Barbie movie | The not-so-rosy life of Ruth Handler, Barbie’s mother

At the beginning of the epidemic greta gerwig, The director, who surprised everyone with “Lady Bird” in 2017, got a Commission from Mattel to make a Barbie movieits most iconic and best-selling game (estimated to have been marketed A billion skinny blonde dolls with impossible measurementsat a rate of three per second). Giant wanted a game summer blockbuster -That the film, which begins Thursday, July 20, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as heroes– to start a file New wave of movies About more games from the company.

“I was reading about it Ruth Handlerthe reckless Jewish businesswoman who gave birth to this A toy with her infamous breasts, the character who became a perpetual avatar of plastic perfectionwhile she was trapped, like all of us, in a fragile and flawed human body,” the director explains in an interview with “The New York Times” that during those months of confinement she believed that people would never return to the cinema again, and that “probably no one would see what she was working on.”

Wink at Kubrick

So why not be great? Why not start the movie with an extension A nod to Kubrick’s masterpiece, “2001: A Space Odyssey”But instead of monkeys cheering when they see the monolith, are here the girls playing with the little dolls who go into ecstasy at the sight of a giant adult Barbie figure and then end up destroying their old pipons?

The great sequence passes perfectly The revolution that led to the arrival of Barbie in 1959which not only turned the gaming industry upside down, but also triggered a paradigm shift in the mentality of society in the middle of the last century.

“The woman every girl wants to grow up to be.”That’s how I named her Barbie Creator, Ruth Moskowitz.

Born in Denver in 1916 to Polish parents with 10 siblings, she soon considered thriving outside the family nest. With 19 (just the age his iconic doll doesn’t pass) Married Elliot Handler, with whom he moved to Los Angeles. They set up a workshop in the garage, where they made picture frames, and made dollhouses using leftover wood. They find a partner Harold Mattsonand I created Mattel (Union of the two surnames).

They triumphed with a ukulele and some toy guns. But Mrs. Handler had an idea: Girls no longer want to be mothers He explained years later on a TV show. I was among the men who did not understand that women could have other aspirations than to conceive and take care of our children.”

Royal Barbie veil

She has two herself, and she didn’t see them much because she was always away from home on business. She was a business woman when there were no business women. In 1941 the eldest daughter was born, Barbara is a healer (Who has the Small cameo in Gerwig’s film), then came Kenneth (Their young children gave names to the heroes of the pink plastic and fantasy world.)

Ruth was sad to see her daughter playing with plastic babies and cut-out paper dolls, and she came up with a solution for a few moments. Vacation in Switzerland in 1956. In an adult shop window he discovered a A strange doll, with a small waist and a large chest. was based on Spicy comedy from Bild Zeitung, about a prostitute Always available to the men who succeeded after the Second World War.

first models

By beautifying her slightly and giving her different dresses so that she was always elegant, Handler convinced her partners at Mattel, who initially resented her idea. the America’s first “doll,” in her black and white striped bathing suit, stiletto heels, ponytail, and curly bangsIt was a success at the 1959 New York Toy Show, and in its first year sold over 350,000 units. Soon the girls are writing to Mattel asking for a boyfriend for Barbie.

after two years Ken arrived, cut more accessories and new friends of the same style (Some measurements, 36 inches for the chest, 18 inches for the waist, and 33 inches for the hips, are more common for foreigners than for a young woman. “I didn’t want to change the world, just show it as it is,” Handler defended himself at the end of the ’70s in the pages of The New York Times’ Beautiful Breasts.)

“anorexia” and “idiot”

In that decade Barbie was christened as “Anorexic”, “Dumb” and “Shallow” Doll. In the face of feminists’ criticism, Your career options (Nearly 200 today, from a doctor to an astronaut, chef, Olympic athlete, US election candidate and even a McDonald’s worker…) and Their “horizons” diversified.

Washing doll image came late for the businesswoman that was She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970. next to, In 1975 she was forced to resign from Mattel After being considered by the judge guilty of fraud (Sales had dropped dramatically and she wanted to fix it by falsifying accounts.)

“chest to chest”

At 60, Barbie’s mom, Ruth Handler, decided to reinvent herself He puts all his efforts into it Manufacturing more comfortable and realistic breast prostheses, So that everyone affected – including herself – would feel better after his trauma Breast removal.

He passed away in 2002, due to complications from a Colon cancer surgery. He was 85 years old, and when he looked back at the two jobs he’d had, he’d say: “I’ve lived my life chest to chest.”