The world’s most famous doll was inspired by a spunky, high-end call girl named Lilli. Described as a “gold digger, exhibitionist, and floozy,” the character of Bild Lilli was created in 1952 by German cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien after he was asked to draw a filler cartoon for the inaugural issue of the tabloid Bild-Zeitung. Lilli, a buxom blonde with a perky ponytail and sky-high stilettos, sat beside a fortune teller. “Can’t you give me the name and address of this tall, handsome, rich man?” she cooed. The cartoon was an instant hit, and in 1955, Lilli was immortalized in plastic.
A year later, Ruth Handler discovered the Lilli doll while on a vacation in Europe. She bought several. One was for her teenage daughter, Barbara, to keep; the rest were brought back to Mattel, the toy company she had cofounded with her husband, Elliot, and businessman Harold Matson. (Mattel is a portmanteau of both men’s names.) Lilli—with comically large breasts, chic outfits, and heavy makeup—was precisely what Handler had been looking for.
Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, wrote: “The doll looked too much like a prostitute for the company’s taste,” so Mattel’s design team (slightly) softened Lilli’s exaggerated proportions, renamed her Barbie, after Barbara, and before long, she would become the physical ideal for generations of young girls and women everywhere.
Come on, Barbie, let’s go party…
Sixty-four years after Barbie hit shelves, she finally got her close-up in Barbie, a feminist manifesto in a pair of pink stilettos. The film’s premiere and after-party at the Shrine Auditorium marked Warner Bros.’ largest premiere to date—and the cherry on top of a bubble-gum-flavored, years-long marketing blitz. According to Event Marketer, “the affair was like Barbie herself: high-energy, glamorous and very, very, colorful.”
