Since 1959, Barbie Dolls have been catering to the imaginations of children. According to barbie.com, from the time of its’ creation 57 years ago, the dolls’ looks have transformed greatly to fit in with each generation. This generation is focused on change and diversity so naturally, Barbie Dolls are too.
When the racial equality movement started becoming increasingly more relevant in America in 1968, the first African American Barbie, often referred to as “Christie”, was created according to the New York Times. Soon after that, the first Hispanic Barbie hit the stores.
The New York Times also notes that when Barbie started getting backlash about her “ironic gender roles”, including her overly-feminine jobs she had and the very girly outfits she wore, Mattel, the toy company who owns Barbie, announced that they were going to make athletic dolls and dolls who were businesswomen.
Fast-forward to 2016 and Barbie’s body is “no longer one size fits all”, New York Times author Rachel Abrams said in her New York Times story on Thursday, January 28th. Abrams writes that, “Mattel unveiled curvy, petite and tall versions of its iconic fashion doll whose unrealistically thin shape has attracted criticism for decades”, and notes that, “The three body types will also be sold in an assortment of skin tones, eye colors and hairstyles.”
The world erupted with both positive and negative views on these new and diverse dolls. According to the New York Times, Ann Ducille, the professor of American and African-American literature at the University of California, San Diego, quoted that a black mother who bought her daughter one of the new racially diverse dolls to play with, heard her daughter still ask her for “The real Barbie.”
Even though all children might not be too fond of the changes, one 24-year old woman loved the new Barbie’s so much she decided to take the doll and put her own diverse spin on it. Hannefah Adam created The Hijarbie, the world’s first Hijab wearing Barbie Doll and told Buzzfeed in a recent interview that she makes all of the doll clothes herself and that the clothes are inspired by every day look of the Muslin girl. She said she wanted to represent her Muslin background, Muslim culture, and Muslim religion and inspire other young Muslin girls to do the same.
According to USA Today, Adam’s posts photos on her Instagram account of the dolls, and has gotten an immense amount of positive feedback. On February 9th, USA Today author Madison Izsler interviewed the Hijarbie creator and said that, “Adam posted the first photo of Hijarbie, clad in a bright blue skirt and black hijab, eight weeks ago and has already garnered more than 24,000 followers.” And, Instagram users aren’t the only ones who have fallen in love with the sudden doll diversity.
Here at Winthrop University, the students and faculty pride themselves in their diversity, and according to the official Winthrop University webpage, “Winthrop University’s student body totals more than 6,000 and is composed of individuals from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds who make up approximately 38% of the university’s population.”
Even though the school filled with these diverse students that are old enough to vote, drink alcohol and own their own homes, they are still up to date with all the changes and modernizations of toys today and like the rest of the world, have mixed views about the new Barbie dolls.
Alina Abedin, junior Integrated Marketing Communication major, was one student who had some of these mixed comments to make about Barbie’s makeover.
“I do like the dolls! I think it was a big change for the Barbie brand to take on. It’s great that they have created dolls that fit all different body types, skin colors, heights and more,” Abedin said. “However, while it is an empowering change, I don’t know if it was really necessary. Barbie’s are just toys after all and were never made to look like real people.”
Abedin helps make up the 38% of Winthrop’s diversity, and has a different cultural background than most. She said that she is Indian and has been raised in an Indian background and culture.
“Though I do really love the idea of diversity in these dolls, I never felt insecure about myself because I was different than the dolls,” Abedin said. “I didn’t look exactly like Barbie looks, but I still loved to play with her as a kid.”Abedin was among one of the millions in America who played with the infamous doll, but in some households Barbie wasn’t present.
John Hembree, a junior and a Business Administration major said that growing up he never remembered his sisters playing with Barbie Dolls.
“It wasn’t that they weren’t allowed to play with Barbie Dolls because of the ‘insecurity stigma’ most women think it causes in young girls, it was just because my parents simply never bought my sisters those types of dolls,” Hembree said. “They still played with dolls, however, and the dolls they played with were still skinny, still white, and still looked like the same, generic doll.”
Hembree said that he doesn’t think young girls look at toys and think about them in depth, and said that “if a girl has an insecurity issue when she’s older, it’s not because of a doll she played with when she was a child.”
Hembree said that he thinks it’s good that they’re putting effort into diversity in toys, but that he wouldn’t want his own future children playing with the different sized Barbie Dolls because “children are cruel and this might encourage cruelty in pointing out people’s differences in a negative way.”
Catherine Lowe, junior Mass Communication major disagrees with Hembree and thinks the dolls bring nothing but positivity.
“I love the fact that the new Barbie dolls are replicating real women. It definitely takes the pressure off of women to have the “perfect body”. And, as we all know, there’s no such thing as the perfect body,” Lowe said. “I would want my daughter to have one of each doll because I want to show her that there are different kinds of girls in the world. I want to make her aware of the different shapes and sizes that women come in.”
According to the New York Times, Barbie has been responsible for eating disorders in girls and have been blamed for the problems women have with insecurity today, which is why Lowe is so gung-ho about the real dolls.
“Women are short, women are tall, women are skinny, women are big. Women are black, women are white, women wear Hijabs, women wear hats. Every single woman is beautiful in their own way and the new Barbie Dolls, both the new size-diverse Mattel Barbie Dolls and the culturally-diverse Hijarbie Barbie Dolls, prove just that.”