Misc

The Creator of Barbie Dies

Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, the world's most popular doll and an American icon that helped shape girls' dreams while infuriating feminists, has died. She was 85.

Handler, who also co-founded the Mattel toy company, died at Century City Hospital on April 27 of complications from colon surgery she underwent three months before.

Since Handler's creation, named for her daughter Barbara, was introduced in 1959 it has become a touchstone of cultural politics.

The impossibly well-endowed doll - her original figure would be about 39-18-33 if she were human - has drawn the ire of feminists, inspired artists and intrigued academics around the world. Barbie even was placed in the official “America's Time Capsule” buried in 1976. More than 1 billion have been sold in 150 countries.

”My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be,” Handler wrote in a 1994 autobiography. “Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.”

”Over and over I've had it said to me by women,” Handler told The Associated Press in 1994. “She was much more than a doll for them. She was part of them.” Barbie's birth came at a time when the usual doll was a baby.

Handler decided to create a more mature plaything - with breasts, as she once put it - after noticing that her daughter liked to play with paper cutout dolls of teen-agers and career women. Barbie went on to make a fortune for Mattel, which sold not only versions of the doll but an expanding number of outfits and accessories, not to mention Barbie's boyfriend Ken, named for Handler's son; her little sister, Skipper, and pals Midge and Christie.

Later dolls were named for Handler's grandchildren. Handler was born Ruth Mosko, the youngest of 10 children of Polish immigrants who settled in Denver. She moved to Southern California at 19, later marrying her high school boyfriend and studying industrial design..