Margot Robbie Barbie Icons

Gloria Steinem may have described Barbie as ​“everything we didn’t want to be, and were told to be”, but in 2023 the tide appears to have turned. The initial trailer for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming fantasia, released this summer and starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Hari Nef, Issa Rae, Dua Lipa and Ncuti Gatwa to name afew, has been viewed more than nine million times. Sales of dolls are up 20 per cent at parent company Mattel and acursory glance at TikTok reveals that Barbiecore is fantastic once again. Given we’re in afourth (or is it fifth?) wave of women’s liberation, how did we get here?

Barbara Millicent Roberts – Barbie to her friends – is born. She was created by awoman, Ruth Handler, and was partially inspired by Bild Lili, asexy, sharp-eyebrowed German doll originally marketed at, um, men. 1963 Four toy-years later, Barbie has her Dream House and agrowing number of outfits. One, Barbie Baby-Sits, comes with abook called How to Lose Weight with the advice ​“Don’t eat!” Two years later, aSlumber Party pack arrives with aset of scales stuck at 110 lbs – underweight for awoman of Barbie’s 5’9 height. Eesh.

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The first Black Barbie is introduced. She’s made by Kitty Black-Perkins, an African-American former fashion designer who’d never owned aBarbie before working at Mattel. By 1991, Black-Perkins is aprincipal designer, making more than 100 outfits for Barbie every year. 1993 Activists calling themselves The Barbie Liberation Organization cause havoc in toy stores. Adherents switch the voice boxes in Barbies and G.I. Joes. Now she says ​“vengeance is mine” and he says ​“the beach is the best place for summer”. Finally: Barbie is given avoice by the feminist cause.

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Valentine’s Day brings aconscious uncoupling for Barbie and long-term boyfriend Ken: Mattel is quoted as saying the pair ​“feel it’s time to spend some quality time – apart.” Commitment issues are cited. The OG himbo does eventually see what he’s missing: after starring in 2010’s Toy Story 3, they get back together when Ken confesses his love for Barbie on aseries of real billboards.

Natasha Walter publishes Living Dolls, abook decrying the return of sexism. The cover features apicture of anaked woman with aBarbie covering her crotch. This is the peak of Noughties toxic sexism when, Walter argues, women like Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton took ​“the plastic look so far that they seem to have been created by Mattel”.

Research shows that, were Barbie areal woman, she wouldn’t be able to lift her neck, would only have room for half aliver and she’d have to crawl on all fours because her ankles are so small. The Daily Mail calls her amutant. Bit harsh.

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Jeremy Scott, creative director at Moschino, makes an entire collection of Barbie outfits, scaled up. ​“Like every girl and gay boy, Iloved Barbie, ” he tells Vogue. ​“Her and Ishare the same things: we just want to bring joy to people.” As long as they had £1, 620 for apink leather cross-body bag shaped like amotorcycle jacket.

Mattel launches New Body Types, meaning you can now buy Barbie in ​“curvy, petite and tall sizes”. The move addresses long-held concerns about promoting unreal body imagery. It’s also an effort to boost the brand: Mattel announce a14 per cent drop in Barbie sales.

What adifference five years makes. Barbie is now afigurehead for the bimbo movement on TikTok, one dripping in irony, but also challenging the idea you have to wear black to be smart. This is Barbie with awink, but also with apoint. She loves pink, sure, but she also loves trans rights and female empowerment. Lots, then, for Gerwig to get stuck into – she signs on as director of the live-action movie.

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Barbiecore, you know the score: Barbie pink becomes the colour of the year, seen in everything from Kim K’s IG posts to Megan Fox on the red carpet. Lyst report that searches for pink increased by 416 per cent, while Net-a-Porter sell more than 8, 000 pink items in aweek. Meanwhile, Gerwig begins shooting in her bespoke Barbie Land. In California, right? No, just outside Watford, at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden. 2023 Barbie is released in July. But while it’s the images of Ryan Gosling as aparticularly muscle-packed Ken that cause the ​“stop everything” moment, this is amovie with amessage: ​“To live in Barbie Land is to be aperfect being in aperfect place. Unless you have afull-on existential crisis. Or you’re aKen.” The feminist rebrand of our living doll is complete.At 62 years young, Barbie is headlining a splashy new live-action movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. In the movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, Barbie is expelled from Barbieland for her so-called imperfections, catalyzing her to go off on an adventure into the real world.

