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The new doll was very unlike the baby and toddler dolls that were popular at the time. This was a doll with an adult body. What was the inspiration? Handler created a personal story for the very first Barbie doll. Barbie was a teenage fashion model. Now, however, the doll has been made in many versions connected to over different careers, including president of the United States.
Barbie came as either a brunette or blond, and in , a red-headed Barbie was released. In , the year Barbie was released, , Barbie dolls were sold. To date, more than 70 fashion designers have made clothes for Mattel, using in excess of million yards of fabric. There has been some controversy over Barbie's figure ever since it was realized that if the doll were a real person, her measurements would be an impossible In , Barbie had bendable legs and eyes that opened and shut.
In , a Twist 'N Turn Barbie was released that had a movable body that twisted at the waist. The best-selling Barbie doll of all time was the Totally Hair Barbie of , which had hair from the top of her head to her toes. After fighting breast cancer and undergoing a mastectomy in , Handler surveyed the market for a suitable prosthetic breast. Disappointed by the options available, she set about designing a replacement breast that was more similar to a natural one. In , Handler received a patent for Nearly Me, a prosthesis made of material close in weight and density to that of natural breasts.
Handler developed colon cancer in her 80s. She died on April 27, , at the age of Handler was survived by her husband, who died on July 21, Handler created one of the world's most successful toy companies, Mattel. Her Barbie doll is one of the most popular and iconic toys in the world. In , the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris had a Barbie show featuring hundreds of dolls alongside artworks inspired by Barbie.
Share Flipboard Email. Mary Bellis, known by some as CalmX, was an experimental artist, film director and producer, video game content creator, and freelance writer for some 18 years. She specialized in writing about inventors and inventions, in particular.
I had a swimsuit Barbie, a disco Barbie, and several Barbies that I stripped naked to liberate them from their too-stiff organza gowns. Truth: I wanted to see their boobs. Truth: He was pushed. I pushed him. But somehow the collection just expanded, with new Barbies added to the group to make the others jealous like proto-contestants on Bachelor in Paradise.
With Barbies, I could act out. She has more brand awareness than Kim Kardashian and the queen of England. Mattel ranks it at 99 percent worldwide. In the brand also unveiled three new body types—petite, tall, and curvy. New Barbies in include a doll with a wheelchair doll and one in a fourth new shape second from left. Like most women born in , she was underestimated from the start. At the time, she was an unprecedented experiment. But Ruth Handler was sure she would sell. Handler was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland.
At 43, she was an executive vice president at Mattel, the behemoth brand she had founded with her husband Elliot Handler and his friend Harold Matson in In an interview, Handler said she loved motherhood. But the conventions of it? Well, those repelled her. Oh shit, it was awful.
Fine, she was a teen swimsuit model at first, but then a flight attendant, a teacher, and an astronaut. And like all of her accessories, he was sold separately. Instead shops stocked infant dolls that seemed to reinforce the expectation that all girls should want children of their own. Handler knew the world was bigger than the bond between a mother and infant. So she proposed a corrective: a miniature woman made from plastic with clothes that girls could swap out, like the ones the cutout dolls had. Oh, and also, she had to have breasts, just like a grown woman.
That part was important. Handler pitched the concept, and Mattel…balked. Her husband insisted no mother would ever purchase a doll for her daughter that was so developed. Her team said the doll would be too expensive to make and sell—Handler wanted zippers, darts, real hems, polish, and lipstick. Besides, what was the market? What child wanted to be around more adults? But Handler plowed ahead. And soon she found her test case in, uh, a sex object. It was and Handler was on vacation in Europe when she encountered the Bild-Lilli doll, a gag gift that men gave each other at bachelor parties.
The doll looked like a stripper, and Handler was entranced. She snapped one up for Barbara and more for research. When she returned to America, Handler found a plant in Japan to mold a Lilli-like doll and Mattel hired a movie makeup artist to give her a more approachable expression.
Handler named her Barbie, after her daughter. With the basic elements nailed down, Handler moved on to the accessories. She tapped a fashion designer to create a full Barbie wardrobe. It made sense; from missiles to Barbies. Feats of craftsmanship, engineered to blow up. For her Toy Fair debut, Barbie wore her best zebra-striped swimsuit while Handler chain-smoked and waited for the reviews to come in. It did not go well. There were almost no female shoppers on the floor at expos like the Toy Fair, which is largely an industry event. And the male executives were confounded.
Her breasts, the shape, the clothes that children could just take off —Barbie terrified them. Not one serious account bit. She drove a hot-pink Thunderbird convertible! Still, when she went home that night, she cried. Thanks to some smaller orders, Barbie was still slated to sell in stores. As soon as it arrived, mothers went wild for it.
Stores had to restock over and over. For about a decade, sales climbed and climbed and climbed as Barbie flooded the American consciousness. There seemed to be no end to her potential—or her closet.
Barbie seemed to mirror those uncertainties—the Day-to-Night Barbie wore a power suit that turned into a sequined gown and carried both a briefcase and a clutch. It was instant social cred— no one had Zipline Barbie. In an interview, Handler said she loved motherhood. A moment of silence at Chanel's first show without Karl Lagerfeld. Applied vulgar tattoos in Sharpie!
Then came The doll was the reason the brand had landed on the Fortune list. Backlash against Barbie followed. Second-wave feminists hated her. Her conspicuous consumption. Her whiteness and thinness. Her blond -ness. She became an avatar for a traditional, gendered role that Handler herself had never assumed: the docile, silent sidekick.
Still, Barbie trucked on. Activists were not impressed. Mattel didn't comment on the critique, but around that same time it made one modest design change. When she debuted, Barbie's gaze was cast downward.