In the trailer for Barbie, the long-awaited live-action blockbuster from director Greta Gerwig with Margot Robbie starring as the titular doll, the assertion is made that whether you love or hate Barbie, this movie is for you. And in the never-ending press cycle that’s seen Robbie gallivant across the globe dressed as every Barbie under the sun, she and her colleagues have been adamant to mention that if you are in the latter camp, it’s because we as a culture created the unrealistic beauty standards that Barbie adheres to and then problematized that very thing.
“They made a doll, and then they got mad at the doll,” Robbie explained in an interview with America Ferrera, Issa Rae (who portrays President Barbie), and Kate McKinnon (Weird Barbie) for Fandango.
Shondaland spoke with a variety of women from different backgrounds and identities, including athletes, activists, artists, and other people who’ve been immortalized as Barbie themselves, like ballerina Misty Copeland and doctors on the front lines of the Covid pandemic, about what the doll means to them. Somewhat surprisingly, many of them aren’t mad at her at all. Instead, Barbie represents aspiration, creativity, achievement, transition, community, acceptance, childhood, empowerment, and much more.
While Barbie has certainly subscribed to a rigid ideal of femininity for a long time, Mattel’s recent marketing philosophy — embodied by the “You Can Be Anything” ethos and the Fashionista range that includes dolls in different shapes, sizes, skin tones, and abilities — along with testimonies from the women below, goes to show that for as many Barbies as there are, there are just as many meanings attached to them.
Patricia Field, costume designer for Sex and the City and Emily in Paris; designed a fashion line for Mattel in 2007
Barbie means to me what a famous actress means to me: Barbie is famous. I’m glad they’re updating her and making her more of the time that we’re in.
Misty Copeland, ballerina and the first African American woman to be selected as the principal dancer of American Ballet Theatre; immortalized as a Barbie in 2016
I grew up playing with Barbies as an extremely introverted girl who was navigating a tumultuous life at home. Through it all, I found solace in music, dance, and Barbie. When I played with them, I imagined a future beyond my circ*mstances. I remember meeting with the Mattel team for the first time at their El Segundo headquarters. It was incredible to see the amount of work and attention to detail that went into creating these dolls that once made up my childhood.
When I first held Firebird Barbie in my hands, it was unbelievably surreal. What made me truly proud was the creative freedom I was given to make her as true a representation of me as she could be. From her skin tone to her muscles to her chest size, I made sure she wasn’t just any Barbie. Rather, she represented me as a Black ballerina Barbie.
Ellie Goldstein, model and disability advocate
Barbie means happiness and memories to me. [The Barbie with Down syndrome] did change how Barbie meant to me as now more children with Down syndrome can feel included and feel loved by Barbie. I hope the movie shows lots of people that we are all the same, even if we have disabilities, and can do whatever we want to show that to the world.
Dr. Audrey Sue Cruz, MD, immortalized as a Barbie in 2021 for her work during the Covid pandemic
Barbie shows girls that they can be anything. In 2021, I had the immense honor of being immortalized as a Barbie for their health-care heroes program. I was a Barbie fan before, but since then I feel such a deep connection with Barbie and what she stands for.
Zerina Akers, fashion designer and stylist; designed a line of Barbies for Black History Month 2023
Barbie was a huge part of my childhood. Barbie dolls were some of the first forms of representation that I remember. I always coveted the expensive special-edition dolls. Many of my core memories involved playing with Barbie products, from my dollhouse to a pink toy Corvette. I was honored to collaborate with BarbieStyle this year to style a collection of Black Barbies and play a role in the continued expansion of visibility and representation. A full-circle moment indeed!
Tara Moss, best-selling author and disability and human rights activist
The funny thing about Barbie, for me, is the strong memory I have of winning a running race as a child and being told to choose a toy as a prize from the girls’ table of options. It was my first time winning anything, and I desperately wanted the Hot Wheels car from the boys’ table as my prize but was told it “wasn’t appropriate for girls.” I was instead given a Barbie doll. I wept. My mother, who understood me well, consoled me and helped me make that Barbie into a Vampira doll, dyeing the hair black and everything. I loved it to bits.
It goes to show that pigeonholing interests by gender norms is unhelpful — I’m sure some of the boys wanted the dolls, some other girls the cars, why divide it up? — and certainly every girl is different. To that end, if you want a doll, the wide variety of Barbies that are available now — from Barbies with Afros or the Fashionistas dolls with wheelchairs and ramps — are a big improvement. No two people are truly cut from the same [cloth].
Candy Lee, professional wrestler
I have such a connection to Barbie. Being trans, when I was younger, she was a role model to me because she was so hyper-feminine. I was like, “This is what I want to be.” I know some people think she’s anti-feminist because she’s [promoting unrealistic] beauty standards, but to me it’s deeper than that.
She’s been a symbol for me in terms of transitioning because that’s all I wanted when I was younger. Being born biologically male and wanting Barbies was going against the grain; it was weird and taboo for little boys to want to play with Barbie. It was a [form of] protest for me to ask my dad for Barbies. This was before I learned about what being trans was, so the more I understood myself, she [became] symbolic of my transition and my journey. She’s a doll, and I love being a doll.
Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa, MD, immortalized as a Barbie in 2021 for her work during the Covid pandemic
Being immortalized as a Barbie continues to be one of the most surreal experiences of my life and stands as a testament to the importance of shifting the notion of what a doctor looks like; Black women like me are occupying and thriving in powerful spaces like medicine and beyond! I hope that it inspires little ones everywhere, especially little Black girls, to know that their potential is limitless.
