Ruth Handler: The Barbie inventor who revolutionalised prosthetic breasts and narrowly avoided prison
Barbie wasn’t like other dolls in the toybox. When her controversially adult form – pink lips, dinky waist, big breasts – hit store shelves in 1959, she revolutionised play. Until then, “dolls” had meant “baby dolls” that invited just one mode of pretend: a little girl could imagine the dutiful mother or sister – the caretaker, really – she was expected to be.
Barbara Millicent Roberts, or “Barbie”, was different. A girl could daydream about the woman she would become, what job she would work or what clothes she would wear. A baby doll suggested one future; a Barbie doll suggested all of them. For all her specific and derided physical features – her whiteness, her blondeness, her thinness – she was also a blank sheet of paper. Which is just how Barbie’s mom intended it.
“The whole idea was that a little girl could dream dreams of growing up, and every grown-up that she saw had breasts,” said Ruth Handler, Barbie’s female inventor. Handler, who died in 2002, had to fight the prudish male execs at Mattel Toys for every perky millimetre.
