Mattel debuted a new line of Barbie dolls Thursday, January 28, featuring a range of body styles. Here, the original Barbie is on the left and the new "curvy" Barbie is on the right.
Mattel debuted a new line of Barbie dolls Thursday, January 28, featuring a range of body styles. Here, the original Barbie is on the left and the new "curvy" Barbie is on the right.
Mattel
Curvy Barbie is getting much of the attention over the changes.
Curvy Barbie is getting much of the attention over the changes.
Mattel
Petite Barbie is the smallest of the three dolls.
Petite Barbie is the smallest of the three dolls.
Mattel
The new dolls also come in a taller model.
The new dolls also come in a taller model.
Mattel
The familiar thin Barbie style will continue as "Original Barbie," despite criticisms from some that it offered up an unrealistic standard of beauty for girls.
The familiar thin Barbie style will continue as "Original Barbie," despite criticisms from some that it offered up an unrealistic standard of beauty for girls.
Mattel
The new body types join a more diverse range of skin tones and hairstyles introduced in 2015.
The new body types join a more diverse range of skin tones and hairstyles introduced in 2015.
Mattel
For now, the new Barbies are available only at Mattel's online store.
For now, the new Barbies are available only at Mattel's online store.
Mattel
Here's another style of "Tall Barbie."
Here's another style of "Tall Barbie."
Mattel
Here's another style of "Curvy Barbie."
Here's another style of "Curvy Barbie."
Mattel
Here's another style of "Petite Barbie."
Here's another style of "Petite Barbie."
Mattel
Barbie debuts new body shapes

Story highlights

NEW: Changes are "the most dramatic we've ever made," Mattel official says

Company said Thursday Barbie will now come in original, tall, petite and curvy

CNN  — 

Girls and women don’t come in one shape, and now, finally, Barbie won’t either.

Now, in addition to the original Barbie – impossibly slender and often parodied – the doll will come in tall, petite and curvy varieties.

Mattel announced the new line Thursday on its website and in a Time magazine article featuring the cover headline, “Now can we stop talking about my body?”

“We have to let girls know it doesn’t matter what shape you come in, that anything is possible,” Tania Missad, director of consumer insights for the doll line, said in a video on the Barbie brand website.

According to Mattel, Barbie will now come in four body types and seven skin tones, with 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles. In all, 33 dolls will roll out in stages, spokeswoman Michelle Chidoni said.

The move comes a year after Mattel introduced Barbies with moveable ankles that would allow the dolls to wear flat shoes for the first time.

In June, Mattel broadened the number of skin tones, eye colors and hair styles available for the dolls, which first appeared on store shelves in 1959.

The latest changes, however, “are by far the most dramatic we’ve ever made,” Chidoni said.

They come after years of criticism leveled at Mattel over the doll’s unrealistic proportions and concerns that Barbie reinforced a single, virtually impossible standard of beauty for girls to try to meet.

A 2006 British study (PDF) found that “girls exposed to Barbie reported lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape” than those who had been given dolls reflecting larger body types or no dolls at all.

Robert Best, senior director of Barbie Product Design, said the changes address such concerns in a positive way.

“This is radical because we’re saying there isn’t this narrow standard of what a beautiful body looks like,” Best said in the online video.

Thursday’s announcement met with approval on social media.

“Thank you @Barbie,” one Twitter user posted Thursday. “I’m officially excited & proud to buy my daughter a barbie one day!”

Another Twitter user thanked Mattel for “bravely acknowledging that women can be ‘Curvy,’ ‘Tall’ or ‘Petite’ & not just ‘Original’ !!!”

For now, only some of the dolls are available and only through Mattel’s online store. They will be in stores March 1, Chidoni said. The full line will roll out in stages throughout the year.

Mattel undoubtedly hopes the dolls will help reverse a long slide in sales that has seen Barbie unseated as the queen of Christmas and Mattel supplanted by Lego as the most popular toy brand.

In October, Mattel reported that worldwide Barbie sales fell 4% in the third quarter of 2015. And the company’s stock price was down nearly 43% from its 2013 peak.