Can iconic doll fuel positive ambitions?
Can the iconic Mattel doll fuel positive ambitions for the next generation of girls?
Barbie is, perhaps, one of the most talked-about toys in history.
Few other playthings have stirred up as much passionate discord like Barbie has. Both beloved and hotly contested, the 29-centimetre doll produced by Mattel continues to be one of the top-selling fashion dolls in the world, 60 years after first being released.
“Throughout 60 years of history, from a toy industry position and from a societal position, she has been reflective of the world around us,” says Kim Culmone, vice-president for Barbie Design. “We have a unique position because we are a toy that is also a societal icon.”
A visit to the Mattel headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., to learn more about Barbie in advance of her milestone anniversary allowed for further insight into the history of the popular doll and where the company plans to take her from here.
Upon entering the large, white building located a short drive from the busy Los Angeles International Airport, visitors are signed in and immediately greeted with oversized renderings of iconic Mattel advertisements, each featuring bestselling toy designs. And Barbie stands out prominently among them.
American businesswoman Ruth Handler dreamed up Barbie after watching her daughter Barbara play with toys such as baby dolls and paper cut-outs that were targeted toward young girls at the time. Originally inspired by the Bild Lilli doll from Germany, which featured a womanly figure including breasts and curved hips, Handler faced some initial skepticism about how an adult-bodied doll would perform as a children’s toy. Despite the pushback against Barbie’s figure, Handler believed the dolls would appeal to young girls who wanted to explore ideas about their prospective adult lives through their toys.
Since Barbie’s debut on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair in New York, the company has sold more than a billion Barbie dolls worldwide, effectively proving that, when it came to creating a doll that generations of children would want to play with, Handler was right.
“It’s imaginative play and it’s open-ended. You’re telling your own stories,” says Robert Best, senior director for Barbie Design. “You have a doll that’s speaking to multiple people and resonating with kids across the globe and is continuing to do that. So, to be able to connect back with your own stories is really meaningful.”
And Barbie transcends the toy realm, as well, boasting a base of “adult fans and collectors” who continue to follow her every move.
“Seeing the doll that acted as the spark, whatever it was, that sparked your imagination and created those endless hours of play, I have these really fond memories of my sister and I, that’s a really powerful thing,” Best says of the lingering connection to the doll.
But the things that Barbie didn’t do so well, such as accurately reflecting the diversity of women’s skin tones and unique shapes, haven’t always been so beloved.
“She is a symbol of so much positive and negative about who we are as women,” Andrea Nevins, director of the documentary Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie, says. “And I felt that really mirrors what us, as women, really go through. That we carry around a lot of baggage ... and I feel like all that pressure is on us and on Barbie.”
The enormity of that pressure has not been lost on the latest Barbie design team. In fact, it was a concrete catalyst behind the considerable shakeup in recent years to the Barbie doll lineup that many consumers have come to know so well.
“In 2013, we were getting feedback from moms and kids and dads that we were not connecting with kids in the way we wanted to as a brand, and we weren’t achieving our goals as far as our positioning. So we did some really deep soul searching across every aspect of the brand and how it was communicated, our advertising, our messaging, going back to the foundation of Ruth’s original intention of this brand, which was to show girls that they have limitless potential,” Culmone says.
“We mapped Barbie, current state, against society and what was going on in the world and how the world was looking, and we looked at ourselves. And we identified some areas that we could improve on.”
In 2016, Mattel introduced three new body shapes to the Barbie fashion lineup’s original doll: petite, curvy and tall. And now, in 2019, the Barbie lineup has been added to again.
“We are introducing another new body and we are also introducing dolls in a wheelchair and a doll with a prosthetic limb to our Fashionistas line, the same line where we introduced the body shape variety,” Culmone explains.
The additions bring the doll collection to a range that includes five body types, 11 skin tones and 28 hairstyles and textures with an estimated 23 eye colours.
“We know that people are living very different lives around the world. So, you’re offering people choices. And the more choices you have, the more people can find what resonates with them,” Best says, noting the design team’s aim of making Barbie the most inclusive collection of fashion dolls available to consumers. “People want to see themselves. People want to be represented. And this doll has this powerful ability to do that.”
Another way the Barbie brand is looking to connect with shoppers — beyond providing a broader array of dolls to better represent women, and offering various content on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram — is through ambition.
And they’re aiming to do that through a new initiative they are calling the Dream Gap, which sees the Barbie team partner with researchers at New York University to overcome the “limiting factors” that represent barriers to young girls.
“We unearthed this amazing body of work that Andrea (Vial) and her partners had been working at at NYU called Dream Gap, and it was the first time we had uncovered real, empirical data that showed that there is a real issue facing girls at a very young age,” says Lisa McKnight, senior vicepresident and global brand general manager for Barbie.
“We don’t know the root cause, however, on why this is occurring, but we felt as Barbie, with the platform that we have and the reach that we have, we sell 60 million dolls each year, we have content that reaches millions of girls around the world. We are sold in 150 countries. If we’re not going to leverage our platform to create positive impact in society, then who else is?”
According to the NYU research, around age six, girls’ perceptions of achievement and success in careers that require “brilliance,” such as sciences, technology, math and leadership positions, for themselves and for other girls, begins to waver. Further study also found that when researchers asked children to identify someone they felt was exceptionally smart, at age five girls were equally as likely as boys to point to someone of their own gender. Yet, by age six, that changed.
“By age six, girls really start to dissociate their gender group from ideas of brilliance. So, they’re less likely to come up with the example of a woman when asked to talk about someone who is really, really smart,” says Andrea Vial, a social psychologist and researcher on the Dream Gap study at NYU.
“Girls have immense potential. We know from data that they have the raw ability to pursue these fields, these careers, these interests and activities. But there’s something getting in the way and they are shying away from these roles.”
With the help of the Barbie brand exposure, the goal is to identify ways to prevent this shift in confidence, then to deploy Barbie as a role model, visibly working in the aforementioned and other fields in order to inspire young girls to pursue careers in a similar way.
“While there are more positive role models ... in the world today than maybe there were 20 or 30 years ago, we still need more. And, in fact, we have done research with moms around the world, and 85 per cent of them agree that we still need more positive role models,” McKnight says. “Girls need to see to believe they can be anything and do everything.”
And maybe, just maybe, Barbie can help them do that.