Barbie, the classic children’s doll that has become a staple of American culture, is kicking off the new decade with a renewed push for more diverse and inclusive offerings. Mattel has now unveiled its Fashionistas 2020 collection to show off “a multi-dimensional view of beauty and fashion,” according to CNN.
The new range of dolls includes one with vitiligo, a condition that causes the loss of skin pigment in blotches. (Supermodel Winnie Harlow has helped raise awareness about vitiligo.) Mattel notes in a press release that “offering a doll with vitiligo in our main doll line allows kids to play out even more stories they see in the world around them.” And the brand even worked with a dermatologist to make sure vitiligo was properly represented in the design of the doll.
You’ll also find a Barbie doll with no hair in the new range, a reflection of both the trends we see out in the world and of the realities of hair loss. Back in 2019, Barbie introduced dolls with disabilities—one has a prosthetic limb, another uses a wheelchair. For that launch, Mattel collaborated with a 12-year-old named Jordan Reeves who “is on a mission to build creative solutions that help kids with disabilities, to create a play experience that is as representative as possible.” For 2020, the brand has added a doll with a darker skin tone who uses a (very fabulous) gold prosthetic limb.
The brand adds that the steps its taken to become more diverse and inclusive have resonated with the public. According to Mattel, over half the dolls offered in 2019 were a departure from the original Barbie and the top selling doll for almost every week of last year was a curvy black doll from its Fashionista line who wears her hair in an afro. In the UK, one in four dolls sold is a Barbie with a wheelchair.
It was dark, windowless, and cold—almost morguelike. But the cousins and I didn’t care. The chill kept our grandparents upstairs, which meant no witnesses to interrupt our “crimes.” A few hours of euphoric destruction, and then we would pile the carcasses in a plastic weekender bag we shoved behind a rolled-up carpet until the next time, leaving errant limbs to roll around like loose pennies at the bottom.
Some of the happiest childhood memories I have were made in that basement. It was where we mounted drawn-out melodramas. Gave bad haircuts! Applied vulgar tattoos in Sharpie! And sure, it was home to the occasional decapitation.
What I mean is: God, we loved our Barbie dolls.
Like more than 90 percent of American women, I grew up with Barbies. Tons of them. I had a pilot Barbie and a waitress Barbie. 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.) I also had a Barbie Dreamhouse—even in 2019, 30 are sold per hour—and a pink convertible that Ken “fell” out of when Barbie floored it. (Truth: He was pushed. I pushed him.)
I can’t remember “the first” Barbie or even the one I liked best. 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. The Barbies in my grandparents’ basement were the most abused, but even the ones I had at home endured hideous bobs and occasional pratfalls.
It doesn’t take a therapist to explain what I understood at six: This world wasn’t built for me. With Barbies, I could act out.
The standard Barbie is 11 and a half inches tall, but her reach is enormous. She has more “brand awareness” than Kim Kardashian and the queen of England. (Mattel ranks it at 99 percent worldwide.) Over 58 million of her are purchased each year, and she’s available in 150 countries.
Six decades after her invention, she’s still the number-one fashion doll in the United States and, since Mattel introduced new skin tones and hair textures in 2015 in response to a 20 percent drop in sales between 2012 and 2014, the most diverse. In 2016 the brand also unveiled three new body types—petite, tall, and curvy. Last month it announced it’ll add to the collection: Barbie in a wheelchair, the first with a prosthetic limb, some with a new, braided hair texture, and an entire fourth shape, with a smaller bust, less defined waist, and more defined arms.
New Barbies in 2019 include a wheelchair-bound doll and doll in a fourth new shape, featured second from the left.
Mattel
For a doll who was once programmed to complain that “math class is tough” on command, it’s all quite impressive. But then she didn’t have to do a lot to exceed expectations. Like most women born in 1959, she was underestimated from the start.
Barbie made her first appearance at the New York Toy Fair that March. 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 1944.
From the moment Mattel was established, Handler decided to be essential to the business, both because she had brilliant ideas and because she couldn’t bear to remain at home. In an interview, Handler said she loved motherhood. But the conventions of it? Well, those repelled her. Or as she put it: “Knowing how to cook and keeping a good house? Oh shit, it was awful.” For all Barbie’s foibles—and the Sleepover Barbie released in 1965 that came with a scale set to 110 pounds and a diet book plastered with the words “Don’t Eat!” is but one example—it’s no surprise that when Handler created Barbie, she made her an independent woman and a wage earner. Fine, she was a teen swimsuit model at first, but then a flight attendant, a teacher, and an astronaut. An afterthought, her husband Ken wasn’t introduced until 1961. And like all of her accessories, he was sold separately.
