Barbie goes ‘body positive’

The iconic blonde doll will now be available in realistic body types and skin tones. Will the move find favour with fans

This story begins in the late 1950s. Little Barbara Handler didn’t like to play with the baby dolls that were available in the market for children those days. She preferred to play with a paper doll she’d found, of a lovely woman. If Barbara had been an ordinary child, her penchant for dolls of a particular kind might not have amounted to much. But she was the daughter of Ruth and Elliot Handler, the founders of Mattel Creations. So Ruth set about fashioning a doll with an adult body — based on a “blonde bombshell” German comic strip heroine and doll — and named it “Barbie” after her daughter, unveiling it at the New York Toy Fair in 1959.

Five-and-a-half decades after that first Barbie — available as a blonde or brunette and in a stylishly cut black-and-white one-piece bathing suit — made her appearance; the doll has been given a major makeover by Mattel. Faced with years of ever-louder criticism about how Barbie was promoting a negative body image among the young girls who played with (by presenting being blonde, fair and blue-eyed, with an impossibly cinched-in waist and pert bust and long, limber legs as the ideal of feminine beauty) the company has finally created a line of “body positive Barbies”. Not only do these new batch of Barbie dolls have more varied and realistic figures (some are decidedly curvier and petite, others are tall and athletic), they are also more diverse in their skin tones. Asian and African-American races have also been represented, as opposed to the purely Caucasian model who was so popular before.

The Barbie makeover — the most significant of its kind; although the doll has had reinventions before with different hair colours, as a career woman, with Hispanic and African-American friends etc — has attracted a lot of discussion, not just among fans of the doll or the toy industry, but also parents and academicians. Is the “body positive Barbie” a step in the right direction Or is it too little, too late on the part of creators Mattel

Child psychiatrist Dr Sarita Shah believes the move is a welcome one. “It’s been far too long that young girls have been exposed to a certain standardised idea of beauty. (Dolls like Barbie) actually inspire a child to be like that. And so a lot of body-image issues that manifest themselves in the teenage years actually have their roots in childhood,” says Dr Shah.

In Dr Shah’s opinion, the “body positive” dolls are an opportunity to introduce children to different body shapes and types. “We are a liberal society and we would want our children to be more tolerant and appreciate beauty in every shape, size and colour, wouldn’t we ” says Dr Shah, explaining why she thinks this is a “makeover” that will have positive benefits in the long run.

“A substantial improvement” is how comedienne Aditi Mittal thinks of the move by Mattel. She explains why: “The fact that there will be new (and more realistic) body images to emulate is pretty great. But nothing can ever be perfect. In the context of objectifying women in toys, one may argue that dolls altogether need to be banned, which is not likely to happen! But the body positive Barbie is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Mattel officials had said that manufacturing constraints at their plants had prevented them from making a move of this sort earlier — although the rationale seems to have been taken with a pinch of salt by industry watchers. But its new initiative seems already to have paid off. The New York Times reported yesterday that the company had posted an increase in its quarterly net results (for Oct-Dec 2015) for the first time in two years — and that sales of Barbies had recovered. Closer to home, the popular toy store Hamleys in Lower Parel continued to see a brisk demand in Barbies.

When The Mumbai Age contacted the store, a representative told us, “It is mostly children between the ages of three to six who buy the Barbies, and the demand for particular models of Barbie varies, depending on the advertisement they’ve seen most recently on TV. Currently, the Barbie that is selling the most is ‘Rainbow Hair Barbie’ — you can colour and wash her hair.” On an average, 20 dolls are sold every day at Hamleys, the store representative said; on weekends, that number rises to 35. Prices range between `499-5,000 (for the collectors’ edition dolls). A dollhouse for Barbie retails at `20,000. The doll has somehow managed to stay relevant even in the era when children as young as one and two are beginning to play with smartphones and tablets.

Mumbai resident Harsha Shivhare, whose seven-year-old daughter Biha loves her Barbies, says that having the doll in different skin tones is quite a good thing. “My daughter studies in an international school, and most of her classmates are foreigners. So, those kids often ask questions like “Why are you brown ” or “Why are you black ” In the school, they have a strict policy and they call it racism, but I completely understand. (Even my daughter) is curious since she has never seen such people around her. With the newer doll models, I think at least children will have the knowledge that in this world, different kinds of people exist, and it will affect them in a positive way,” says Harsha.

Harsha and several other Barbie fans also feel that the controversy around the doll has been blown out of proportion. “I don’t know why everything has become such a sensitive issue for people these days Barbie was supposed to be a bombshell, I would rather let her be,” said Divya Iyer, a PR professional whose favourite toy growing up was a Barbie. Another grown-up Barbie fan, freelance writer Hina Shaikh, says that while she certainly played with her fair share of Barbies as a little girl, she was never influenced by the doll’s physicality. “If anything, I might have aspired to the Barbie ‘lifestyle’ — all the gorgeous stuff she had, furniture, the townhouse and travel accessories and suchlike. To me, Barbie was all about the glamour and the fashion,” says Hina.

Harsha Shivhare adds that it is adults rather than children who seem to have the most issue with Barbie and what she may/may not represent. “Barbie is projected as a fashionista and I think that is what most girls like most about the doll, in addition to the accessories that come along with her. Girls of Biha’s age are not quite affected as far as body image is concerned. But in the long run, I guess that might influence them.”

As for Biha Shivhare, Barbie is quite the “status symbol” among her friend set. “Biha is very close to her Barbie and all her peers have Barbies too. In fact, they keep track of ‘Who has the entire collection Who has the latest model ’” says her mom Harsha.

With its “four body types (the original and three new), seven skin tones, 22 eye colours, 24 hairstyles and countless on-trend fashions and accessories” as part of its new “body positive” line, we’re guessing Biha and her friends will have a whole lot of catching up to do.