On this day, 1916, Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie, was born.

[niyad]

[hunter]

1. From wikipedia....

Ruth Handler claimed her daughter Barbara, pre-teen, played with paper dolls by pretending they were adults. Handler noticed that in such play, children would act out future events, rather than the present. Handler noted the limitations of the paper dolls, including how the paper clothing failed to attach well. She wanted to produce a three-dimensional plastic "paper doll" with an adult body and a wardrobe of fabric clothing, but her husband and Mr. Matson thought parents would not buy their children a doll with a voluptuous figure. While the Handler family was vacationing in Europe, Ruth Handler saw the West German Bild Lilli doll (which was not a children's toy, but rather an adult gag gift) in a Swiss shop and brought it home. The Lilli doll was a representation of the same concept Ruth had been trying to sell to other Mattel executives. This doll was different than the baby-like dolls the girls would play with during this time, and Ruth was inspired. Up until that point, there was a lack of dolls for girls who were old enough to comprehend the basic concepts of being a teenager and adulthood. Barbie aimed to directly fill that gap in the industry.

--more--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Handler

[niyad]

2. Thank you for providing this background information. I had not known about the

Lilli doll. Never even had a barbie, I was a bookworm.

[Hekate]

3. You might like the book "Forever Barbie". The Lilli Doll was for men, actually. She had a sultry...

…stare, and nipples. She could be posed to sit on a bar next to the drinks or on the dashboard of a car.

Ruth Handler really had to work to get the Mattell people to see the potential, lol. They had test batches made in Japan, but with Lilli as a model they all came back with nipples, which had to be sanded off in the US. (I may be a pervert, but I thought this was hilarious.) The first Barbie had heavy eye makeup, but smooth breasts — later she acquired the softer expression we’re used to, plus a lot more career options.

I had a lot of personal bias to overcome on the road to appreciating the Barbie phenomenon. One huge step in this journey was a PBS documentary many years ago that featured all the ways artists had thought of to use Barbie and her clan, my absolute favorites being gay men’s vision of a Barbie universe.

Here’s to Ruth!

[niyad]

4. Thank you for this fascinating information. I am so glad that I was not drinking

my coffee when I read about the sanding.

I remember a line I heard years ago when someone (sorry, I don't remember who) was talking about reincarnation. She said, "I want to come back as barbie. That b**** has everything."