New Barbie Ad Shows Girls Already Have Confidence [Video]
Mattel’s bestselling doll, 56-year-old Barbie, has had over 150 careers so far, but she doesn’t just want little girls to pretend to be professors, veterinarians, or soccer coaches at home — she wants them to be these professions and beyond, too. In the latest Barbie promotional commercial on YouTube, hidden cameras (according to the video description) follow five young girls as they act out grown-up roles in real life. “What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?” the video asks. You don’t actually see any Barbie dolls until 1:30 into the clip, when one of the girls, Gwyneth, lecturing about the brain in front of a college auditorium, is suddenly lecturing to her dolls at home.
Professor Gwyneth lectures on the brain. (Source: Mattel/YouTube)
All five of the girls, from Professor Gwyneth to Doctor Brooklyn to Coach Maddie, are confident in their grown up roles and squeaky voices. “Good morning everyone. My name is Maddie. Nice to meet you,” says Coach Maddie to a men’s soccer team. She, rocking a pink jersey and braids, stands at least one foot shorter than the shortest of the team, but that doesn’t stop her from blowing her whistle and urging them to pull their “knees up, like a unicorn.” They laugh — but they also listen.
Giving a tour on dinosaurs. (Source: Mattel/YouTube)
The Barbie brand is not without its criticisms. When Barbie was conceived as a teenage fashion doll based on a German adult pinup doll called Lilli, Barbie doll creator Ruth Handler was criticized for sexualizing children’s dolls. “Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future,” Handler told The New York Times in 1977. More recently, Salon writer Sarah Gray critiqued Entrepreneur Barbie, which was endorsed by entrepreneurs like Reshma Saujani from Girls Who Code, for being a “modern woman with her smartphone and her tablet stuck in a sexist, outdated, dangerous representation of femininity.”
Barbie ran for President of the United States in 2004. (Photo: Mattel)
But this hasn’t stopped Mattel from pushing Barbie as a figure of not just female empowerment, but also possibilities. In 1985, she was a business executive in a business suit. In 1992, she was a rap musician. In 1997, she was a paleontologist. In 2004 and 2012, she was running for President of the United States. (Never give up.) This new video from Mattel does not pander to the condescending idea that girls are insecure — it assumes that girls are confident, and that they have every right to be confident.
A veterinarian at work. (Source: Mattel/YouTube)
In her autobiography, Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story, Handler wrote: “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.” Barbie, after all, went to the moon four years before Neil Armstrong did, and her famous #squad of Skipper, Stacie, Chelsea, Midge, and Ken existed before Taylor Swift was even born. It appears that “when girls are free to imagine they can be anything,” they always take the lead.
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