The Politics of Barbie’s Curvy New Body: Marketing Mattel’s Fashionistas Line

Abstract

In 2016, Mattel released a Fashionistas Barbie line with diverse skin tones, hair styles, body shapes, and fashion-forward attire. The line’s inclusion of a “curvy” body type made international headlines, including a Time magazine cover featuring a backlit curvy Barbie and the words: “‘Now can we stop talking about my body?’ What Barbie’s new shape says about American beauty.” This chapter examines factors precipitating the Fashionistas’ release, including decades of scholarship concerning Barbie and girls’ body images; years of declining Barbie sales; and successful indie-brands dolls (like Lottie and Lammily) with more realistic body shapes. Informed by feminist scholarship, this chapter interrogates and problematizes Mattel’s marketing and reception surrounding the Fashionistas’ launch, including Mattel’s emphasis on body type and de-emphasis on the line’s racial and ethnic diversity; Mattel’s reliance upon public relations tactics to appeal to reluctant parents; and the press’ mix of praise for Mattel’s promotion of body positivity, criticisms that Mattel overstated the change represented by curvy Barbie’s still-slender, U.S.-size-four body type, and condemnation of Mattel for allegedly pandering to liberals and feminists to create a doll that conservative critics perceived as fat.