In one of the most exciting cinematic moments of 2023, Greta Gerwig’s much-hyped Barbie movie hits cinemas this Friday.
It’s been declared by critics already as ‘super feminist’, subverting expectations of what a Barbie doll can and cannot be by casting a range of different actors, male and female, to play the doll alongside Margot Robbie.
Gerwig described the film’s mission as ‘diving into the complexity of [feminism] and not running away from it’ and ‘looking at all the thorniness and stepping into what is the negotiation of what women need to be, and how to give them something other than a tightrope to walk on’.
The woman who created Barbie, Ruth Handler, had a similar aim in mind when she brought her idea to toy manufacturer Mattel. While there are many theories as to what first inspired Ruth Handler to create a Barbie, we know that she was inspired by how her daughter Barbara and her friends projected themselves and their hopes and dreams onto the paper dolls they played with.
For Ruth, it was all about endorsing different life choices for young people. As she wrote in her 1994 autobiography: ‘My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.’
Even though Barbie has been criticised over the years for the exclusivity that surrounded her hourglass-shaped body type and an initial lack of diversity, Ruth remained steadfast when it came to rejecting traditional life choices for the doll.
As Barbie reached stratospheric success, fans started demanding that she follow the conventional route that pervaded the 1960s, particularly for women (and still does to this day, to a lesser extent perhaps). When was Barbie going to get married to Ken and have children? At the time, Ruth felt strongly about the impact this would have on young people playing with Barbies, insisting that she didn’t want to reinforce the attitude that young girls should be aspiring exclusively to get married and/or have children.
While she has worn numerous wedding gowns, Barbie has never walked down the aisle – a deliberate choice made to try and deter younger generations from falling into the patriarchal trap that tells us that the conventional path is the only acceptable one available to us.
Some have, however, argued back against this revelation and core element of Barbie’s mythology, arguing that they or someone they knew owned a pregnant Barbie. They’re partially correct – back in 1982, Mattel brought out a pregnant version of Midge, Barbie’s best friend, with a newborn baby named Nikki residing in a magnetic removable womb.
Although the doll was part of a ‘Happy Family’ line of dolls, there was backlash at the time for endorsing ‘teenage pregnancy’, so the road towards endorsing a liberating world through Barbie dolls has admittedly not always been smooth.
Regardless, for Ruth the idea was to keep Barbie single and child free. The doll has also pursued more than 200 careers, even though Ruth herself admitted feeling ‘tremendous guilt about being a mother away from my children’.
So as we reach peak Barbie hype, it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate the complicated (and definitely imperfect) feminist ideals that the doll empire was built on. And if a childless, unmarried life is good enough for Barbie, it’s good enough for anybody.
Everything you need to know about Barbie creator Ruth Handler
Who was Ruth Handler?
She was the creator of the Barbie doll, and it was manufactured by Mattel – a company jointly owned by herself, her husband Elliot and their business partner Harold Matson. The two men combined their names to make the company name, and were apparently unable to fit Ruth’s name in. Ruth was the first president of the toy manufacturer from 1945 until 1975.
Her main mission behind the Barbie doll was to empower young children, and to ensure ‘that through the doll a little girl could be anything she wanted to be and that she has choices’.
How did Ruth Handler’s children inspire Barbie?
First of all, we have Ruth’s daughter Barbara to thank for the name of the doll. Second, Ruth noticed that her son Kenneth’s toy collection offered him all kinds of career and lifestyle options for himself (from army cadet to astronaut) whereas her daughter did not. So she decided to create a three-dimensional doll that offered those things to young girls.
Did Ruth Handler have cancer?
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970 Ruth had a modified radical mastectomy, which removes the entire breast leaving only the pectoralis major muscle. She decided to make her own breast prosthesis after some difficulties with comfort, and went on to manufacture them for others, and named the line ‘Nearly Me’. Then First Lady Betty Ford was fitted for one.
Is Ruth Handler still alive?
Ruth passed away in 2002 after complications from colon cancer surgery.