At 62, Barbie is still helping girls imagine their future
Kathleen Parker says Mattel’s ever-youthful doll — with her ever-evolving careers — shows that adaption is essential to survival.
Though never her biggest fan, I’ve been fascinated by Barbie ever since her birth as a full-blown hottie on March 9, 1959, through decades of reincarnations.
Today’s new “it” girl is a British scientist of global renown — one Sarah Gilbert, who co-created the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. Gilbert’s resume is chock-full of accolades, including having been knighted by the Queen, but being a Barbie shouldn’t get lost in the footnotes.
Barbie Gilbert is no Pamela Anderson look-alike or a celebrity fashion plate, as earlier Barbie iterations usually were. She’s a redhead with shoulder-length hair who wears black glasses and a navy pantsuit. All very sensible and thoroughly modern. A female scientist certainly isn’t as rare today as it was during Barbie’s early life, but men still dominate the top echelons in science and Gilbert is keen to change that. Embracing her new place in Mattel history, she has said: “I hope it will be part of making it more normal for girls to think about careers in science.”
Barbie’s creators Ruth and Elliot Handler, who also founded Mattel Inc. in 1945, always intended that their doll be a way for girls to imagine the future. As a child who owned the first swimsuit-clad Barbie, I’m not sure how I was supposed to envision my future. As a swimsuit model? A suntan lotion rep? I do remember wondering whether my future curves would resemble Barbie’s. But for my tender age, I might have guessed the answer given the raucous laughter as my mother and her friends examined the impossible body of this new, strange plaything.
Over time, Barbie became many other things, though I had long lost interest by the time she became an astronaut in 1965 and flew to the moon — four years before Neil Armstrong. The first celebrity Barbie was supermodel Twiggy in 1967. The first Barbie of color was Barbie’s friend Christie, but an official African American Barbie didn’t come along until 1980, along with a Latina Barbie.
You get the idea that Barbie grew up to become a Democrat. She ran for president in 1992, which was true even if his name was Bill Clinton. (I kid.) She became a drag queen. (True.) But she was also a cancer patient to help little girls through a tough time. One version used a wheelchair. Mattel’s motto for its Barbie line might have been: Hey girl, you be you.
And sales, which just five years ago were in a steep decline, are booming again. Frankly, few would have projected her longevity. But for the past 62 years, Mattel has proved that evolutionary adaptation is essential to survival. Today, as our lives are rocked by a pandemic and a variant that has begun targeting children and teens, how should girls imagine their future?
Mattel’s answer has been to pay homage to front-line nurses, doctors, activists and, yes, Gilbert. Instead of playing sick, hoping for Dr. Ken to make her well, Barbie is helping to cure others. She’s a Canadian psychiatry resident who battled systemic racism in health care and a Brazilian biomedical researcher who led sequencing of the genome of a COVID-19 variant in Brazil. She’s an Australian doctor who pioneered a surgical gown that can be washed and reused by front-line workers. She’s the New York doctor who treated the first COVID-19 patient and a front-line doctor in Las Vegas who fought discrimination.
Not only are these women impressively accomplished, but some have performed herculean tasks while also fighting obstacles that shouldn’t exist. The message, not just to girls, is that women are leaders now and into the future — and we are grateful for that. Mattel will have to crank up its
production given the plethora of role models all around us these days. From gymnast Simone Biles, who had the courage and strength of character to forgo some of the Olympics in deference to her mental health, to the United States’ most decorated track-and-field Olympian, Allyson Felix — Mattel’s elves are likely busy preparing Olympic Barbies in time for Christmas.
From Biles and Felix, they could learn that success is preceded by hard work, commitment and discipline — and there are other things more important than winning.
Same as any 60-plus woman, Barbie has accumulated some wisdom, despite her refusal to grow older. As a doll with purpose, she proffers lessons worth learning early in life and suggests futures worthy of imagination. They sure beat obsessing over how you look in a dadgum bathing suit.