It’s Barbie’s world right now, and we’re just living in it.
With excited moviegoers riding the wave of nostalgia in the run-up to the star-studded Barbie hitting theaters later this month, it’s fitting that Director Susan Stern has released the 25th Anniversary Director’s Cut of her documentary, Barbie Nation: An Authorized Tour on digital platforms. Originally released in 1998, the film is a crash course on all things Barbie, from the doll’s history to the cultural phenomenon it spawned.
As someone that spent a good deal of my own childhood playing with Barbie dolls, I didn’t actually know all that much about the doll’s origin or Mattel’s founders. And Barbie Nation does a tremendous job of schooling its viewers on the history of the original doll. Moments into the documentary, audiences are introduced to Mattel Co-Founder Ruth Handler, who is first shown at an official Mattel Barbie Festival meeting Barbie fans.
In a riveting sit-down interview footage shown throughout the film, Ruth shares how the initial inspiration for the doll partly derived from her seven-year-old daughter, who played with paper dolls and took note that they were always adult paper dolls. She felt that the paper dolls should be “three-dimensionalized,” which she pitched to her husband Elliot and their factory designers.
“I found a hole in the market,” Ruth said, explaining that there were baby dolls for little girls to play mommy and companion dolls to hang with a girlfriend; however, there wasn’t an adult doll available. Mattel’s Barbie would go on the market in 1959.
The film features a trove of information, from Barbie’s design being based on a doll named Lilli, who, as the documentary reveals, was “modeled on a floozy from a German tabloid–who knew?–to fans of the doll being sued in the ‘90s by Mattel for unauthorized use of Barbie’s image.
Highlighted throughout the film are different Barbie collectors and players, and new to this 25th Anniversary Director’s Cut of Barbie Nation is the inclusion of Marcella, a collector of Black Barbie dolls who began collecting as an adult after revisiting the first Barbie she owned at age 11.
The segment is brief, and ultimately, it feels like a missed opportunity for the film to discuss the history of the Black Barbie dolls further, as the audience learns very little aside from the fact that they exist. According to the New-York Historical Society, the dark-complected Francie doll was released nearly a decade after the original Barbie was released in 1967. A year later, in 1968, Mattel introduced Christie. And as Marcella shares in the documentary, the first Black Barbie was released in 1980.
What was special about playing with Barbie growing up is that it could spark the imaginations of young girls and boys, allowing them to express themselves through the stories they dream up for their dolls. As Barbie Nation reveals, this hobby doesn’t always end after childhood.
Players Caroline and Barbara set their Barbies in scenes of a sexually-explicit nature, featuring custom accouterments on their Barbies and Kens. And then there’s Allen’s Heavenly Valley of dolls, featuring much tamer party and community scenes.
The film doesn’t shy away from addressing criticism of the doll and how beauty standards affect young girls that play with Barbies. Two young girls, Nora and Claire, while they joke about Barbie’s body, they matter-of-factly share, “If you’re not a little pretty, then you won’t have any friends.” It certainly calls for some reflection on the influence of Barbie.
Barbie Nation succeeds in highlighting the different attitudes toward Barbie. It’s clear that the doll represents very different things to different people. While the history of the original Barbie could have been its own film, adding insight from both fans and detractors offers different viewpoints on how the doll continues to make an impact decades after hitting shelves.
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