The meaning of Barbie: 16 ways we think about the iconic doll

For someone only 11 inches tall, Barbara Millicent Roberts takes up a disproportionate amount of space in our culture. Barbie, as you know her, entered American society in 1959 and has been a symbol of modern femininity for better or worse, in all of its complexity ever since. We love her. We loathe

For someone only 11½ inches tall, Barbara Millicent Roberts takes up a disproportionate amount of space in our culture. Barbie, as you know her, entered American society in 1959 and has been a symbol of modern femininity — for better or worse, in all of its complexity — ever since. We love her. We loathe her. We can’t stop thinking about her. We can’t wait to see the Greta Gerwig-directed film about her.

Barbie is wholesome, Barbie is sex. Barbie is queer, Barbie is the most hetero of heterosexuals, a zero on the Kinsey scale. She’s president, paleontologist and pet groomer, simultaneously. Barbie is beautiful, but her beauty can represent something ugly about us. Arched feet, curved hips, hollow head. A vessel for our aspirations and insecurities and yearnings. Barbie can be anything, but Barbie will always be Barbie. And here, in these stories about her impact, it’s clear: Barbie is an icon. — Maura Judkis

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O.G. Barbie

Barbie has an embarrassing European ancestor (how American!): Bild Lilli, who began as a lewd postwar comic character in a German newspaper and was developed into an 11.5-inch full-figured female doll as a gag gift for men.

This doll also enraptured Ruth Handler, the co-founder of the toy company Mattel, when she saw it in 1956, during a family vacation in Switzerland. She had been eager to manufacture an adult doll for children, but her colleagues said producing a plastic doll with as much detail as Handler wanted would not be profitable. Handler believed the male designers just didn’t want to make a doll with breasts, M.G. Lord wrote in her book about Barbie.

Bringing several Lilli dolls back to California, Handler showed the designers that such a doll could be manufactured, if not in the United States, then overseas — Barbie was first prototyped in Japan, her fashion-forward outfits hand-stitched by homeworkers.

Mattel made changes to the doll, relaxing the lips, softening the eyebrows, upgrading the plastic and whitening the skin, plus at one point filing nipples off the breasts of an early prototype. That, mixed with a marketing campaign, all helped to transform her personality from a vaguely pornographic male fantasy into a girl-next-door fashionista. — Maham Javaid

Barbie’s ‘pornographic’ origin story, as told by historians

Mutilated Barbie

Let us resist the urge to psychoanalyze the children who hacked off their Barbie dolls’ perfectly coifed hair, or popped her head off like a grape, or cut off her feet, or tattooed her body with permanent marker, or scratched her eyes out with a paper clip. They did not become serial killers.

Not to victim-blame, but there’s something about Barbie that makes you want to do it. She’s perfect. A little too perfect. How does it feel to make the doll with the Dreamhouse and the impossible waist suffer a bit? Children are sadists.

According to accounts shared with The Washington Post, little girls and boys have melted their Barbies on the stove, run them over with bikes, chopped off their limbs and buried them in shallow graves in the woods. They have performed “surgery.” They have chewed off the hands. They have hung Barbies from ceiling fans. In 2004, British researchers interviewed children who described decapitating their dolls and putting them in the microwave. The doll “aroused complex and violent emotions,” they wrote.

“We used to burn their hair,” says Jamie Grayson, 44, now a child-passenger safety technician in Denver. His sister had the idea. “It really just kind of melted up,” he says, “like a hard, crusty Q-tip.”

These Barbies looked an awful lot like Kate McKinnon’s character in the film. She has choppy hair and marker scribbles on her face. She is also the Barbie who in the trailer appears to understand the real world, while Margot Robbie’s Barbie has her existential crisis.

So why did Grayson and his sister mutilate their Barbies? “I don’t know,” he says, laughing. “I need to call my therapist.” — Maura Judkis

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Black Barbie

“Repeat after me. I am strong. I am loved. I am unique. I can be anything.” Broadcast through the heart-shaped speaker of a Black Barbie — my daughter’s Barbie Breathe with Me Meditation Doll — those words are especially radical. And the gag is: My 6-year-old doesn’t even get it. To her, it’s a given — and how incredible is that?

