Barbie turns 65 in 2024, but she's far from retirement.
Since the high fashion doll burst onto the scene on March 9, 1959, well over a billion Barbies have been sold and she has lived dozens of doll lives, including as a doctor, veterinarian, lawyer, paratrooper, military officer, ambassador, architect, paleontologist, teacher, scientist and even a Star Trek officer. In 2004, she even had a very public breakup with Ken, her long-term boyfriend, but they were back together by 2011.
Barbie's story has a very traditional 1930s beginning. Girl meets boy, falls in love, but wants to go to college. Her parents think she should marry, which she does after graduation. Ruth and Elliot Handler would have two children, Barbie and Ken, who would become famous. Sort of.
Ruth and Elliot Handler, along with their friend Harold Mattson, started a little company that made picture frames in the 1940s. Elliot started using the wood scraps to make doll furniture, and Ruth sold them. It was the beginning of Mattel, though Mattson left the company in 1946.
While visiting Switzerland in 1955, Ruth Handler purchased a German fashion doll based on a cartoon character seen in a West German newspaper. The doll would inspire Ruth to design her first fashion doll and name it after her daughter, Barbie.
Ruth's iconic doll with a high bust, a tiny waist and hips, and permanently arched feet (made for tiny plastic high heels) has been adored by generations of girls, but scorned by some as an unrealistic vision of a woman. Despite criticism of the doll, Ruth had a pro-girl attitude toward dolls. She told one biographer that she thought her own daughter preferred a grownup doll to baby dolls. Ironically, the creator of the doll, once scorned by feminists, was one of the earliest presidents of a large corporation.
Ruth Handler became president of Mattel in 1967. Assisted by her Mattel technologists, Ruth designed more than 125 spinoff dolls from the original Barbie. During the 1960s, the company created some of its most successful products, including the (dreamy!) Ken doll and talking toys Chatty Cathy and See 'N Say.
Handler retired from Mattel in 1974, according to Mattel. But Barbie has no such plans, especially after her 2023 blockbuster hit movie.