Barbie as a role model

When Barbie first appeared as an advertisement in the Mattel catalog in 1959, her most exciting features were highlighted there (Giacomin& Lubinski, 2023). She was advertised as a fashionable grown-up doll for young girls. Barbie should serve as a role model for the children. She should help them to imagine what and who they want to become later on. Ruth wanted children to be able to identify with her, but also wanted Barbie to inspire young girls to dream of a great future (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023& Whiting, 2023). The ability to dress Barbie in different clothes also represented the possibility of making Barbie anything you wanted. There were office clothes, nurse uniforms, prom dresses, and tennis outfits (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023). Ruth invented the doll to encourage young girls that there is not only a possible future as a housewife and mother for them, but that everything is possible in the future (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023 & Kennedy, 2023).

Ruth Handler herself was also a fighter and role model (Kennedy, 2023). As a businesswoman in the 1960s, she has fought all her life to be a respected female leader (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023). All her life she was surrounded by men while she was alone as a woman in the business (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023). Ruth never lost sight of her goals and always had the strength to assert herself. At the same time, it was especially important for her not to lose her own femininity in the male-dominated environment she found herself in (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023). However, in 1970, about 20 years after Barbie was released, Ruth suffered a stroke of fate. That year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, because of which she lost her breast (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023& Whiting, 2023).

“When I conceived Barbie, I believed it was important to a little girl’s self-esteem to play with a doll that has breasts. now I find it even more important to return this self-esteem to women who have lost theirs.”- (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023).

So not only was Barbie a role model for young girls and women, but Barbie also represented an opportunity for Ruth to emancipate herself as a leading entrepreneur and female executive from a male-dominated industry (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023). The Barbie doll represented a new form of the American dream. A feminist form of the American dream in which women can dream of anything (Giacomin & Lubinski, 2023).