All her Barbies have been Black. Unlike in the Toys R Us aisle treasure hunts my own mother had to do in the ’80s, I’ve never had to search too far or wide to give my children the kinds of dolls that look like them.

Barbie has long been a universally unattainable beauty standard, but triple that for girls of color who didn’t get their own Black Barbie (not a sidekick doll to the main character) until 1980 (the year I was born). “She’s black! She’s beautiful! She’s dynamite!” read the pink box with the Afro-sporting Barbie inside. It was a different time, y’all. “Today one in five dolls developed by the brand is Black,” according to Mattel’s official website.

Now my girls have a squad of Brown-skinned dolls with braids, pink hair, curls and curves led by Barbie “Brooklyn” Roberts — Malibu’s BFF, and the main character in her own story. — Helena Andrews-Dyer

Unwedded Barbie

Barbie never married Ken, and I think that’s important. The helmet-head himbo was introduced in 1961 — two years after Barbie — and from inception, he was intended to be a boyfriend, not a husband, her companion but not a legally binding one. In the Mattel universe, they broke up, they got back together. You know how it is.

In the real universe, here’s why that relationship status matters: Well into the 1960s, professions like teaching and nursing permitted women to be fired if they got married. Women couldn’t independently hold credit cards without their husbands co-signing until 1974. Until 1978, it was still legal to fire a woman in the United States for getting pregnant; until 1981, a man could take out a second mortgage on the family home without informing his wife.

Barbie, ever wise to the world and well before her time, sidestepped the patriarchy by refusing to put a ring on her finger. Ken was the boyfriend. Meanwhile, she became a business executive, astronaut, nurse, editor, fashion designer and ballerina in her first decade alone.

I like to picture the drawer Ken might have kept in Barbie’s hot-pink Dreamhouse. A well-stocked drawer, with a toothbrush, hair products, contact solution. But just a drawer. The house, the decor, the mortgage, the ownership — all of that was Barbie’s, earned and paid for, and she had made sure nobody was ever going to take it away. — Monica Hesse

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Duvet cover Barbie

Barbie is on backpacks, stationery, pool floats, scrunchies, rugs, duvet covers, inline skates, cleansing serums and hair straighteners. Gap, Bloomingdale’s, Forever 21 and Unique Vintage have exclusive clothing lines.

While Mattel doesn’t disclose how much money it brings in from licensing agreements, toy expert and consultant Chris Byrne noted that the company receives an upfront payment and subsequent royalties.

The movie is another extension of this — and is one of about 15 film projects in the works across Mattel brands, which will beget more merchandise. In the lead-up to the premiere, Barbie has teamed up with Xbox for a console that looks like a playhouse, NYX for a cosmetics line and Dragon Glassware for pink martini glasses.

Some may view the churn as perpetuating overconsumption. But as Byrne put it: “People still love connecting to that feeling in themselves … that wonderful sense of open imagination and play.” — Jaclyn Peiser

Can nostalgia make the Barbie movie a win for Mattel?

Sex-curious Barbie

Do not Google “Barbie and sex.” The results, so many results, will ruin whatever childlike fantasy you had about the innocently platonic and yet somehow romantic relationship between Barbie and Ken, the perfect couple who never actually coupled. Or will it? Because if there’s one thing most children do with their Barbie dolls, it’s take a peek under her clothes, exploring the smooth mannequin anatomy underneath.

“Is it normal for kids to do sex play? Yes! That’s easy,” says Susan Engel, a senior lecturer in psychology at Williams College. “Exploration is the foundation of intellectual development. One of the ways kids express their curiosity is by replicating things in their play.”

Surprise! The children are watching us, constantly observing themes about body image, romance, gender roles, career choices and — gasp! — sex. Zara Rafferty, an expert on play and child development, shocked her own mother when as a preschooler she pretended that Barbie and Ken had “cracked apart” their marriage. “She was not aware I knew anything about divorce,” Rafferty wrote via email.

