She’s got blonde hair, blue eyes, a small waist, and long legs. She’s perfection in every sense. One day she’s a doctor, the next a model. Her level of recognition is among the likes of Mickey Mouse and Elvis. However, unlike Elvis, she never ages. At the age of 48 she is as much of a teenager as she was in 1958. She’s perhaps one of the most popular beings in the world, well despite the fact that you have to buy her friends. Her name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, but you can just call her Barbie.

Barbie is possibly one of the biggest icons of the past 50 years. She has grown to represent a culture and more than one generation. But, who exactly is Barbie? To many she is just a popular plaything for girls, and others, a sort of unattainable goal. Everyone seems to have an view on her, but as everyone knows you need to know a bit about something in order to form an adequate opinion. So today I will supply you with the information and the views on Barbie so perhaps you, yourself can make your own judgment on her. So lets put on our comfortable pink pumps, and jump into our pink corvette and first, take a closer look Barbie, next look at the views that people have about her, and finally, take a tiny peek at what is expected for her future.

Barbie made her first debut at the American Toy Fair in New York City in 1959. She was an eleven and a half inch doll with a pony tail and curled bangs, black and white bathing suit, open-toed high heels, sunglasses, earrings, and a sly sideways glance. She was intended as a teenage fashion model and was the first doll on the market of an older age. Despite the fact that buyers at the fair weren’t impressed with the doll she set sale records for Mattel in the market selling 351,000 dolls in her first year. It seems that an older doll was exactly what girls wanted. This is also what Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, noticed in her daughter. Barbara, Barbie’s namesake, and her girlfriends always seemed to enjoy playing with dolls of an older age rather than baby dolls. Since the only adult dolls were made of paper or cardboard, Handler realized the need for a three-dimensional version. Ruth found just such doll on a trip to Germany with her daughter. Her name was Lilli. She was a doll based on the character from a popular comic strip from the magazine, “die Bild-Zeitung.” This doll was originally first marketed to adult men in bars and tobacco shops as a type of pornographic gag gift. Handler bought three Lilli dolls and gave one to her daughter and brought the other two back to Mattel. After some changes to the doll Lilli came back as the new and improved Barbie, a vision of purity and innocence.

In addition to her creation and introduction another important part of Barbie’s history is the introduction of her dreamy beau Ken. Ken was first released in 1961 and stood a whole half inch taller than his bombshell girlfriend. Although there was a wedding dress and tux for the duo right away, Ken was never intended to be Barbie’s husband but was instead intended to stick around as a sort of boy toy for Barbie. But of course Ken stayed by Barbie’s side through thick and thin until their breakup in 2004. It seems that Barbie met a new hunk, namely a cute Australian named Blaine. Sorry Ken.

Throughout her history Barbie has lived a pretty good life. Between all of her real-estate and her abundant wardrobe she would have to have quite the job to live such a lifestyle. Being the modern, multitasking, girl, she is, she has multiple. These jobs range from being a ballerina to professional athlete, from teacher to surgeon, firefighter to astronaut, army officer to UNICEF diplomat. Barbie has worked anywhere and everywhere, even Canada as a Mountie. Thanks to Barbie we are entertained, educated, safe, and healthy.

People have shown their love for Barbie in many ways. There is hardly a Barbie anniversary that goes by without a celebration in New York City. When she turned 16 they renamed part of Times Square Barbie Boulevard for a week. When she turned 24 in 1984 there was a gala in NYC and mayor Ed Koch even declared a Barbie and Ken Day. In 1976 she was named the Doll of the Century and was put in a time capsule to be opened in 2076. She was even put on a stamp in 1999 as part of the Celebrate the Century series. It seems that people have come up with many ways to honor a doll that has come to mean so much to the world.

