Barbieland: The Unauthorized History

“More than the story of a toy, Barbieland is the story of the 20th century.” —Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto

“Eye-opening, provocative, and always, always fun.” —Helaine Olen, author of Pound Foolish

“Barbieland marks the arrival of a brilliant new voice on the American nonfiction scene.” —John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

The explosive true story of Barbie and what Mattel has done to keep her on top.

In June of 1952, German publishing tycoon Axel Springer was sending a new paper to print: a four-page broadsheet that almost ready, save for a narrow blank on the second page. With minutes to spare, Springer commissioned a one-block cartoon of a petite blonde with a predilection for rich men. That blonde was named “Lilli.” But in a span of seven short years, she would be reborn in plastic, across an ocean, and under a different name: Barbara Millicent Roberts.

If Barbie began as a blank space, the world has spent seven decades filling it in. No doll has elicited more adoration from fans, more hatred from detractors, and more eyerolls from the indifferent. To boosters, she is the ultimate symbol of unabashed girlhood, an 11.5-inch figurine who shot to the moon before American women could get credit cards, an evolving illustration that, per one tagline, “we girls can do anything.” To critics, she represents an inane vision of femininity that was going out of style just years after she was “born”—an homage to impossible body proportions, an emblem of Eurocentric beauty standards, a bimbo built on an empire of polyethylene. For everyone else, Barbie is to dolls what Xerox is to copy machines, or Kleenex is to tissues. She is, for better or for worse, an American icon.

Barbie’s conquest over the toy market did not happen by accident. It is the byproduct of meticulous marketing, occasional backstabbing, squadrons of designers with strong opinions on coral lip shades, and covert corporate maneuvers—many of which replicate, in miniature, the economic trajectory of the country Barbie seems to represent.