My Blog, Myself

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I was bothered by a factual inconsistency of the piece Our Barbies, Ourselves and decided to research a bit about it.

FThere is such a gross error in what Prager says about who designed Barbie. According to her, "Barbie was designed by a man." That's just factually incorrect. Barbie was based on the design of a German doll known as Bild Lilli. Picture for reference:
Here you can see the resemblance, in terms of proportions to Barbie. Want to take a guess who introduced the idea of replicating this doll? It was actually a female - Ruth Handler, who at the time was an executive at Mattel. A bit of backstory, before she laid eyes on this doll, she was trying to develop a doll that had "an adult body" (Ruth Handler's Wiki Page). Her husband actually suggested that the doll was too "voluptuous." Her family had vacationed to Europe where she brought home the Bild Lilli doll, which was in fact "not a children's toy, but rather an adult gag gift," and was able to convince other Mattel executives on the design. It was not until later that Ryan was brought onto the design of the doll.

Finally, there's just one small detail that I'd like to add. Instead of claiming the plastic figure of the Barbie doll has anything to do with sexualizing it, let's just be logical for a second, Mattel is after all a business, trying to make a profit. The plastic figure was probably done for the sake of cheaper production - just food for thought.


Comments

  1. Sai RavulaFebruary 23, 2020 at 5:47 PM

    I agree in some aspects in regards to your retort on the piece. Barbie has been subject to criticisms on its body image, but the company have tried making efforts to be more inclusive, most likely because it will expand their demographic of customers.

    ReplyDelete

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