Barbie and friends. A new decade, a new direction.

Long gone are the days of the insanely-proportioned body type Barbie, with her ever-flowing hair, perfect skin, and her once misguided advice to losing weight as: ‘Don’t eat!’

To be fair, those days were already pretty far behind the perennial doll, who has been glamming and adventuring it up since 1959. In recent years, maker Mattel has done much to present Barbie and her friends to a world more in tune with diversity and eager to see inclusion in action.

As a new decade begins, it’s pleasing to see Barbie’s designers steer her in the right direction by introducing dolls with baldness and vitiligo – this in addition to their recent physical disabilities range of wheelchair and prosthetic limb Barbies, and a continuing drive to enhance their dolls with different skin tones, hairstyles and body types.

All images from Barbie© Fashionistas© by Mattel.

TVTA is not affiliated with Mattel and receives no incentives – but, yo, Mattel, if you want to send me some free Barbie to go with my first Barbie California Dream and beach dune buggy, I’ll be one happy vintage editor 🙂