The humble Barbie doll has gone through quite a journey: a childhood toy, a feminist icon, a lightning rod for feminist discontent, a byword for bimbo and, thanks to this summer’s grabbing new film by Greta Gerwig, a cultural moment.

But what is the real story of the doll that has never left the spotlight – or the toy box – in 64 years?

A doll to place your dreams on…

“Someday I’m gonna be, exactly like you… till then… I’ll make believe I’m you.” So went the dulcet tones of Barbie’s first ever TV advert in 1959. That year, what would come to be toy company Mattel’s most significant and long-lasting creation, Barbie, arrived.

She was the brainchild of Ruth Handler; the co-founder, along with her husband Eliot, of Mattel in 1945. According to one of two origin stories (the other involving an adult novelty doll called Bild Lilli, handed out at bachelor parties), Handler noticed her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls and decided she wanted to give her a doll that was not a baby, but a woman she could aspire to. Barbie, named after her daughter, was born and she premiered at the annual Toy Fair in New York in March 1959. In the first year, 300,000 Barbie dolls were sold.

She was ‘petite’ as the advert chimes, with all the latest clothes and accessories. Among these was, of course, a wedding dress. Her immediate MO was clearly as a stylish and sophisticated style maven, the kind of svelte, pretty woman young girls wanted to be – at least in 1959. Her first ever outfit – as exemplified in Gerwig’s initial teaser trailer for the Barbie movie – was a black and white swimsuit, with white heels and white-rimmed sunglasses. Unsurprisingly, by 1961, she was ‘going steady’ with Ken (oddly named after the Handlers’ son).

Courting controversy

By the 1960s, Barbie was already attracting criticism for being a ‘sex symbol’. To counteract this, the Handlers gave her a little sister, Skipper (originally a child and now sold as a teenager), and a best friend, Midge – who would go to have her own chequered history. Fashioned as a ‘homelier’ friend for Barbie (with red hair and freckles) Midge would disappear after 1967, returning in the 1980s along with a husband, kids and a ‘Happy Family Line’ of toys, which even included Pregnant Midge (with a detachable womb!). The line courted scandal from every angle – among which was outrage that Midge was pregnant without a wedding ring. Cannily, Gerwig has lined up Emerald Fennell to play Midge. Yes, Pregnant Midge.

Though to many Barbie was too conventional – with her improbable proportions and origins as a doll who aspires to, essentially, marry Ken – to many she was too progressive. Indeed, as early as 1968, nine years after Barbie’s invention, Mattel introduced their first Black doll, Christie, a friend of Barbie. Christie arrived at a fecund point in American politics, just as the Civil Rights Act of 1968 – enshrining the illegality of racial discrimination – was passed.

It would not be until 1980, however, that Mattel would produce its first Black Barbie. She was designed by Kitty Black Perkins, who was then chief designer for Barbie. She bought her first Barbie doll aged 28, when interviewing for the position, when she was asked to create a whole new wardrobe for the doll. She was chief designer for more than 30 years and, in 1979, she was asked to design the first ever Black Barbie. When she arrived, she was wearing a red disco jumpsuit and came with the tagline: "She's Black! She's beautiful! She's dynamite!”

Barbie and feminism

If many were concerned that Barbie was too ‘sexy,’ there were true concerns amongst the feminist movement – which took on a whole new momentum in the 1960s and 1970s – that Barbie was an anti-feminist role model; a doll created (especially if we consider the alternative origin story) as a male, not a female, fantasy. Quickly, Barbie had become a shorthand for bimbo, for a sort of man-pleasing vapidity that Second Wave Feminists took issue with. Indeed, at a 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality march in New York, the chant became “I am not a Barbie doll”.

Yet Barbie was already a working woman. Just one year after her inception, in 1960, she was working as a fashion designer (in a natty pink pencil suit no less) and the following year she took on three more jobs: an air stewardess, a nurse (complete with diploma) and a ballerina (someone’s got to pay the mortgage on the Barbie dreamhouse after all). Throughout her first decade, Barbie would take on myriad vocations; from tennis player to astronaut to the vaguely coverall job of ‘career girl’.

While her earliest tasks were more stereotypically ‘feminine,’ by 1973, she was a surgeon, and in 1991, she joined the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. By 1992. ‘Business Executive Barbie’ had snagged herself a corner office and that same year, she made her first bid for President. Fun fact: Barbie has run for president every election since. She has also, since 1959, held more than 250 careers – from dentist to Olympic skier. Busy girl.

In her 1994 memoir, Ruth Handler said: “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.”

Barbie and body image

If there is one unswerving commentary about Barbie, it is the unrealistic proportions of her figure. Impossibly nipped-in waist, generous boobs and unbendable legs which, famously, would never be able to support Barbie’s frame in reality. Beyond the fact that she is ludicrously appointed, it is the message this sends to young girls that has always caused concern. How impossible would it be to look like Barbie, and, equally, how depressing when you look nothing like her.

Indeed, the doll has historically propagated an unrealistic body type, and worrying messages. A 1963 Barbie came complete with a diet book that simply read ‘Don’t eat’. In 2006, a study published in the journal of Developmental Psychology concluded that girls exposed to Barbie at a young age were more vocal about being thin, compared with those exposed to other dolls.

Evelyn Mazzocco, head of the Barbie brand, undertook a poll of ‘Barbie haters’ shortly after she took over in 2014. She wanted to see why it was that the world’s most loved and hated doll drew such derision. The most common responses were ‘out of touch,’ ‘materialistic’ and ‘not diverse’. She told Time magazine that year that she regularly received hate mail, and even death threats, about Barbie’s body. Then, in 2016, three new body shapes were introduced to Barbie: petite, tall and curvy.

Of course, there are myriad other body types to consider. The first Barbie doll in a wheelchair was released in 1997, though she was ‘Becky’ and not Barbie. It was not until 2019 that there was a full range of Barbie dolls with prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs. In April of this year, Mattel released its first ever Barbie with Down Syndrome.

Margot Robbie at the London premiere of Barbie

The legacy of Barbie

According to the most recent statistics, three Barbie dolls are sold every second. This means that approximately 1 billion dolls have been sold since Barbie arrived in 1959. Mattel estimates that the doll has more than 99 per cent global awareness. Whatever we may think about Barbie – love or loathe her – it is impossible to ignore her worldwide impact. Plus, following the launch of the viral new Barbie trailer, searches for ‘Barbiecore’ rose by 7900 per cent. It looks like, this summer, more than 60 years since she first arrived, it’s Barbie’s world once more.