When we were younger, we kinda idolized Barbie. Between the clothes and the houses, the Corvettes and the hunky BF (call us, Ken), girlfriend had it all. Well, everything except a realistically-attainable body.
Barbie has courted controversy since her birth on March 9th, 1959. Her creator, Ruth Handler, based Barbie’s body on a German doll called Lilli, a prostitute gag gift handed out at bachelor parties. Her proportions were designed accordingly. When Handler introduced Barbie (named after her daughter Barbara) in 1959 at the New York Toy Fair, her male competitors laughed her out of the room: nobody, they insisted, would want to play with a doll with breasts.
That's why we were thrilled to hear that for the first time in its 57 year history, Barbie has gotten a body makeover--announced by a TIme Magazine cover no less. In addition to the impossibly-proportioned original, you can now you can buy the doll in tall, petite and curvy sizes. The company hopes that the new dolls, with their diverse body types, along with the new skin tones and hair textures introduced last year, will more closely reflect their young owners’ world.
To which we say, hell yeah!
