Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Bethenny Frankel calls for reality show strikes, Mandy Moore hits the picket line, and Fortune reporter Jane Thier probes whether Barbie moves the cultural icon beyond her past tropes. Have a restful weekend!
- Come on, Barbie. If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the flamingo-pink press, here’s today’s big news: Warner Bros.’s Barbie is now in theaters. Tens of thousands of fans already have tickets. At least some movie-goers—The Broadsheet included—will be watching to see if the film can make the much-maligned cultural icon-turned-Big Screen star palatable to her detractors.
The question of Barbie’s suitability for young girls is as much a fixture of the zeitgeist as Barbie herself. Barbie’s original inventors conceived of the doll as an aspirational figure; in Barbie, a little girl could envision her future self.
But from the start, Barbie had her critics. Way back in 1958, mothers criticized Barbie for having “too much of a figure.” Over the years, many feminists have accused Mattel, the doll’s maker, of enforcing harmful, retrograde values and poor body image. A 1965 Barbie came with a guide on how to lose weight with one entry stating, “Don’t eat.” An early-90s Barbie included a voice that said, “Math class is tough!”
Barbie’s persona also glossed over the realities of her early years. As the New York Times points out, Barbie owned her Dreamhouse and pink convertible as of 1962, when women were often denied mortgages and credit cards. In 2018, Gloria Steinem said she was “so grateful” she didn’t grow up with Barbie, adding that the doll was “everything we didn’t want to be and were told to be.”
The impression of Barbie as a symbol of society’s worst female stereotypes stuck. Richard Dickson, Mattel president and chief operating officer, told Fortune at Cannes Lions last month that in 2014, internal market research revealed Barbie’s appeal was diminishing, and she was unable to “inspire and represent diversity.” Mattel’s verdict: Barbie desperately needed to get with the times.
So the company set out to reverse a record-breaking sales decline in the mid-2010s with rebranding and a reconsideration of purpose. With an eye towards inclusion, in 2015, it unveiled a Zendaya Barbie in 2015, and then a Tall, Petite, and Curvy Barbie in 2016; President Barbie made her debut that year, too.
The changes worked. In 2020, Barbie doll sales raked in $1.35 billion, 16% year-over-year growth. Mattel chalked that up to the pandemic-era boom in toy sales but maintained that it “significantly outpaced” the industry. Mattel has continued evolving, and has since sold Barbie dolls with Down’s Syndrome, hearing aids, and wheelchairs.
The Barbie movie is another opportunity to recast the doll’s image. Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s chairman and CEO, told Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast last week that the film is “multidimensional: fun and funny. It’s smart and innovative, it’s lighthearted and happy, [and] emotional and inspirational.”
Interestingly, another Mattel exec, Robbie Brenner, told Time what the film is not: “a feminist movie.”
Margot Robbie, who plays the titular character, seems to disagree. She told the New York Times that her version of Barbie is “so iconic, but she’s also so complicated,” adding that the movie “runs towards” many of the brand’s decades-old contradictions. In the movie, a real-world teenager tells Barbie she’s the definition of “unrealistic physical ideals, sexualized capitalism and rampant consumerism.”
Likewise, director Greta Gerwig has told Barbie-goers to expect her usual feminist flair from the movie, with a healthy dose of cheeriness and thoughtfulness.
Early reviews suggest Gerwig succeeded in moving Barbie beyond her past tropes. “The Oscar-nominated filmmaker has crafted a fierce, funny, and deeply feminist adventure that dares you to laugh and cry, even if you're made of plastic,” Entertainment Weekly gushed. If viewers agree, Barbie’s image might get its greatest overhaul yet.
Jane Thier
jane.thier@fortune.com
@thier_jane
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