous toys allowing him to imagine himself as a surgeon, astronaut or firefighter.
But the only things little Barbara had to play with were baby dolls.
Watching her play with grown-up paper-doll cutouts, Ruth didn’t want to make another Betsy Wetsy, Tiny Tears or Chatty Cathy baby to indoctrinate girls into being just good mommies.
She was convinced doll play could be about a girl’s fantasies of being grown up.
And while travelling to Switzerland in 1956, she saw Bild Lilli, a female fashion toy with a shapely body.
Ruth created Barbie in 1959 with big breasts, because she felt it important to give girls self-esteem with a doll that represented their future bodies.
But a toy company rejected her idea, saying: “We don’t want to objectify women — they already have enough to deal with.”
Ruth was undeterred, though.
In a brilliant move, she ensured the first Barbie TV commercial, in 1959, was pitched to girls during The Mickey Mouse Club show which Mattel was already sponsoring.
Seeing the shapely figurine on their favourite TV show propelled girls to push their moms to buy her.
Ruth was ahead of her time in other ways, too.
She made black Barbies in the Sixties, as a statement against racism.
She ensured Ken was just the boyfriend, never husband.
Barbie is one of the few toys to have stood the test of time, with annual sales topping £1BILLION.
Barbie will never go out of style.
She may be a plastic doll but she is a cultural phenomenon, with celebrity fans like Kylie Jenner and Beyoncé dressing in her likeness.
You only have to look at the recent Barbiecore trend on TikTok — with the hot-pink shade being seen on the likes of Lizzo and Megan Fox.
Our obsession with Barbie remains strong because, like the modern woman she is, she has moved with the times.
Mattel started honouring real-life female role models including British Olympic boxer Nicola Adams.
In 2016, it also launched a range of Barbie body shapes including curvy, tall and petite.
American activist Gloria Steinem once described Barbie as “every-thing we didn’t want to be and were told to be”.
Feminist critics of the doll focus on her looks.
But wanting to appear pretty and sexy is not antithetical to being feminist.
Steinem’s own beauty helped her become a leader of the women’s liberation movement, since many people want to have a hot body and social conscience.
It’s not like every woman has to have the same identity.
As I always say, I’m a raging feminist who loves men and marriage.
Barbie is paving the way for a new wave of feminism, one adopted by the likes of Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski.
Speaking in 2017, model Emily said: “To start saying certain people need to have a licence to be feminist is insane.”
Barbie shows we can be who we want to be, and on our own terms.
- Susan Shapiro is the bestselling author. Her books include memoirs The Forgiveness Tour and Five Men Who Broke My Heart. You can follow her on Instagram at @Profsue123 and on Twitter at @susanshapironet.