Barbie: is she the real creator of the doll in the film with Margot Robbie?

Warning, this article contains spoilers for the Barbie movie.

Have you seen Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and wondered who the woman Will Ferrell introduced as “a ghost that haunts Mattel’s premises”?

This is Ruth Handler, the creator of the Barbie doll. Died in 2002, the latter is embodied on screen by the actress Rhea Perlman already seen in Matilda, Cheers, and The Mindy Project. The latter appears at the end of the film as a meta wink, it is she who will lead her “creation” towards her emancipation.

Thanks to her creator, Barbie will dare to assert herself and take her destiny into her own hands.

The Creation of Barbie

In 1959, Ruth Handler discovered that her daughter Barbara, then 10 years old, was abandoning her dolls in favor of paper dolls which often represented movie stars or music. The mother of the family therefore imagined an adult plastic doll, far removed from the eternal babies offered at the time.

She then submits the idea to her husband Elliot Handler and his collaborator Harold “Matt” Matson, at the head of Mattel (contraction of their two names), a company manufacturing frames. But the two men then think that this toy would be unsaleable.

During a trip to Europe, Ruth Handler discovers the Bild Lili fashion doll from the German company O. & M. Hausser. Originally it is a character from Reinhard Beuthien’s comic strip, published in the German newspaper Bild Zeitung.

Ruth decides to be inspired by it and redesigns her new doll which she baptizes Barbie, nickname given to her daughter Barbara. At the end of the feature film, when Margot Robbie decides to become human and gives her name, she says her name is Barbara Handler and not Barbara Millicent Roberts, which is the doll’s full name. A nod to the designer.

Presented at the New York Toy Fair on March 9, 1959, the Barbie doll terrified young girls and became a huge success around the world.

Ruth Handler then decided to create Ken, this time taking inspiration from the first name of her son Kenneth. It should also be noted that all the characters in the Barbie universe bear the first names of friends of the Handler family. Thus, Allan (played by Michael Cera in the film) is the first name of the husband of her daughter Barbara, the producer Allan Segal.

For Ruth Handler, creating an adult doll was important so that little girls could imagine being something other than a mother. This is also explained in the opening scene of the feature film which parodies that of 2001, Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. The most assiduous spectators will have noticed the many other cinematographic references in Greta Gerwig’s film.

Warner Bros.

Controversy

But very quickly Barbie is controversial. His physique, and in particular his chest circumference, are criticized and deemed unrealistic. Many experts say that Barbie makes girls complex because of her measurements.

In 1990, Mattel decided to make some changes to its famous doll and reduced its chest size. The company launches different ranges: Barbie dream jobs, Barbie Princess, Barbie Fashionistas and over the years diversifies its dolls with different colors, different sizes and even disabilities so that each child can find himself in a Barbie or a Ken.

So many dolls that are found in Greta Gerwig’s film and which were THE condition imposed by Margot Robbie on Mattel to embody the “stereotype” doll.

Led by Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Michael Cera, Issa Rae, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Dua Lipa or even Kingsley Ben-Adir, Barbie is to be seen in theaters now.