All weeks are probably good when you’re Rihanna, but this past one especially has been something. The singer/beauty mogul/designer showed her debut Savage x Fenty lingerie show at New York Fashion Week on Wednesday, and promptly followed up the iconic event with another one: her fourth annual Diamond Ball on Thursday, for which she wore an incredible lace catsuit. But this is Rihanna, so even that doesn’t justify an evening crashed on the couch with Netflix: On Friday, she rightfully celebrated the one-year anniversary of her Fenty cosmetics line, which has in a very short time brought a wave of change to the beauty industry.
She teased the magnificent dress we’re about to talk about—because it needs to be talked about—on her way to Fenty’s birthday celebration, held at a JCPenney Sephora location in Brooklyn. How else but with a few Instagram stories?
RiRi stepped out at the event in a strapless Calvin Klein by Appointment gown with major nineties vibes—and a boatload of ruffles cascading along the dress’s hemlines and thigh-high slit. But as remarkable as the dress’s construction was, it was the color that stood out: an eye-popping fuchsia that doesn’t look all that dissimilar from Fenty’s Starlit Hyper-Glitz Lipstick in Gravity. Check it out, below—and the pointy hot-pink heels she pairs with it like a boss:
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
Although we can’t be sure that this bespoke dress was inspired by that lipstick (or that it wasn’t) it was just as extra as you’d expect for a birthday party at Sephora. Note the Fenty kabuki brush chair and life-sized Diamond Bomb mirror, below:
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Fenty Beauty
Her fans, obviously, loved it too:
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur
We’re already saving the date for the 21st birthday. Rihanna, don’t forget our invite.
For nearly 60 years, Barbie has been telling girls they can be anything they want to be, thanks to the 200-plus careers held by the most famous doll in the world. Now, Mattel is going a step further by not just releasing a new career for the doll, but actually helping young girls take the necessary steps to one day achieving that career. Welcome Robotics Engineer Barbie, which launches today, and is designed to interest girls in a particular STEM job that many might find unfamiliar to them.
It’s not the first time that Barbie has explored a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—we’re all familiar with astronaut Barbie—but it is the first time the doll will come with a robot that you can bend and reconfigure (as well as a laptop) as her main accessory. If you’re unfamiliar with the work that a robotics engineer does though, you’re not alone. That’s why Barbie has partnered with Tynker—the gaming platform that helps kids learn to code—to help young girls understand the careers available to them as robotics engineers (like designing robots to explore areas where humans cannot, such as the ocean or planets).
“We wanted to shine a light on this underrepresented career and field for women,” Lisa McKnight, Barbie’s General Manager and Senior Vice President, tells Glamour. “Only 24% of STEM jobs are held by women, and we felt that Barbie, with the platform that we have, was the perfect opportunity to do more in this space.”
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The doll will come in four ethnicities—African American, Asian, Caucasian and Latina—so “as many girls as possible see themselves [in this doll],” McKnight says. Mattel and Barbie are also partnering with Black Girls CODE robotics workshops to reach young girls interested in developing skills in the field. In addition, Barbie is collaborating with information science professor and coder, Casey Fiesler, PhD, to release Code Camp for Barbie and Friends, an e-book available on Amazon that will introduce the concepts of code.
But being that this is Barbie, fashion is an important aspect to the doll’s identity, and one that McKnight is thrilled to debut. “The details of her fashion are all about authenticity,” she says. For example: Barbie’s hair is in a ponytail so she doesn’t have any distractions, and she’s wearing sneakers since the job requires her to be on her feet, constantly working constantly with equipment. “We wanted to make sure her fashion was reflective of what someone in the profession would really be wearing,” McKnight says. In fact, the Barbie design team worked with a female professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to ensure the doll’s presentation was accurate.
“All [Barbie’s] careers are about inspiring the limitless potential in every girl,” McKnight says. “We have a platform that can be leveraged to do good, and we want to use our voice to have a call to action to inspire the next generation of girls.”
