17. Was the Barbie doll created as a Hollywood image of the perfect woman?
The Barbie doll, a seemingly harmless toy designed originally to accessorize the fantasies of pre-adolescent girls, has been condemned by feminists and others as objectifying women, warping the minds of the young into envisioning an impossible image of feminine pulchritude, and a host of other heinous crimes. Its designer was a gentleman by the name of Jack Ryan – no relation to the character of the same name created by Tom Clancy and portrayed onscreen by Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, and others. Mr. Ryan worked with Ruth Handler, whom toymaker Mattel credits with inventing the doll, named for her daughter of the same name (Handler was married to one of Mattel’s founding partners). Ruth also had a son named Kenneth, who later had a doll named for him as well. Hence the namesakes for Barbie and Ken were brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Ryan was also once married to Zsa Zsa Gabor, the sixth of her eventual nine husbands (among then hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, great-grandfather of Paris Hilton). Ryan was also, according to the offended Gabor, innocent that she clearly was, a womanizer with a taste for women who possessed physical attributes which he designed into the famous doll, and eventually her plastic female friends as well. Ryan was accused, in life and after death, of promoting his sexist beliefs through the marketing of Barbie dolls and the fantasy lifestyle the doll promoted in young and impressionable girls. Ryan was active in the Hollywood social scene while married to Gabor (January 1975 – August 1976), after which he faded into relative obscurity. Whether Barbie and her friends are a product of Hollywood sexism is up to the eye of the beholder.