Barbie has always been controversial.
We may not think of the doll as particularly revolutionary or influential now, but Mattel’s Barbie dolls have always been something of an icon of girlhood. Barbie, whose full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, was initially released by Mattel on March 9, 1959. Her small, tapered waist, full breasts, and long legs made her unpopular with mothers of the time who thought Barbie was too sexual compared to the more child-like dolls that dominated the girls’ toys market in the 1950s. They weren’t exactly wrong since Barbie’s design was inspired by the Bild Lilli doll, a risqué German doll marketed to men.
Despite the initial controversy surrounding her design, Barbie quickly became a popular gift for young girls and a nostalgic symbol of femininity for older women in the years that followed. So, when Mattel came out with a line of Barbie dolls that featured disabled women and women of color, their bold move towards inclusivity received overwhelming support and a surprising amount of backlash.
Released in January 2020, the Barbie 2020 Fashionistas line made waves on social media for its sudden break from the typically perfect, slim-figured dolls featured by Mattel. The new Barbie 2020 dolls featured dolls with vitiligo and alopecia areata, a condition that causes severe hair loss and baldness. One of the dolls, who looks closer to the ‘standard’ Barbie we usually associate with the name, was shown in a wheelchair.
The newer 2020 dolls are also noticeably more racially diverse. Stepping away from the once predominantly Caucasian beauty standards promoted by the Barbie doll line, the Barbie 2020 Fashionistas release included women of Asian and African descent. The new line of dolls also had more variances in body shape and size, a continuation of Mattel’s initiative to create more realistic Barbie dolls that better represented the women and girls who owned them.
The sale of inclusive Barbie 2020 dolls is a response to the push for inclusion from Barbie’s consumers. According to Barbie senior vice president Lisa McKnight, Barbie has seen a 12% growth in sales in an era when the toys that kids in the 90s and early 2000s loved are losing more and more ground to video games. Though the hyperfeminine Barbie we’ve come to know and love could easily have lost to growing video game and console sales, the doll continues to resonate with women from all walks of life. A good chunk of what makes Barbie a cultural mainstay of girlhood is her ability to get with the times and adapt to an ever-changing audience.
But even Barbie’s charms couldn’t make the Barbie 2020 Fashionistas line a hit with everybody. While many consumers were happy to see Barbie dolls in different sizes, colors, and abilities, some parents have questioned the necessity of having a Barbie that is ‘woke’. Her fight to stay relevant has left many concerned as to whether children’s toys should be politicized in the first place.
Barbie 2020 and the Psychology of Play
While introducing politics into children’s playtime may be an unprecedented, and potentially damaging, approach, there is some merit in teaching children about the world around them through the Barbie 2020 dolls.
Play has always been a vehicle for conveying the ideals and values of a culture and the societal roles that a culture wants an individual to fill. This shows in the very objects we let children play with. Young boys are given model soldiers and guns while young girls are expected to play with baby dolls and plastic makeup. These toys signal to children the traits that are valued in the societal roles they will be assigned to as adults. Enculturation teaches boys that as men, they are valued for physical strength, protective behavior, and aggression. On the other hand, girls are taught that their value lies in childbearing, child-rearing, and physical attractiveness.
Though the nurturing behaviors that girls’ toys train them to exhibit aren’t negative traits per se, what is harmful to young girls is how early dolls like the original wasp-waisted Barbie introduced them to the idea that they are physically imperfect. Studies on the effects of playing with thin dolls on young girls between the ages of 6 and 10 years old have shown that this early exposure to standards of conventional attractiveness directly affects the food intake of young girls.
The aspirational messaging of the classic Barbie doll was also shown to cause increased body dissatisfaction in girls as young as 5 years old. While research is yet to show whether exposure to dolls contributes to a risk of developing an eating disorder later in life, the early harm that Mattel’s non-inclusive dolls can cause could be enough to influence the mental well-being of girls who aren’t even old enough to have a fully developed sense of personal identity. The Barbie 2020 Fashionistas line, with its inclusion of disabled women, curvy women, and women of color in what counts as desirable could help mitigate the effects of media and advertising that plays on the women’s body insecurities for profit.
Aside from addressing the issue of body dissatisfaction in children, the Barbie 2020 Fashionistas line can be a way for parents to help their children navigate feelings of internalized racism.
Mamie Phipps Clark’s groundbreaking research was among the chess pieces used by the civil rights movement in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark Supreme Court case that set aside the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine that segregated African-American students from their Caucasian counterparts. Clark, an expert in social psychology with a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University, designed a study that became a turning point for the Brown case.
Clark took 253 African American children and had them participate in what is now known as the Doll Test. Children were shown four different dolls, two of which were white-skinned blondes. The other two? Dolls that had brown skin and black hair. These dolls, which looked more like them, were assigned negative traits by the children who, at the age of three, had already internalized racist messages from the society around them.
Though the Barbie 2020 Fashionista line is likely little more than a marketing scheme to stay relevant, the shift in social values that have forced Mattel to adapt marks a step in the right direction for fostering a healthy self-image in children, whether they be male or female.
If you’d like to read more about toys that helped shape our social and political landscape, check out this piece on Trumpy Bear, the huggable Donald Trump teddy bear.