Barbie: Thanks, Ruth Handler! Here’s what you need to know about the iconic doll’s mother

• The film “Barbie” tells the story of a very special doll.
• It was a woman named Ruth Handler who created Barbie in the 1950s and brought it into numerous children’s rooms.
• But without a German comic artist that might never have happened.

In Greta Gerwig’s new film “Barbie” we experience the extraordinary adventure of a stereotypical Barbie. The doll, embodied by Margot Robbie, is the first version of Barbie released by Mattel in 1959.

But the film notes that the original portrayal of Barbie is outdated and few women can live up to her ideal. Mattel also recognized this and over the past 60 years has brought numerous different Barbies onto the market: fat, thin, tall, small and with physical disabilities.

But as “wrong” as the values ​​of the first Barbie may be, she still has a very important place, and not just because she was the first. Inventor Ruth Handler had a very precise idea for her doll. There was a reason she made Barbie look like we all know her. This was also presented to us in the first teaser for “Barbie”.

In 1945, along with her husband Elliot and a mutual friend named Harold Matson, Ruth started a small company called Mattel, making picture frames and doll furniture. During a trip to Europe, she then discovered a doll in a shop window that inspired her to create Barbie.

Barbie’s role model was called Lilli and was initially just a cartoon character intended to fill in the gaps in the first issue of the BILD newspaper in 1952. The character of the Hamburg caricaturist Reinhard Beuthien quickly became a success and so the Axel-Springer-Verlag had dolls made of the lusty-looking female character. Ruth saw these and decided to add dolls to her company’s Mattel range.

Just like Lilli, she wasn’t a little baby, as is so often the case, but a grown woman whose main concern was to dress her in beautiful clothes. With her toys, Ruth wanted to boost young girls’ self-esteem, with her own daughter Barbara in mind.

Barbie was also named after her, because the full name of the doll is actually Barbara Millicent Roberts, Barbie for short. That’s why Ruth is also a part of the “Barbie” movie because she is the doll’s mother, literally, after all she named her toy after her daughter.

Ruth allowed Barbie to do anything and any profession there is and set a good example. In 1967, the Mattel co-founder became the company’s president. In those days, a woman in such a high position was a rarity. So Ruth proved that women really could do any job. Even if it’s not as easy in real life as it is for a doll.

Thanks to Lilli, Ruth and Barbara Handler, Barbie became a worldwide success and still inspires millions of people today. Incidentally, Barbie only became a success in Germany after Mattel bought the marketing rights to BILD-Lilli from Axel-Springer-Verlag.