If you’re a girl or grew up around girls, you’ve probably got your fair share of experience with Barbie dolls. They’re one of the most successful toy brands in the world, and there’s been a lot written about them in recent years, mostly due to their misrepresentation of how women look or should look.
There’s a lot of things about Barbie that almost never get mentioned though. And since we’re here to entertain you guys, let’s take a look at some of the things about Barbie that people probably don’t know.
She Wasn’t a Child’s Toy
Let’s start with the big one: Barbie wasn’t a child’s toy at all. In fact, she was based on another doll named “Bild Lilli”. Lilli was an adult comic strip, and her dolls were often given as gifts at bachelor parties. Tell me if this still sounds like a good idea to give to your six year old daughter.
She Doesn’t Have Children By Choice
Probably the one good thing Barbie has done for girls growing up is give her just about any job under the sun. One job Barbie didn’t have, was the job of mother. The choice was made to not give Barbie any children so girls could be creative with her life and let her be pretty much anything they wanted. The babies that come in some Barbie sets are probably nieces and nephews or something.
She Broke Up With Ken Before
We really haven’t heard as much about this as we should have, but apparently Barbie and Ken were single and ready to mingle from 2004 up until 2011, when they decided to give their faux-plastic relationship a new shot. They’ve been together ever since and still going strong.
She’s Bad at Math
This was quite a kicker back in the day, but one version of Barbie back in the 90s had the ability to speak about 270 phrases. One of which was, and I’m not kidding, “math class is hard”. Certain groups were furious about the message this was sending to young girls, and Mattel decided to remove the phrase after having to realize that Barbie probably wasn’t the ideal platform to spread that message.
There’s a Barbie Restaurant
Because why not? And like all other “why not” things, you can find this restaurant in Asia – Taiwan, more specifically. It’s basically what you’d expect: a place where you eat surrounded by Barbie dolls, in a theme that looks like the store was out of all paint colors that weren’t some version of pink.
She Has a Negative Impact on Self-Esteem
In news, nobody didn’t see coming, research shows that young girls that play with Barbie dolls generally feel a lot worse about their looks and figure than girls do that play with normal dolls. Luckily in 2015 Mattel finally got the message and started releasing Barbie dolls of different body types and skin colors.
