“There’s no way I’m not going to show up to a Barbie event,” said Pedri, who came wearing a hot pink silk dress with a floral pink scarf wrapped around her hips and pink and purple butterfly clips in her hair. “I am one of the people that was inspired by the idea that women can do anything.”
That idea — Barbie as an inspirational figure — was a common theme among the adult women who had turned out to celebrate a young adult novel about a toy made for children. They see Barbie not just as nostalgic comfort or a tether to childhood, but as a role model they can still look up to.
Several young women said that Barbie’s success in various fields, from paleontology to pizza making, felt inspiring, if a bit out of reach at a moment when young people are struggling in a shaky economy.
“Barbie inspires a lot of girls because she has 150 careers,” said Kareesa Reid, 26, a home health aide who lives in Mount Vernon, N.Y. (According to Mattel, Barbie has more than 250 careers, including astronaut, saxophonist, Target cashier, ballerina, Army medic, biochemist, robotics engineer and bee keeper.)
Whatever the reasons, the passionate response from Barbie fans suggests that some women who have aged out of playing with dolls still want to read about them.
Barbie isn’t the only doll getting main-character fictional treatment. In October, Mattel plans to publish a novel for adults about Samantha, one of the original American Girl dolls, which follows Samantha, now a 25-year-old living in 1920 New York City, as she navigates romance and work, fights for women’s right to vote, and infiltrates a criminal enterprise. (Plucky, independent and fond of burgundy dresses, she still shares personality traits with the original Samantha doll character, a child of about 9.)