Barbie has come to mean many different things to people. For some it is a love-hate sort of relationship, for others it’s a complete love for her and everything she stands for. Ruth Handler originally had a very specific idea of what she wanted Barbie to stand for and the kind of ideals she represented. Handler wanted Barbie to serve as an example to help girls imagine what life would be like as they got older. She wanted them to pretend that Barbie was them and get an idea of what their potential was in life. Handler wanted Barbie to be very versatile in order to represent the dreams of every type of girl. This is the reason why Ken was never Barbie’s husband, or why Barbie was never given parents, or why Barbie was never given a daughter. Handler and Mattel didn’t want Barbie to be held down and given a single role of a housewife; they wanted to make it possible for Barbie to be anything any girl could dream up in their own life by promoting gender equality. How could Barbie ever be the most successful businesswoman possible if she was held down by the rigors of being a housewife? By showing them that they can do anything they dream up it keeps girls from limiting themselves to the normal female roles.

Don’t get me wrong though, not all in the world of Barbie is rosy like her aisle at the local Toys ‘R Us store. For as many people that agree with Barbie and what she stands for, there are just as many who don’t . One of the biggest arguments about Barbie and the ideals she is teaching is all over a couple little numbers. Well numbers that mean a lot and numbers that young girls encounter every time they play with Barbie. But still numbers nonetheless.

36-18-33. If Barbie was an actual five foot nine inch tall woman she would have these highly unrealistic measurements. Hard to imagine? That’s probably because that those measurements are highly unlikely for any woman. According to research done at the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, Barbie would be far below the required 17-22 percent of body fat needed to menstruate. I guess it’s a good thing Mattel never gave Barbie children, because they would be a compete miracle. However, Mattel gives a reason for why these measurements are justified. They say that exaggerating Barbie’s proportions so much is needed to make her look natural with clothing on.

But not only is it the measurements of Barbie’s body that strike a nerve with feminists and activists but also the items that Barbie is sold with. These critics assert that the large collection of accessories relating to clothes, hair, and looking pretty causes young girls to focus too much on such shallow things. This is evident in one of the Barbie dolls that has caused the most uproar since her creation. In 1993 Mattel released “Teen Talk Barbie.” She spoke a variety of phrases such as, “Will we ever have enough clothes?” “I love shopping!” and, “Wanna have a pizza party?” One of the possible 270 phrases that could be programmed into these dolls was “Math is hard!” Even though only 1.5% of the dolls said this, it caused people to accuse Mattel of representing women in a bad light. However, this was not the biggest controversy that Mattel has had to deal with in connection to Barbie.

The Barbie doll industry makes about $1.9 Billion a year. That could buy Barbie quite the collection of tiny pink shoes. Mattel has also claimed that approximately three Barbies are sold every second somewhere in the world. It seems that the only way to go is up for Mattel and Barbie sales have been steadily increasing since her introduction. However, recently it seems Barbie has hit a little bump in the road. The competition against her is growing as well and a new brand of dolls “Bratz” is honing in on her territory. It seems that she has already felt the sting of competition as U.S. sales of Barbie decreased by 30% and world sales by 18% in 2005. In order to try and get some buyers back Mattel has decided to change the proportions of Barbie a bit, but not for the reasons you may think. No they are not cracking under the pressure of criticisms of everybody saying Barbie is unrealistic. Mattel simply claims that they are changing her measurements in order for her to “look right” in the popular fashions of today such as the hip huggers. It’s being said that Barbie’s breasts are being cut down, her waist enlarged, and her hips slimmed down. All this for fashion? Quite the price to pay. Hopefully for Barbie the new make-over of her body will help her to attract some of her once skeptical criticizers.

We can assume that there will never be a time when everyone agrees about Barbie. People will always hate to love her and at the same time people will always love to hate her. But now that we’ve taken a closer look at her life, the views that people have about her, and taken a tiny peek at what is expected for her future, hopefully you too will also be able to better understand her. No matter how people feel about her, everyone can agree, her staying power and adaptability is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Although she’s become much more than just the blond haired, blue eyed girl she used to be, she will definitely always be the perfect teenage fashion model that mesmerized the world and generations. She definitely has the world in her tiny plastic hand.