Closing the Dream Gap, one doll at a time

“Imagining she can be anything is just the beginning. Actually seeing that she can makes all the difference” reads the Barbie ™ Dream Gap project mission statement.

The newest additions to the Barbie Dream Gap collection.

If you weren’t a young girl who grew up playing with Barbie™ dolls, you at least know someone who did. Barbie dolls have been acclaimed for breaking boundaries when it came to what their dolls “aspired” to be. Since the doll’s creation 60 years ago in 1959, Barbie™ has had a ton of careers. From astronaut to teacher, chemist to veterinarian, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything that Barbie™ can’t do.

Mattel's Frida Kahlo Barbie

After decades of criticism for depicting unrealistic, Eurocentric ideals of beauty, since 2015 Barbie™ has extended its collection of dolls to feature a range of skin tones, hair styles and textures, heights, weights, and body types. The two most recent additions to the collection were dolls made in the likeness of Rosa Parks and Sally Ride. The dolls honour the accomplishments of Parks, who has been dubbed the mother of the modern civil rights movement, and Ride, the first woman in space.

Model and activist Ashley Graham, with the Barbie made in her likeness.

Through the Mattel’s new Dream Gap Project, they claim to be committed to highlighting empowering role models as a key part of an ongoing global initiative aimed at giving girls the resources and support they need to continue believing that they can be anything. They claim to be aiming to highlight a more diverse group of women under the premise that by showcasing women from all walks of life they are inspiring more young girls to believe they can do anything.

In the past four years Barbie™ has created dolls in the likeness of a variety of women, such as: Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician, Frida Kahlo, the artist, Ashley Graham, the plus sized model and body positivity activist, as well as a host of other women who don’t fit into the original tall, slender, blonde haired, blue eyed, white Barbie that the world is most familiar with.

Mattel's Katharine Johnson Barbie

In its 60th year, the Barbie brand is working to close the Dream Gap by donating to fund like-minded organizations aimed at levelling the playing field for girls through the Mattel Children's Foundation. Research has shown that starting at age five, girls start doubting their potential, this is the Dream Gap. Mattel donates one dollar from every doll sold to the Mattel Children’s foundation.

Written by Devon Clare Banfield.