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Biography |
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Barbie was displayed for public viewing for the first time in the American International Toy Fair in New York. The time was the month of February in the year 1959. She was the brain child of the chairman of the Mattel Company, Elliot Handler and him wife Ruth. This beautiful form of the doll was named after the daughter of the Handlers. The name of Ken was taken from their son.
The extraordinary level of glamour of the Barbie doll and astoundingly slender waist attracted people’s attention, but according to some others such an unnaturally feminine look can portray wrong picture in front of girls around the world.
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In the recent years a controversy has sparked about the voluptuous figure of Barbie. The statistics of her body has been measured in a way that she has a twenty one inch waist, thirty inch hips and thirty nine inch chest.
Over 1.5 million dolls are sold by Mattel each year. This statistics says that each second two Barbie are sold by the company. Ninety percent of the American girls have been found in last forty years to have one Barbie (at least). It has been discovered that if all the Barbie dolls that have been manufactured are laid one after another the chain will encircle the world 3 and ˝ times.
Every year the in house designers of Barbie provide designer clothes to Barbie and help them each to become a style icon. Almost hundred new outfits are designed each year for Barbie. The renowned designers Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Perry Ellis, Valentino, Bob Mackie and Oscar de la Renta have designed outfits for Barbie. In fact almost 105 million yards of fabric has so far been used for making Barbie’s attire since the year 1959. This project of clothing Barbie has become a large cloth manufacturing project for Mattel. In fact, Mattel has become the 4th largest company for manufacturing women ‘clothes.
Mattel has designed Barbie as girls engaged in different professions such as, teaching, astronomy, veterinarian, singing, fighting as a soldier, then profession of flight attendant, modeling, etc. In the year 1985 Barbie got her first computer. By now Barbie has started featuring the picture of a lady who can do anything. Barbie replicates the girls of the suburban region from middle class family who wanted to keep the world within their reach and portrayed the figure of a strong, urban, career oriented lady. The accessories of Barbie gave the feeling of a very consumption lifestyle that suburban community then adopted. Her dream house was well-furnished. She had the best sports car, the best collection at her wardrobe. Consumerism was at the peak at that time and the necessities of Barbie also reflect the social condition of the time.
The site Barbiexl.com has a lot of information on Barbie.
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