It’s Still Barbie’s World

At the latest celebration of the world’s most famous doll, everything is pink.

People speak in hushed tones, pointing out their favorite — the one they had, or wanted desperately — and laugh with childish wonder about the fantastical stories they used the curvy, 11.5 inch figure to tell. Strangers of all ages swap tales and compare models. Some recall being forbidden to own the doll, with its rather sexy adult body; some profess disinterest or even disdain; and others wonder about how sustainable it is to produce so many of the plastic figures that three are sold every second.

Love her or hate her, Barbie — 65 this year and still basking in the glow of her recent Hollywood success — has a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of adults and children alike. At “Barbie: The Exhibition,” running through Feb. 23, 2025, at the Design Museum in London, 180 chronologically displayed dolls and accessories chart her aesthetic and sociocultural shifts.

The show opens with the original: the first Barbie ever, spotlit on a pedestal where she turns slowly in her strapless black-and-white-striped bathing suit, her tiny feet wedged into precariously high kitten-heel sandals, her blonde ponytail coif immaculate. Nearby, the first commercial for the doll plays on a monitor, its sugary sweet jingle drifting through subsequent rooms: “Barbie’s small and so petite, her clothes and figure look so neat!” and “Purses hats and gloves galore, and all the gadgets gals adore! Barbie, beautiful Barbie …”

When Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel in 1945 and acted as its first president, conceived of Barbie in the early 1950s, it was as an alternative to the omnipresent baby doll, which she thought — watching her daughter play — automatically socialized young girls for marriage and motherhood.

Barbie, launched to some skepticism from male executives in 1959, was an adult woman with a glamorous interchangeable wardrobe, offering more role play options. For parents spooked by Barbie’s maturity, Mattel developed more benign options, including a freckled best friend, Midge (1963) and little sister Skipper (1964). Ken, Barbie’s devoted boyfriend, appeared in 1961, with a head of strange velvet hair. And so, the franchise grew and grew.