A Black Woman Is Running for President. Her Name Is Barbie
Barbie can be anything: a ballerina, a princess, a doctor, an astronaut. Barbie can even be something that has never existed in real life—a Black woman presidential nominee from one of America’s major political parties. (We are assuming that at this point in the election season, Barbie is not running as an independent.)
Mattel—the brain behind the iconic doll—is releasing a Campaign Set of Barbies, complete with a presidential candidate and support staff. Presidential candidate Barbie is a Black woman dressed in a pink blazer who comes holding a microphone. The other dolls are also all women—a campaign manager, a fundraiser, and a voter. (We presume Ken is on the campaign trail keeping up an attractive prospective-first-spouse Instagram.)
Laugh, cry, or stand your childhood Barbie on her feet and let her fall to the ground, bearing the weight of her breasts! The fact is that a doll has achieved a milestone American politics has not. “The set highlights dolls of different ethnicities, including a Black candidate, to remind all girls they can lead from the polls to the podium,” reads the press release from Mattel. The company that once released a doll that was programmed to say, “Math class is tough!” on command is more hip to the times than the times themselves.
The new set is in partnership with She Should Run, an organization that supports women who run for office, aiming to help 250,000 women run for office before 2030. The hopeful, businesslike profile of the set’s candidate doll echoes her real-life predecessors: Senator Kamala Harris, who ran for the democratic nomination in 2020; Shirley Chisholm, the pioneering Black woman Democratic candidate of 1972; and Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman senator, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004.
The new doll also comes on the heels of several Barbie dolls who have become increasingly diverse. In 2019, after releasing a range of dolls who have disabilities, Mattel reported that in 2019 over half the doll models made by the company were a deviation from the white, blond, über-Barbie. There’s a hijabi Barbie, a Barbie with vitiligo, and even a Barbie made in the image of Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay.
“Our goal is to remove barriers to leadership by giving girls the tools to imagine and play out their future roles,” says Lisa McKnight, Mattel’s global head of Barbie and dolls. As we speak, little children are asking their parents for the Barbie candidate set. By the time those dolls have been given unflattering haircuts, graffitied, or subjected to other forms of childhood torture, may there be an actual Black woman candidate for president in our world.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
