Review: Barbie: Her Inspiration, Story, and Legacy by Robin Gerber

Disclosure: I received an advance review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Now I know that Barbie doesn’t really have anything to do with classic rock, but I really enjoyed the Barbie movie and when I saw there was a coffee table book coming out about Barbie available to review, I jumped on it, especially with Women’s History Month happening now and this year being the 65th anniversary of Barbie. If you’re a Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z, you’ve never lived in a world without Barbie. How awesome is that! With it being International Women’s Day today, I think it’s the perfect day to publish this book review.

I remember when I was younger, Barbie was seen as one of the worst things for women’s rights because she’s skinny, pretty, and blonde. Even in university, I’d see pop feminist graphics that scaled up a Barbie doll and show how unrealistic her proportions are and how that’s bad for women’s self esteem or whatever. People see her as perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards and setting women’s liberation back by decades. This is all a complete misrepresentation of Barbie and we saw that myth dispelled in Greta Gerwig’s film last year. All the women in Barbie Land were Barbie. Barbie is Black, Barbie is Asian, Barbie is Hispanic, Barbie is a doctor, writer, lawyer, judge, president, astronaut, any job out there you can think of! Before Barbie, all the dolls girls would play with were babies and girls would pretend to be mothers, but the introduction of Barbie was a game changer because she’s a grown woman with her own job, no kids, and she’s not married. Nope, Ken is not her husband! Barbie is her own person and she shows that girls can be anything, a very important message during the second wave feminism years of the mid 20th century.

Robin Gerber previously wrote a biography about Barbie’s creator Ruth Handler called Barbie and Ruth and now she’s back with this coffee table book celebrating 65 years of Barbie from its humble beginnings in the 50s with Ruth and Elliot Handler starting a toy company with their friend Harold Matson (Mattel is a portmanteau of Matson and Elliot) to it becoming an ever-evolving cultural phenomenon and more than just a doll.

This book shows how much of an entrepreneur Ruth Handler was. She was calling the shots and coming up with the creative ideas. Early on Mattel made music and cowboy themed toys, but these were nothing compared to Barbie. Before Barbie, girls could play pretend with paper dolls with interchangeable outfits, but she wanted to take that concept from 2D to 3D, a doll would take that to the next level. During the postwar years there was a lot of prosperity so people had more disposable income to spend on things like toys for their kids and finally you had the concept of teenagers – they’re not quite kids, but they’re also not fully grown adults. While Ruth Handler had a lot of confidence in her idea and believed it would succeed, the men at Mattel thought that no parent would buy their daughters a dolls with a fully developed figure. However, during a trip to Europe she saw the German Lilli doll and knew her idea had potential. A lot of work went into designing and manufacturing Barbie and her accessories. It was truly an international effort, as the doll was originally manufactured in Japan and Handler hired a renowned Austrian psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Richter to market Barbie as something aspirational. Finally in 1959, the first Barbie was introduced with her blonde hair in a ponytail, her fringe curly and short, and wearing that iconic black and white striped swimsuit, as modelled by Margot Robbie in the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired opening scene of Barbie.

Surprisingly Barbie wasn’t a hit straight away and at the Toy Fair in New York, many buyers turned their noses up, but things changed within a couple months and dolls were flying off the shelves and Mattel couldn’t keep up with demand. It took them three years to catch up with the backlog of orders. Ruth Handler expected it to be a fad, but instead it became a cultural phenomenon with a fan club starting in the 60s and the Barbie universe expanding with more characters like Ken, Skipper, Midge, and Christie and more career and sport themed outfits thanks to customer feedback. They even made a Twiggy Barbie – the very first celebrity Barbie! Within a decade of launch, Ruth Handler became a millionaire. Decades later, Barbie became more diverse with celebrities becoming Barbies, like Zendaya, Chloe Kim, Misty Copeland, and Ava DuVernay. Historical figures too! Like Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, and Katherine Johnson. Barbie also reached out to fashion houses like Oscar De La Renta, YSL, Versace, Dior, Bob Mackie, Moschino, and Christian Louboutin for collaborations and some of their designs were made miniature for Barbie and more accessible to the masses, now everyone can have a piece of designer clothing. Andy Warhol even painted a portrait of Barbie, which his friend BillyBoy* sold for over $1.1 million. Barbie has ended up in museums like the Louvre and is a whole franchise with computer games, publications, books, all sorts of media all about her. Growing up I loved playing the Barbie hair styling computer game, even though I was a bit of a tomboy.

There are lots of beautiful vintage pictures and as a vintage fashion nerd, I love it! If you’re a fan of the Barbie movie and want to know more about the history, it’s a great read. It’s the perfect book for any Barbie enthusiast and if you love the mid 20th century, the aesthetic of the photos is heavenly. So much behind the scenes information on Barbie like the marketing and business side of things and the manufacturing and history of dolls. This book isn’t just beauty, there’s brains behind it too. There are many valuable marketing lessons to be learnt from Barbie. There’s so much more to Barbie than you think!