Angelina Kekich, costume designer; most recently worked on Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
I was infatuated as a young child with Barbies. At the age of 5, I knew that I wanted to be a fashion designer, and I remember telling my parents I wanted to design, and they laughed at me! I came from a very traditional Croatian family, so they thought I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a businessperson. But being Croatian, most of my mom’s friends were all tailors … and they would always give me their scraps of fabrics.
I would get my Barbies and be like, “I don’t like what they have on,” so my mom taught me how to stitch, and I would hand-stitch [new] clothes for my Barbies. It was my creative outlet. I have a very close bond with Barbie because she brought me to where I am now. I have an 8-year-old daughter, and she’s very much like me in that sense. She’s started to build clothes for her doll through paper towels!
Therese Shechter, documentary filmmaker of My So-Called Selfish Life
In many ways, Barbie was a role model not because she had a tiny waist, but because she had the ability to be anyone she wanted to be. She had lots of friends, great clothes, a cool place to live, and always seemed to be having fun. Barbie’s independent. She wasn’t under anyone else’s control — except mine.
Karen Byrd, creator of Natural Girls United
Barbie and fashion dolls have always been something that I enjoyed playing with as a child, and as a mom with my daughters. There hasn’t always been a wide variety of dolls available with a range of skin tones, hair textures, and eye colors. I am grateful to be in a place where I have seen the evolution of more diverse dolls become available to our youth. Representation of our cultures, skin tones, and hair types plays an important role in young girls and boys feeling as if they are seen and valued. I am grateful to all of the independent doll designers that made natural-hair dolls available to the public ... until larger corporations finally caught up and started making dolls of and for all ethnicities.
Véronique Emma Houxbois, trans cartoonist
My story is probably exactly what you think it is: I grew up with a sister who got Barbies, I got Ninja Turtles, and we played with them together. It gave me the latitude to play with dolls, to experiment in femininity by dressing up the Barbies and doing their hair. Whenever my parents gave me money to buy my sister a present, it gave me a hall pass into the pink aisle at Toys R Us.
Whatever criticisms there are of Barbie as a brand, it’s hard to think of another toy that allowed for that kind of safe exploration. “Boys” toys certainly never offered that opportunity. By the 1990s when I was growing up, 12-inch G.I. Joe dolls only existed as adult collector items, replaced by 6-inch molded plastic figures that offered little in the way of fashion or grooming options. Barbie and her competitors were the only game in town, and they gave everyone — from cis gay men who grew up to be drag queens to the lesbians who made their Barbies kiss — an outlet for thoughts and feelings they had nowhere else to articulate. Whatever the brand messaging is, the lived experience of Barbie is indelibly queer and trans.
Imani Barbarin, writer and disability-rights activist
I didn’t play with a lot of kids when I was younger. I would go to events for other disabled children, having been born with cerebral palsy, but a lot of times I was in physical therapy and occupational therapy to treat my disability. The physical therapists were the ones who would play with me the most with Barbie, using her to model what exercises I was supposed to be doing, or entice me with Barbie to get me to do more exercises!
I can’t remember when the first disabled Barbie in a wheelchair came out, but I remember being so moved that they had made one who had a physical disability. Barbie is iconic, and they made every Barbie with the intention to saturate the market so everyone could see themselves in Barbie in some way, and that trickled down into a lot of ways that young girls or young femmes saw themselves.
A lot of times we think of Barbie as this very white, perfect body, feet that are always designed for heels type of doll —which I agree with — but I think it’s pretty interesting to see how much they wanted to expand and reach out to other demographics and other people who may not see themselves in dolls that are that affordable.
Maria Teresa Hart, author of Doll
I find it very empowering to see the ultimate symbol of femininity as something that is emblematic of success and achievement but also can be taken very seriously. She can be president, she can be an astronaut, she can be a surgeon. Barbie can do it all.
On the flip side, there’s the subtext that all of these options are on the table for someone who is white, able-bodied, cisgender, and model beautiful. She has all of these boxes checked off. Outside of those categories, it becomes a lot more complicated to obtain these levels of Barbie-ness.
But it doesn’t diminish the fantasy. Everyone wants to play with that fantasy. The beauty of Barbie’s world is that it is something that’s accessible to a lot of people — even if you don’t conform to Barbie’s perfection, you can still play in that world and enjoy it.
Zoe Simmons, writer and disability activist
I am glad that Barbie is increasing its representation of disabilities and doing their bit to right past wrongs (like their original wheelchair-using doll who couldn’t even fit into the Barbie Dreamhouse). We’ve now seen dolls with Down syndrome, vitiligo, hearing aids, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs — but I hope it doesn’t stop there.
I hope we see Barbie with a walking stick. With a walking frame. With a feeding tube. With a stoma bag and other medical items people — especially young people — feel ashamed about. I think Barbie can make a real difference in tackling stigma and helping newer generations to see disability as a fact, not as a tragedy. But it also needs to be more than just token, palatable representation. They can’t just all be white. I hope they can increase their commitment to diverse representation so we can see people of all races, ages, genders, sexualities, body types, and disabilities, and the beautiful ways they interlink. Let’s cut the unrealistic standards, and show life for what it’s really like: diverse.
Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris.
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