So, what do you do when your 6-year-old becomes low-key obsessed with Barbie’s “nipples”? Rafferty suggests asking about where questions are coming from and responding like a grown-up, creating a teaching moment about privacy, safety and bodily autonomy. Oh, and “try not to giggle.” — Helena Andrews-Dyer

Aspirational home designer Barbie

If your parents can’t afford a shell-shaped bed with a glittery sparkle coverlet, no problem. Your doll can have one.

A child’s play version of home life at Barbie’s Dreamhouse can ignore the sad secrets of real life, which may mean a family of four living in a crammed one-bedroom apartment with clothes stuffed in shopping bags.

There is no decluttering necessary in Barbie’s neat and clean plastic rooms.

“Barbie’s sense of style is unencumbered by the wear and tear of life. She doesn’t have a futon sofa she schleps around from house share to house share,” says interior designer Jonathan Adler, who was commissioned by Mattel to decorate a Malibu mansion for the doll’s 50th anniversary in 2009.

The movie will probably help adults imagine themselves in a doll’s world. Sarah Greenwood, the production designer of the Barbie movie, says she scaled Barbieland to be 23 percent smaller than human-size. “We had to keep in mind the toyness of the house,” she says.

“The great thing about the doll is that the child actually projects onto the doll whatever attributes they want her to have,” says Kim Culmone, Mattel’s global head of design for Barbie and fashion dolls. The same is true for her houses: If the bed brings joy in the living room and the pink toaster lands in the bathroom, no parent is going to tell you no.

The whole point of Barbie, after all, is for you to tell your own story. — Jura Koncius

How 6 top designers would make Barbie’s house even dreamier

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Collector’s item Barbie

“I stopped counting after 4,000,” says Jian Yang, a 43-year-old Singaporean man, his shelves full of Barbies displayed proudly behind him on a recent Zoom call. This impressive army of plastic dolls began with Great Shape Barbie, who wears a bright blue aerobics outfit. She was supposed to be a present for his younger sister before he spotted it under the Christmas tree in 1984. It was love at first steal.

He went through ebbs in his collection, like when he discovered the joy of girls and going out. But now his Barbies join him on his adventures, which he documents on Instagram — he often simply puts them in his briefcase. Recently, he took his 1999 Dancing Fire Barbie to a preview of the Pixar film “Elemental.” On a 2016 business trip to New York City, Yang visited the Times Square Toys R Us and walked away with around 20 Barbies that had to be taken out of their boxes so that he could transport them.

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But Yang didn’t want to become consumed by Barbie in the way so many zealots are. “I sort of built my own personality around the white-collar advertising agency guy,” he says. “I did not want the personality of an inanimate object to take over who I am.” — Olivia McCormack

Career Barbie

Barbie’s résumé — hundreds of pages long, covering decades of career changes — tells the story of our evolving aspirations for little girls. Though her earliest careers tended to be female-coded entertainment or caregiving positions — fashion model, ballerina, nurse, student teacher — Barbie’s career trajectory is a triumph of feminist ambition. She went to space before any woman ever did and has run for president multiple times. And these days, she’s pursuing several careers in STEM. Here’s an excerpt from her CV:

Barbara Millicent Roberts | 33505 E. Pacific Coast Hwy. | Malibu, CA 90265 | Barbie@Mattel.com

Professional history:

— Maura Judkis

Lawsuit Barbie

“I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world / Life in plastic, it’s fantastic,” go the lyrics of the annoyingly catchy 1997 song “Barbie Girl,” which brought Danish-Norwegian band Aqua instant fame and sparked a quirky hot pink music video that has racked up more than 1.2 billion views.

But Mattel actually sued Aqua’s label, MCA Records, over the song, claiming that lyrics such as “kiss me here, touch me there, hanky-panky” damaged Barbie’s reputation. The legal dispute raged for years and famed Judge Alex Kozinski eventually ruled against Mattel, noting that the song was protected as parody under the First Amendment and famously concluding in his opinion, “The parties are advised to chill.” Chill they did, as the toy giant went on to embrace the tune, using it in a 2009 advertisement, though with modified family-friendly lyrics. A new version of the song featuring Aqua, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice is also featured on the soundtrack of the upcoming movie.

