Every little girl’s favorite toy was a Barbie. Mattel, a major toy company, sold their first Barbie wearing a black and white swimsuit on March 9th, 1959. After this debut, Barbie’s sales shot up from $1 million to $1.92 billion in sales in 2023. Following the first Barbie, thousands of different Barbies were created to give girls the ability to express themselves instead of being objectified.

Here are a few of the different Barbie that have been created over the years:

These ideas of women empowerment were used to create the Barbie movie that came out in the summer of 2023.  This is when Barbie became more than just a doll to Gen Z. Barbie became a message to all girls. The movie premiered on July 21, 2023, and shook fans attention everywhere. In the film, Barbie and Ken are enjoying their perfect life, with continuous beach parties, dance parties and sleepovers. During a house party, Barbie questions dying, which shocks all of the other Barbies and Kens in attendance. Her perfect world was flipped upside down and Barbie began to malfunction. It started off with her heels that were permanently arched to fit in a high heel comfortability, then when she showered she got wet, and when she attempted to float out of her dreamhouse she fell. These malfunctions drove her to traveling to the real world to find the little girl who is playing with her. After a long car ride, bike ride, snow mobile, boat and skating on rollerblades (all accompanied by Ken), she reached sunny Los Angeles, California.

Barbie and Ken’s sense of  “normalcy” was flipped upside down. Barbie realized that in the real world men rule the world. This was very overwhelming, considering the rhetoric for young girls that was created by Barbie’s inventor.  Ken was also stunned, realizing that in the real world men are more dominant and they occupy huge percentages of the work force, politics, and presidency. During Barbie’s journey to finding her human, she faces many battles, not grasping the concept of work, sexuality, and gender roles. Eventually, though, Barbie finds her her human and discovers they aren’t so different.

After conducting a survey on this film with Banneker students, the general consensus was that many people enjoyed the movie, however, they believed it exaggerated a semi-realistic ideology of women and society as a whole. Despite some of the situations being correct, some things where dramatic for the sake of an entertaining film.

One example of what resonated with students was actress America Ferrera’s speech about how hard it is to be a woman. It’s hard to meet society’s expectations about motherhood, career, education, and social obligations. Students also felt Barbie depicts an accurate view of a sensitive and powerful woman in today’s society, while Ken displays a true depiction of men in today’s society taking advantage of women and the power that they hold.

Teenagers today believe is authenticity is important within a society and how the media can be inaccurate and based so much on images poses a threat to humanity. But the idea of perfectionism and trying to achieve perfection can be extremely damaging to people, especially the drive in society to push perfectionism on to women.