Barbie, of course, has had a reputation for her anatomically-impossible figure, gender-normative behavior and a lack of diversity. To be fair, Mattel, the company that makes Barbie, has made strides. The physical look of Barbie has expanded to include dolls with diverse body types, over 35 skin tones and even prosthetic limbs. There are dolls in wheelchairs, dolls with hearing aids, gender neutral dolls and even a doll undergoing chemotherapy.

Even though the Barbie universe has expanded, many still associate Barbie as a blonde without much depth, a stereotype reinforced by the various Barbie-animated series with episode titles like Perf Pool Party and Virtually Famous. And the big question is how Gerwig, who directed films featuring strong and independent females, including “Lady Bird” and “Little Women, ” will portray Barbie in the movie, which comes out next summer. Will she be pictured as the feminist icon many of us have been waiting for?

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Prior to Barbie, children who wanted to play with dolls had two options. They could play with baby dolls, or they could choose paper dolls that had a broader range of play—and tons of clothes—but often fell apart after a few uses.

Enter Barbie, a three-dimensional adult doll who could wear all the latest fashions. She made her debut at an annual industry gathering known as Toy Fair in March of 1959 sporting a blond ponytail, blue eyes and her now-iconic black-and-white striped strapless bathing suit.

Barbie had her roots in the risqué German Bild-Lilli doll, which was based on a sexy, opportunistic comic character. The doll was not designed for children's play; it was generally purchased as a gag gift for male buyers. Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel with her husband, spotted that doll on a European trip in 1956 and realized that it was the type of toy she was hoping to create. Handler used the doll as inspiration for the first Barbie doll, who she named after her daughter Barbara.

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Even the first Barbie had a career at a time when many women didn’t work outside the home: Barbara Millicent Roberts from Willows, Wisconsin was a teenage fashion model.

Through the years, she has been an astronaut in 1965 (four years before a man walked on the moon), she was a surgeon in 1973 (even though women never made up more than 6 percent of medical school classes before 1970) and she ran for president in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012—and joined the first all-woman Presidential ticket in 2016. She once again stepped up her game in 2020 with a diverse female campaign team.

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Aside from her careers, Barbie was revolutionary in other ways. She moved into her Dream House—alone—in 1962, more than 10 years before women who were single, widowed or divorced could borrow money without a male cosigner. The fact that she and Ken have been in a long-term relationship but never married is also noteworthy.

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Is the doll, which many associate as a gorgeous blonde with a penchant for clothes, the best role model for our children?

In writing her 2015 unauthorized biography of Barbie, “The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on Us, ” author Tanya Lee Stone examined Barbie’s legacy.

“I didn't play with Barbies when I was little. And I did sort of just assume, without any knowledge, that Barbie was just one more thing in the culture making girls feel bad about themselves, ” said Stone. “And then I did this historical research. And I discovered that no, it's what people ‘put on’ the 11-inches of plastic.”

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Stone solicited thoughts, memories and anecdotes from roughly 500 people for her book. Approximately half thought she was a bad role model for their children in terms of values and body image, and the other half thought she was an excellent example of female empowerment.

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The children who played with Barbie, on the other hand, were not conflicted at all. “They were thinking about how they can make her be anything they want her to be, ” said Stone.

Barbie originally was designed to be a mini mannequin who wore clothes well. She was given an hourglass figure, a look that was popular at the time.

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Barbie’s proportions have come under fire a number of times through the years, including from the “Get Real Barbie” campaign from the South Shore Eating Disorders Collaborative. The campaign