On This Day in History: March 9

Barbie

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The original Barbie Doll, and those that followed for decades, had impossible proportions. Still, over a billion of them have been sold. Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, had a radical mastectomy due to breast cancer in 1970. Not satisfied with the prosthetics available and knowing a thing or two about designing artificial breasts, she made her own. 

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 9, 1959--

Ruth married her high school sweetheart Elliot, who went into business with Harold “Matt” Matson to make picture frames. The guys portmanteau-ed their names to create Mattel in 1945. They turned the scraps left over from manufacturing frames into dollhouse furniture, which sold better than the picture frames, and a toy giant was born. Matson got sick and sold his share to the Handlers in the late 1940s and Ruth became company president.

Seeing her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, Ruth said, I know, I’ll give her a plastic Marilyn Monroe if Marilyn ate a dozen amphetamines diet pills a day instead of food. People were like, little girls don’t want to play with voluptuous women and Ruth said you don’t know shit about little girls. On March 9, 1959, the first-ever Barbie Doll debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

Problem was that Ruth kind of stole her design from a German doll called Bild Lilli that was based on a comic strip and sold to adults as a gag. And yeah, Mattel got sued and settled out of court and in 1964, bought the copyright for Bild Lilli.

Parents weren’t real thrilled with those two rockets attached to Barbie’s chest, but you know how kids are. “Mommy, I WANT it!” Like I said, over a billion sold, helped by an aggressive TV advertising campaign. Barbie was one of the first such toys to be marketed that way, and it worked so well other toy manufacturers said holy fucking shit we need to buy up ad space during all those kid shows too!

The company has listened to feedback about the doll, at least some of the time. For the first dozen years Barbie’s eyes were demurely cast off to the side in a “hey big fella I’m just a girly girl and you’re such a manly man and the patriarchy is awesome” kind of way. But since 1971 her eyes have looked forward in more of an “I am woman don’t fuck with me” way.

Regarding the side-eye thing, it’s kind of fucked up that astronaut Barbie was created in 1965, and yet for six years she was continuously looking out the side of the space capsule. She has been one helluva career woman, because accessories sell. She’s been a veterinarian, doctor, marine biologist, park ranger, judge, cop, firefighter, and presidential candidate. As a testament to such evolution, flight attendant Barbie was released in 1961, but it wasn’t until 1990 that airline pilot Barbie finally hit the scene.

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