Barbie has come a long way since 1959. The blonde, blue-eyed doll that debuted late in the Eisenhower administration is now offered in a myriad variety of skin tones, body types, hair textures, and facial features, allowing every child to envision themselves at the center of their own imaginative play. As many older Barbie enthusiasts can attest, however, it wasn’t always so easy.
Black Barbie, a brand-new documentary coming to Netflix from Shondaland, chronicles the creation of the first Black Barbie doll — complete with textured hair, fuller features, and a killer Diana Ross–inspired ensemble. It also tells a broader story about why it’s important for children to have access to toys that represent their lived experience.
Directed by Lagueria Davis, Black Barbie explores the impact of three Black women at Mattel responsible for the Black Barbie’s 1980 debut and evolution thereafter: Beulah Mae Mitchell, Kitty Black Perkins, and Stacey McBride-Irby. Years ago, when Davis was an aspiring filmmaker, she traveled to California and moved in with Mitchell, her aunt. Mitchell’s vast collection of dolls sparked Davis’ interest — which led to 13 years of development for the project that would ultimately become Black Barbie.
“There was lots of research and development for the first couple of years and then it was really about trying to find the funding,” Davis tells Tudum about the long process. “[Lagueria] knew she did not want this to be a Mattel film that dictated what she talked about or what her perspective was,” adds producer Aaliyah Williams. “When you have the intention to honor the culture as much as one can, things can take a little longer.”
With its trove of interviews and animated interludes, the film is “ambitious” in scope, Williams says: “It uncovers this story, but also designs a conversation with current kids to see ‘How much have we changed since the Clark test?’ ” In the ’40s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted experiments in which Black children considered two dolls that were identical except for their skin and hair color. When asked to identify which of the dolls they preferred and discuss why, the Clarks discovered that even very young Black children had internalized the myth of their own inferiority.
Born in 1938, Beulah Mae Mitchell had grown up steeped in the realities of a segregated America. She began working at the Mattel factory as a toy tester in 1955, the year after Brown v. Board of Education kickstarted America’s modern Civil Rights movement. At Mattel, Mitchell got to witness the birth of Barbie firsthand, and suggested to company president and co-founder Ruth Handler the possibility of producing a Black doll. Christie, Mattel’s first Black doll, marketed as a “friend of Barbie,” debuted in 1968. Still, it would take more than a decade after that for a uniquely Black Barbie to hit the shelves, thanks to the work of Kitty Black Perkins, Mattel’s first Black designer. “Every doll that I have done has been special for me,” Perkins tells Tudum about her decades of work at Mattel. “We have really, really improved on our shapes, our skin colors, our hair textures — [the things that help suggest] the whole idea of what she can be or what she can become.”
During Perkins’ tenure at Mattel, a young McBride-Irby was playing with dolls and beginning to dream of what she might one day become. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if [my parents] didn’t let me play with Barbie,” she tells Tudum. When a young McBride-Irby’s father gave her a newspaper clipping about Perkins’ work as a doll designer, it became the foundation of an ambition to one day do the same, a dream that became reality when Perkins herself hired the young designer and became a colleague and mentor.
“The name Barbie holds weight,” McBride-Irby says of the importance of Black representation in childhood play. For Davis, who didn’t grow up playing with any dolls, her deep dive into the complicated history of Black Barbies and the women who have pushed the conversation forward has left her feeling much more connected to the subject matter in ways she hadn’t counted on. About the historical dolls and sets used in the creation of Black Barbie, she says, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all that stuff, but I don’t have it in me to get rid of it. Now it’s a part of this legacy that I speak of at the end of the film. We’ll see where all of this wonderful memorabilia ends up.”
Watch Black Barbie on Netflix now.
