00:00Could Barbie ever have been uncontroversial?
00:03I don't think so.
00:04Because for the past 50 years,
00:06femininity has been a contested space.
00:10In the past, dolls had all been baby dolls.
00:14They had all been about teaching little girls how to nurture.
00:17Barbie was a wildly revolutionary toy.
00:22Barbie became things that real women hadn't become.
00:25She had broken barriers.
00:26These dolls enable girls to tell stories about dreams.
00:31She's been around 55 years,
00:33but the last few years have been trying for Barbie.
00:37Barbie was everything we didn't want to be,
00:39and we're being told to be.
00:41Some people think Barbie needs to be liberated.
00:45You look at television and film and music
00:48and you see the same body type being idealized.
00:51Perception on Barbie is that she's vapid, materialistic,
00:54she's not healthy for girls.
00:55This limited understanding of who girls are is not acceptable.
01:01We have to make such a drastic shift
01:04to get people to care about Barbie.
01:07The overall problem is being judged by our outsides,
01:11not our insides.
01:12It starts with just changing the ideals that we set forward
01:16as what a normal body looks like.
01:20Feminism and how a girl sees herself
01:22and self-esteem for girls.
01:25To put that all on the tiny, plastic shoulders of Abdallah
01:29is quite a burden.
01:31I don't think I've ever been involved
01:33with something as culturally significant as this.
01:36We're taking a really big step forward.
01:43I don't want Barbie to be history.
01:46I don't want Barbie to be history.
01:53and I often want Barbie to be history.
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