Since the “new generation” of Barbie has been announced, I’ve remained undecided about how I really feel about it. As a child I loved Barbie; I remember playing with my Barbie dolls and all their fab accessories for hours on end. But I also remember that I never saw her as a tall, blonde, skinny gal for which I aspired to be: she was simply Barbie. Barbie could be anything you wanted her to be, including any profession, and this is what was so relatable about her for so many children. But this was obviously not enough. Now there is not just one Barbie, instead there are multiple variations of her (33 different dolls to be precise). Yes, this means that consumers have the chance to pick the doll that best represents themselves- in terms of height, skin tone, body shape, hair colour and so on- but is there really any need for this?
Understandably, in today’s world it would be highly criticised for a manufacturer to produce a doll that possesses the model-like image that the traditional Barbie has. So it makes us question what young girls who play with Barbie dolls now-a-days see when they look at her. Do they just see her as another toy like I did as a child? Or do they see her as a portrayal of what they ‘should’ look like? Over the years, Barbie’s empire has been huge, with billions of dolls sold worldwide; however this popularity has declined in recent years, shedding light on the idea that Barbie’s multiple new images are the way forward for the manufacturers from a business perspective, as well as for consumers and psychological reasons.
Elliot and Ruth Handler founded Mattel Creations (who make Barbie) in 1945, and for as long as Barbie has existed she has “always represented the fact that a women has choices.” So in a sense, traditional Barbie taught the past generations that they could aspire to be any kind of career women that they wanted to be. And now, she represents that girls can look any way they want to look. Whatever your feelings are towards the new Barbie’s, it will certainly be interesting to see which one people find the most relatable.