The Tina Turner Barbie Doll. — Mattel/TNS
WHEN I was seven years old, Barbie was my first doll that might need a job instead of a diaper change. I imagined my Barbie as an archaeologist or a veterinarian or, a few years later when the space race began, an astronaut. Her future was unfettered.
In 1961, Mattel released the first Ken doll. For one year only, the debut Ken had flocked felt hair. And, woe is me, my Ken doll started going bald.
At age 10, I wrote a complaint letter to Mattel – and got action. They sent me a new Ken head with blond plastic hair. By popping the heads on and off, my Barbie could have two boyfriends – a wise, balding older guy or a somewhat clueless but hunky surfer dude.
That experience of my successful complaint letter led me to consumer advocacy.
As a lawyer, I analyse the impact of new technologies on ordinary people. I chaired the ethics advisory board to the Human Genome Project and worked on laws to prevent employment and insurance discrimination against people who were healthy currently but whose genes indicated a higher chance of cancer or heart disease later in life. When Facebook started invading people’s privacy, I wrote a Social Network Constitution and helped pass laws ensuring people the same online rights to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of association they had offline.
Other women got a head start thinking about careers from Barbie as well. In 1986, Mattel released the board game We Girls Can Do Anything. The playing pieces reflected your aspirations – including doctor, pilot, musician or fashion designer. Television ads for the game had the refrain, “Nothing worth doing that we girls can’t do.” Although, in looking at the game pieces, you had to do everything (even major surgery) wearing hot pink dresses and high heels.
Empowering girls
When the Barbie brand took a misstep on the career issue, the base pushed back. Teen Talk Barbie, released in 1992, uttered the phrase, “Math class is tough.” Way to discourage girls from considering careers in STEM! Activists calling themselves the Barbie Liberation Organization visited stores, bought talking Barbies and G.I. Joes and switched the voice boxes. Then they put the dolls back on the shelf.
Customers who unwittingly bought the altered dolls found themselves with G.I. Joes that said, “Let’s plan our dream wedding” and Barbies that shouted, “Eat lead, Cobra.”
Within a few months, Mattel dropped that phrase – and even offered to replace the dolls that claimed they were math-deficient with math-savvy versions.
In the meantime, I was using my legal skills to suggest policies to address discrimination against female scientists in research funding and the grant of patents. Female innovators garner less than 2% of venture capital investments, even though startups run by women make twice as much money as startups run by men, a Boston Consulting Group analysis found. This deprives the economy of $85 million (RM388 million) in revenue. That could purchase a lot of Barbie dream houses!
Mattel and I clashed again a few years ago. The Wi-Fi-enabled Hello Barbie, released in 2015, worked with an app on parents’ phones. The conversations little girls had with the dolls (as well as the conversations of anyone else in the vicinity) were recorded by an affiliated company, ToyTalk, for marketing purposes. The connection was easily hacked, allowing outsiders to learn about little girls’ locations and plans. Eventually, Mattel did the right thing. It withdrew Hello Barbie from the market.
Now Mattel touts Judge Barbie, complete with a Ruth Bader Ginsburg-style collar, with this enthusiastic description: “Barbie Judge dolls inspire girls to imagine everything they can become – like protecting the rights of others and ruling on legal cases!”
Coming full circle, I can finally retire and let the next generation of Barbie-inspired consumer advocates protect our rights. Perhaps I’ll move west and become Malibu Lori. Unless, of course, Barbie needs me for legal advice. She’s 64 now and might need a will or help with her Medicare paperwork. – Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Lori Andrews
Lori Andrews is an emerita professor at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law. She directs the school’s Institute for Science, Law and Technology.
