Asides from the so-called Human Barbie Valeria Lukyanova, Barbies have, in the past couple of years, become a way for people to attempt to redefine ideals of modern beauty. So people will make mock-ups of Barbies with normal human proportions, or African Barbies, or Barbies without make-up. But now, to redefine what it means to be a modern woman, the actual makers of Barbie – Mattel – have brought out a new collection of the dolls called I Can Be.
As well as an astronaut, a doctor, a pilot, a ballerina, a politician and a football player, the collection includes an Entrepreneur Barbie. Dressed in a pink suit-dress, kitten heels and pearl earrings, she has an iPhone, an iPad and a fancy bag she's bought with her self-made rich woman's salary. She also has a team of Chief Inspiration Officers (CIOs) behind her – real-life female executives who have apparently collaborated, according to The Wire, with Mattel to make the Barbie. These women include Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani and Rent The Runway founders Jennifer Hyman and Jenny Fleiss and many others. We're not sure what their involvement is, or whether actual girls playing with the Barbies will ever really know about their involvement.
To celebrate her own launch, using the #Unapologetic hashtag, 'Barbie' held a Pink Power Lunch chat session on Twitter, where people could answer her questions such as, 'Where do you find inspiration' and 'What are the 3 #unapologetic qualities an entrepreneur should have?'
Though it could be really easy to take this apart – no job is going to change the fact the Barbie is bestowed with an impossible, idealised body that no one should really aspire to – we won't. This is because if a Barbie becoming an entrepreneur shows young girls that that's a viable option for them, maybe that's the thing they'll aspire to. Maybe, just maybe, a girl playing with an Entrepreneur Barbie now will grow up to make her own company, which makes dolls that don't look like, um, Barbies?
And FYI, the person who's going to be most upset about this is probably Madonna – she's been using the #UnapologeticBitch hashtag for months now.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.