Mattel had a history of suing parodists, including an artist who turned Barbie into a bondage doll, but it appears the toymaker now realizes Barbie belongs to all. “We love seeing the brand celebrated in pop culture,” a Mattel spokesperson says.

“Come on, Barbie, let’s go party! Ah, ah, ah, yeah.” — Jennifer Hassan

Remember the ‘Barbie Girl’ song? Mattel actually sued, but was told ‘to chill.’

LGBarbieTQ+

My childhood afternoons were spent sipping apple juice, making the historical knockoff Barbies (purchased by my third-wave feminist mom) kiss my Mermaid Barbies (the ones I cajoled my dad to buy) and checking to make sure no one was eavesdropping. There was nary a Ken doll in sight.

This exploration of sexual identity turned out to be a common thread for many queer women. Yamini Nambimadom, 25, had immigrant parents who did not get the appeal of Barbies, so her collection was small and often full of DIY’d “Butch Barbies” for the femme Barbies to kiss. She views the same-sex kissing as a “cherished” part of the queer experience. “It was a part of my childhood that was about exploration and fun,” Nambimadom says.

These hidden moments of childhood queerness once made me feel shame, like I was doing something wrong that needed to be concealed. Now they make me feel connected. As designer and Barbies-kissing aficionado Daniela Bautista, 27, puts it: “Being online is just realizing that you’ve never had a unique experience in your life.” — Olivia McCormack

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Video game Barbie

As I started playing “Barbie Fashion Designer,” a Mattel dress-up computer game released in 1996, I was flooded with nostalgia. I shuffled through dozens of clothes pairings, patterns and colors, harking back to the hours I spent expressing myself through style as a child: first on my dolls, and then in my own fashion.

The ancient computer I was using wheezed as I prepared Barbie to walk down the runway in a pink halter top, yellow polka-dotted circle skirt and ballet slippers. Then, finally, she strutted down the catwalk and struck a pose.

I worked on another outfit, then another, seeking the right auras for what I pictured Barbie doing for the day: tanning at the beach, attending a wedding.

When “Barbie Fashion Designer” first came out, it was revolutionary, one of the few video games marketed to young girls. It sold 500,000 copies in the first two months, outselling top games such as “Doom” and “Quake” during the same period. Now it’s in the World Video Game Hall of Fame. In titles such as the “Secret Agent Barbie” series and 1998’s “Barbie Riding Club,” which raised a generation of horse girls, Barbie’s computer games helped prove that girls can be gamers — and whatever else they want to be.

As a girl, I painted and decorated the day away in “Barbie as Rapunzel: A Creative Adventure,” where players help Barbie rehabilitate a castle and save the prince. Barbie games invite an element of imagination, letting players know that the best way to play is however they please. “Barbie Fashion Designer” reminded me how fun it is to let my inner artist run free. — Samantha Chery

Pink, and color in general, is an unnamed character in Barbie's world. Color expert Amy Wax and antiques appraiser Lori Verderame explain. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Post)

Pantone 219 C Barbie

Pink heels. Pink wheels. Pink highlights. Barbie leads a radiant life.

And though pink might be thought of as stereotypically girlish, the color’s connotations have changed alongside the generations that have grown up with Barbie.

Pink demonstrates strength, confidence and independence, color expert Amy Wax says. “And then you take all those ideas and you make it youthful and more playful and more appealing — and there you are. You end up with a perfect choice for Barbie’s color.”

Pantone recognizes “Barbie Pink” with its own slot on the color chart. (Unsurprisingly, Mattel owns the rights.)

And it looks like color will play a major part in defining Barbie in the new film, Wax says. “If we take away the color palette, you’re taking away the whole identity of the character.”

Barbie’s world oozes vibrancy — but it also gives off a certain familiarity.

“It’s an artificial place,” says Lori Verderame, an antiques appraiser who specializes in American toys, “but it’s an artificial place that we feel comfortable in.” — Allie Caren

Glow-up Ken

Growing up, I owned about a dozen Barbie dolls, but just one Ken — and he was the ultimate prize, the fixture of every boy-crazed story that unfolded on my bedroom floor. It always ended the same: with just one lucky Barbie riding off with him in her pink Corvette.

