Barbie Through the Decades: A History of Barbie, Feminism, and the New Barbie Movie

Barbie has been breaking barriers for over 60 years—but can she be characterized as a feminist? The new Barbie movie begs that very question.

In 1959 Barbie was first introduced on the market and was a trailblazer from the beginning. Ruth Handler, CEO of Mattel, intended for Barbie to be a doll that could provide little girls with aspirational imaginative play outside of being a wife and a mother. While Barbie’s first job, teen fashion model, might not have been a particularly empowering one, Handler intended Barbie as a vehicle for little girls to imagine themselves working outside the home. Handler made conscious choices to keep Barbie’s identities away from those of wife and mother by releasing Ken as a boyfriend—not a husband.

Barbie soon took on more jobs outside the home. By the time Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, Barbie was available as a fashion designer, a corporate executive, and a college graduate. Like the feminism discussed in The Feminine Mystique, Barbie’s 1960s empowerment largely addressed a white, middle-class woman who sought her own money and agency outside the home through a career. The first Barbie Dream House debuted in 1962, before women were even guaranteed access to their own bank accounts. By the end of the decade Barbie would also be an astronaut, a flight attendant, a tennis player, and a nurse.

Since the 1960s, Barbie’s relationship to contemporary feminism(s) has been less clear. 1970s Barbie didn’t make as many new strides as 1960s Barbie did, although she did become a surgeon in 1973. 1980s Barbie took a huge step forward in terms of diversity. While Mattel released the first Black doll in 1968 as Barbie’s friend Christie, it wasn’t until 1980 that the first Black and Hispanic Barbies were released. 1980s Barbie also became a veterinarian, and Mattel released the “We Girls Can Do Anything Campaign,” a marketing campaign that emphasized empowerment for girls through Barbie play and in their lives.

While Mattel made strides in the 1980s in terms of empowerment and diversity with Black and Hispanic Barbies, the company’s attempts at addressing other diverse ethnicities and cultures was more uneven. In 1981 Mattel released the first East Asian Barbie as part of their Dolls of the World collection. However, the company initially called her “Oriental” Barbie. The “Dolls of the World” collection, which ended in 2014, included dolls from over 50 countries from every continent—but the dolls were always dressed in traditional garb, which was sometimes stereotypical and inaccurate. Arguably, releasing these racially and ethnically diverse dolls as strictly international dolls served to “other” certain races and ethnicities within the US Market. While the Dolls of the World collection addressed the global market outside the United States, sometime problematically, it did not depict diverse ethnicities and cultures within the United States. American children playing with “American” Barbies, in other words, would have to wait until 2017 for a hijab-wearing Barbie (based on American fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad) and 2023 for an Asian-American Barbie (based on American actor Anna May Wong).   

In 1992 Barbie joined the “year of the woman” in response to the Anita Hill hearings by running for president for the first time. 1990s Barbie also became an air force pilot, a naval officer, a marine corps sergeant, an army medic, a firefighter, a dentist, a soccer player, a NASCAR driver, a baseball player, a WNBA player, and an airline pilot. Barbie was clearly very busy building her resume in the 90s! The first Barbie with disabilities was also released in 1997, but (like the first Black doll. Christie) she was a “friend” named Becky. Becky was a wheelchair user who was released as a school photographer and a paralympic—yet none of these dolls could fully access the Barbie dream house or car.

In the twenty-first century, Barbie has continued to expand her career portfolio and has represented diversity in a number of different ways. 2000s Barbie ran for president a few more times (once even in a pantsuit!) and became an art teacher and a “newborn baby doctor.” In 2010 and 2011 Barbie became a computer engineer, an architect, and a news anchor. In addition, the 2010s saw one of the most significant changes since Barbie became more racially inclusive in the 1980s—the addition of new body types to the Barbie line in 2016, discussed thoroughly in the 2018 Hulu documentary “Tiny Shoulders.” Mattel also introduced dolls in more skin tones and hair styles. To date, Barbie has had 35 skin types, 97 hairstyles and 9 body types. In 2019 Barbie as a wheelchair user was introduced as well as Barbie with a prosthetic leg. Wheelchair-user Barbie also came with a ramp for the Barbie dream house. In addition, Mattel released Barbies with hearing aids and down syndrome in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

This brings us to the present and the newly released Barbie movie. While Margot Robbie, a blond, thin, tall, conventionally attractive woman, was cast to be “stereotypical Barbie,” the film also features a Black President Barbie, a Barbie played by a trans actress, a Barbie in a wheelchair, nine Supreme Court Justice Barbies, and Barbies of different body sizes, races, and hair colors. The film doesn’t include a Native American Barbie (even though Mattel released one in 1993); instead, the movie includes a controversial smallpox joke about the genocide of indigenous people.  

While the Barbie movie is explicitly interested in gender equality and sees patriarchy as a villainous ideology, the “feminist” message is arguably pretty shallow. While The Feminine Mystique made waves in 1963, by 2023 viewers may imagine Barbie could be feminist in ways that more fully reflect the feminisms of today. Of course, it’s great that Barbie owns her own home and can do any job—but 60 years after The Feminine Mystique, I’d like to see Barbie’s feminism going further than empowerment through career. While the diversity of the different Barbies in the current Mattel line and in the movie is important, we might ask, how did the film’s diverse Barbies show a diversity of culture or values? Race, disability, and gender diversity were present in the movie but not with any depth or commitment to anti-racism, as evinced by the smallpox joke. Another problematic element of the film, especially considering the plotline (Spoiler alert!) in which each Ken has his own attentive Barbie, why weren’t any of the Barbies (or Kens) gay? (This is a nagging question since many children make their Barbies gay.) Was the Barbie played by a trans actress meant to be trans in her identity? And is diversity and representation meaningful if not backed by political commitment?

Even if we accept that the film has a relatively narrow agenda, aiming at patriarchy and not much else, the plot is a bit baffling from even the most narrowly feminist perspective. In the beginning of the movie Barbie seems very concerned with gender equality in the real world, not just in Barbieland. However, (Spoiler alert, again!) after visiting the real world and seeing that patriarchy is alive and well, Barbie’s concern for gender equality outside Barbieland seems to vanish. Instead, the main conflict in the movie becomes the fact that Ken, having seen patriarchy, brings it back to Barbieland and turns all the Kens into little mens’ rights activists. While the movie does show that the Kens are ridiculous and patriarchy is “bad,” and encourages the audience to cheer when the Barbies reassert themselves, it also spends a lot of time on Ken and Ken’s feelings for a movie called “Barbie.” Barbie even apologizes to Ken in the end for not giving him enough attention—even though he stole her home and possessions and tried to disenfranchise her. The Barbie movie instead could have been written to show that Kens were happy in Barbieland and when Ken went to the real world with Barbie, he could have helped Barbie address misogyny there. Ken could have helped explain why patriarchy is bad for men and why Kens are happier in the Barbieland! Alas, instead we get the implication that Barbieland is just as bad for Kens as the real world is for Barbies.

Barbie spoke to a feminist discourse when she debuted in 1959 by providing an avenue for little girls to imagine their lives as something other than wives and mothers. In 2023 if Barbie wants to be feminist, she is going to need to movie beyond career success and surface-level depictions of diversity. I, for one, am waiting for abortion-advocate Barbie, an actual fat Barbie, librarian Barbie complete with banned books, Crown Act Barbie with beautiful natural hairstyles, and pro-union Barbie.

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Feature image: still from Barbie (2023) from Warner Bros. Pictures/US Magazine.