The Sebinomics Blog 1.0

Barbie celebrates her 50th birthday today and she still looks as young as she looked like in 1959. Ken, Barbie’s long-time boyfriend, might be very happy that she didn’t change much, but from a marketers point of view, that might be one of the reasons why the plastic doll is not as popular among kids anymore as she used to be.

Barbie in 1959

Forbes’ Barbie Turns 50 special report states that “She is an American icon, a business phenomenon and a real doll. Since her introduction on March 9, 1959, Mattel has sold more than 1 billion Barbie dolls, nearly 100 million of those last year alone. She is the ultimate career woman (108 different jobs); a strong, single woman (she dumped Ken in 2004); and a three-time presidential candidate. Along the way she has fired the ambitions of countless little girls.” Very impressive. Nonetheless, “barbie’s body has come under criticism for offering girls unrealistic expectations of womanhood, and even for inspiring eating disorders and related pathologies,” as designboom.com wrote in an article.

Elisabeth Eaves paraphrases and quotes Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, in her Why Does The Barbie Obsession Live On? article “Barbie is fascinating in part because she discomforts, which she does by shining a light where we don’t want to look, specifically on children’s sexuality. She didn’t become controversial with the rise of feminism’s second wave in the 1960s; rather, she was a source of contention from the very beginning.” Eaves continues, “The inspiration behind [Barbie inventor and Mattel co-founder Ruth] Handler’s invention, [Robin Gerber] repeatedly said, was her observation that “little girls just wanted to be bigger girls.” They didn’t want the pudgy baby dolls foisted on them throughout the 1940s and ’50s, they wanted dolls they could pretend to be, with grown-up clothes, cars, and, yes, breasts. Translated into an actual woman, the original Barbie’s proportions would have been about 39-21-33.”

“Love them or hate them, everybody knows Barbie dolls. And this year, Barbie turns 50. When she first showed up in 1959 — with those mile-long legs and trunks of cloths and, for heaven’s sakes, breasts — Barbie was rejected as way too sexual for American girls. Then she conquered the world. Feminists hated her impossibly svelte figure. Barbies flew off the shelves anyway,” says Tom Ashbrook from On Point on NPR. 

Barbie's competition: Hannah Montana

In my opinion, Barbie should be aging like all public figures. You cannot expect any character to stay the same for decades. Everyone needs to go through significant changes and adapt to the times and the generation running that period in time. That is what movie directors and producers do with James Bond movies. Sure, Barbie started in 1959 looking like Brigitte Bardot, and in 1969 with the rise of a multicultural America, the first Afro-American Barbie hit the shelves. Unfortunately, not much happened to Barbie, except maybe breaking up with Ken in 2004 and becoming a bad role model to girls that played too much with the super-blonde. According to a survey conducted in the 90s by the University of Sussex, girls who played ‘a lot’ with Barbie dolls were rather unhappy with their bodies when they grew up. I am not quite sure what the survey meant by ‘a lot’ but it is a fact that after her market introduction, the western world became barbie-anized with a wrong image of beauty.

Barbie might have made many girls’ dreams come true in the past, and it might also be true that designers still think that Barbie is the non plus ultra of all dolls. Fact is that sales have been decreasing and competitors like the Hannah Montana fashion dolls might be more attractive to older girls. Maybe it is time for Barbie to retire and to hand over to a new bread of plastic girls that fit more into our time. As TODAYShow.com contributor Keosha Johnson wrote, “Barbie has left behind an enviable legacy that will allow her to retire with satisfaction — if she ever does.”