Film shows Barbie’s survival strategies in changing world

She’s too thin, too tall, too blond. And now, too fat. Poor Barbie. Since her birth nearly 60 years ago, the 111⁄2-inch doll has been a repository for every impossible expectation thrust on womankind. She’s weathered the nuclear age, the sexual revolution, a feminist backlash and the advent of Bratz Dolls with a neutral smile and perky bustline.

“Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie” takes a look at the cultural weight placed upon Barbie’s forever-scrutinized frame and the challenges of keeping the American icon relevant in the age of fat-shaming, #MeToo and changing gender ideals. The 93minute documentary, now streaming on Hulu, goes behind the scenes at Mattel in 2016, on the eve of a seismic shift for America, for the brand and for the doll at the center of it all.

“We have a very complicated relationship with our own femininity, and it’s not just us individually,” said the film’s writer and director, Andrea Nevins. “Society still has a very complicated and unsolved idea of what women should be today. That’s captured in this doll. She carries a lot on her tiny shoulders.”

Far from child’s play, “Tiny Shoulders” explores what Barbie has meant to generations of women, and men, in interviews with historians, feminist leaders such as Gloria Steinem and Roxane Gay, and the female teams at Mattel now in charge of rethinking Barbie for the 21st century.

Nevins got the idea to make the film after a friend who worked at Mattel kept telling her “how excited she was to go to work everyday because she was with a bunch of really strong, interesting women, debating who Barbie should be for the next generation,” said Nevins. “

Throughout the film, other Mattel employees, including chief designer Kim Culmone and the company’s PR chief Michelle Chidoni, represent two ends of the challenges of making Barbie more relevant and representative. They are on the verge of launching a “curvy Barbie,” who comes in many shades, a move that they hope will revive flagging sales and reframe Barbie’s place in girls’ hearts and their mothers’ collective psyches.

America seems poised to elect its first female president as the cameras go inside Mattel’s El Segundo headquarters, and the #MeToo movement is just around the corner (“We were watching the Women’s March,” said Nevins, “and we all screamed when we saw their hats. They were Barbie pink!”).

In one scene, the Mattel creative team watches a test group to see how they’ll react to a fullerfigured version of Barbie.

As they watch girls play with the doll through a two-way window, the team winces as they face the tough realities of trying to keep Barbie real.

An interviewer in the room asks what the kids think of the voluptuous update.

“She looks different,” says one child. “Why?” asks the adult. “Her legs are different,” answers the girl.

“Is that good?” inquires the adult.

“No. She’s fat,” giggles the girl. “She’s a fatty.”

Encouraging a healthier body image while pretending that size doesn’t matter is an impossible tightrope walk, and “Tiny Shoulders” captures that dichotomy wonderfully in behind-the-scenes debates at Mattel, among feminists and Barbie fans, about what the doll should symbolize versus what realities she should reflect.

For those who aren’t Barbie aficionados but grew up dressing the doll in G.I. Joe clothing, cutting its hair in unfortunate bobs or drawing on Magic Marker lipstick, “Tiny Shoulders” explores a rich history that’s both fascinating and surprising.

A: The NBC drama decided to kill Tom last year “largely because of what it’s going to do to Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone),” executive producer Jon Bokenkamp told EW.com at the time.

Viewers may remember that Tom had seemingly died several times, but the show kept him around because “Ryan just brought a special and different dimension to the show that we really liked.” Finally, Bokenkamp