Living Dolls: Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, Kylie Minogue and More Honored With Role Model Barbie Dolls
This is a big week for women everywhere, and that even goes for Barbie.
March is Women’s History Month, International Women’s Day is March 8th, Barbie’s 65th birthday is March 9th, and the iconic doll has at least a chance of winning an Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony where Barbie the movie is nominated for Best Picture.
In celebration of this, and of women everywhere, Mattel, the company that created and manufactures Barbie, announced Wednesday the women who would be featured in this year’s Role Model Collection.
The winners are American actress, author, activist (and EGOT winner) Viola Davis, Canadian musician and style icon Shania Twain, British actress and advocate Helen Mirren (who also was the narrator for Barbie), Brazilian content creator Maira Gomez, Mexico’s Lila Avilés, a director, producer and screenwriter, Nicole Fujita, a model and TV personality from Japan, and Enissa Amani, a German comedian and activist.
Mattel’s website says the the purpose of the Role Model dolls is to introduce girls to remarkable women’s stories to show them that they can be anything. Previous dolls in the collection honored producer Shonda Rhimes, author Julia Alvarez, salsa singer Celia Cruz, and the Wojcicki sisters, Anne, who co-founded 23 and Me, Janet, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at UC San Francisco, and Susan, long time YouTube CEO.
“Girls in particular need to be able to see women telling their own stories, writing their own narratives, living out their own dreams, and we’re happy to honor these women in celebration of Barbie’s 65th,” Kim Culmone, senior vice president and head of design for dolls, told People magazine.
Viola Davis said the doll in her image, whose dress was inspired by Davis’ 2018 Golden Globes look, appealed to the little girl in her. “Honestly, I wanted this Barbie to make little 6-year-old Viola squeal,” Davis said in a statement she gave to theGrio. “It is my biggest gift to her…my lifelong mission and legacy to make her feel pretty, seen, and worthy. No words…just joy.”
Kylie Minogue’s Barbie wears a red ensemble that pays homage to Minogue’s costumes in her “Padam Padam” music video. “Look at Padam Barbie,” Minogue wrote in a post debuting the doll on social media. “Baby Kylie would NOT believe this is happening right now.”
Mattel introduced the first of its celebrity doll collection in 1967 with a doll molded in the image and style of fashion model Twiggy, and in 1969 released a doll modeled after Diahann Carroll character from the TV show Julia.
Unfortunately, even if you wanted to shell out the bucks for one of these Barbies, that’s not an option. The one-of-a-kind dolls, which were created especially for the role models, will not be sold in stores, but instead are given to each woman as a way for Mattel to celebrate each woman’s contribution to humanity. However, Mattel has manufactured many dolls for purchase that feature the likeness of famous people, like Rosa Parks, Gloria Estefan and Ella Fitzgerald, and of popular characters like the latest incarnation of The Little Mermaid, and Ted Lasso characters Keeley Jones and Rebecca Welton.