Looking back, he wasn’t much to fuss over — a buff, bland and blue-eyed embodiment of American masculinity. But over the years, Ken did catch our attention in some peculiar ways. There was the suggestive-sounding Sugar Daddy Ken, which Mattel explained was a reference to Ken’s dog — a white West Highland Terrier puppy named Sugar. In “Toy Story 3,” he strays to the dark side as a conflicted henchman to the main villain.

Proving most controversial was 1993’s Earring Magic Ken. With his mesh lavender shirt, matching pleather vest, silver hoop earring and charm necklace, he was marketed to young girls like me. Instead, the doll ignited a toy craze among gay men who viewed the debut as Ken’s coming out, according to Matt Haig, author of “Brand Failures.” In response, Mattel quickly recalled the doll from shelves. As In The Know put it, “He was that gay.”

Lately, his image has seen a glow-up. In 2017, Ken was reimagined with 15 new looks — dolls that take various shades and shapes; dolls that are vegan, wear cornrows or have 20/40 vision. And in trailers for the film, Ryan Gosling’s Ken embodies that absurdly confident and bro-like spirit, but also appears earnest, jovial and helplessly loyal to Barbie. Maybe it was this infectious Ken-ergy my Barbies found so irresistible all along. — Janay Kingsberry

Which ‘Ken’ is Ryan Gosling supposed to be in ‘Barbie’?

Drag queen Barbie

Growing up in a “very religious” household in the South, Jonathan Hamilt could only play with Barbies if it was with his younger sister. The pair took their dolls on safari adventures in their front yard, constructed a townhouse out of bookshelves, transformed Capri Sun boxes into furniture and appliances.

“Barbie was always a great place to do world building and create your own reality,” says Hamilt, 35, an executive director of Drag Story Hour and a drag artist who performs under the name Ona Louise.

It’s no wonder Barbie has wielded such a powerful influence over the world of drag, inspiring a roster of queens such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alum Trixie Mattel and Native American drag artist VIZIN.

There are aesthetic similarities: the colorful cut crease eye makeup; the cleanly arched eyebrows and luscious lashes; the flowing locks and perfectly painted lips; the unblinking commitment to sparkles and glamour.

But more importantly, Barbie is a master of multiplicity. She is ambitious and kitschy, larger than life but also familiar. Barbie is a master of head-to-toe dressing, taking a great outfit and a few well-placed accessories and embodying not just a character, but a lifestyle. Drag renditions of the doll, expertly re-sculpted, painted, adorned and posted on Instagram, can seem like Barbie’s final form: the platonic ideal of a woman born to be in the spotlight.

When it comes down to it, Hamilt says, “I can’t think of a draggier drag queen than Barbie.” — Anne Branigin

Real-life Barbie

Barbie was recovering from a hip replacement; she wasn’t looking to date. But Kent, a widower, showed up to the Walgreens where she worked in Winchester, Va., looking for a phone charger.

Kent Turner, 62, left the store with a charger that day, and he was back a few days later. He hadn’t been able to forget how beautiful she was, he says. That day, Kent began to introduce himself as “Ken,” he says. “Because Barbie and Ken just go together.”

When they told their families about each other, their adult children playfully teased them, but their six granddaughters (ages 1 to 11) could hardly contain their excitement.

“They call me Barbie, not grandma,” says Barbie Kay Shaw, 57. They sing the song “Barbie Girl” on repeat. To play her part, she only wears pink around them and lets down her long blond hair. They’ve been married almost seven years, but for the children, this bit of role-playing never gets old. And for Barbie, finding Ken made her believe in fate.

The couple almost always gets a reaction from strangers. “Are you kidding me? For real?” Some give them hugs. For the movie, they’re getting a Barbie cake.

As a teenager, there was a phase when Barbie thought her name was childish. But today, she “wouldn’t change my name for a million dollars,” because it adds joy to the world, especially with Ken by her side. She’s become proud of her identity: “No one ever forgets me — or my name.” — Maham Javaid

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