Barbie: Why Barbara & Kenneth Handler Hated Being The Inspiration For The Famous Dolls

Barbara and Kenneth Handler were not very happy growing up associated with the famous Barbie and Ken dolls. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling may play Barbie and Ken in the cast of the 2023 Barbie, but Barbara and Kenneth Handler were the inspiration for the legendary Mattel toy line. Barbara and Kenneth are the daughter and son of Ruth Handler. Ruth was the inventor of the Barbie doll and the cofounder of Mattel, alongside her husband Elliot and Harold Matson.

The doll has seen a massive resurgence in popularity thanks to Greta Gerwig’s smash-hit Barbie movie. The comedy was not only nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Song, but it broke box office records and was the highest-grossing movie of 2023, taking home a whopping $1.4 billion. But beyond its impressive achievements, the Barbie message resonated with audiences, sparking conversations about feminism and women in cinema. But the doll still has its critics, and Barbara and Kenneth Handler were among them.

Barbara & Kenneth Handler Didn’t Like The Attention Associated With The Barbie & Ken Dolls

The Handler Siblings Were Very Different From Their Toy Counterparts

Barbara and Kenneth Handler never approved of the Barbie brand being so strong. Ruth and her children have spoken at length about the kids’ annoyance with the toys being named for them. Ruth told BBC,

“Barbara hated being known as the inspiration for the Barbie doll – it bothered her.”

Barbara, for her part, said,

“It was just very odd – people were coming up to me, asking me for my autograph. When people came up and say to me, ‘Oh, you’re the real Barbie’, I couldn’t understand it because that’s just a name that was given to the doll, but a lot of people thought that they modelled it after me and they made it look like me, and that I was supposed to be it. That’s not true.”

Kenneth, who passed in 1994 at age 50, also shared how the dolls had bothered him over the years, saying about comparisons to Ken and himself, via LA Times,

“Ken doll is Malibu. He goes to the beach and surfs. He is all these perfect American things. [I] played the piano and went to movies with subtitles… I was a nerd–a real nerd. All the girls thought I was a jerk.”

He was none-too-pleased with his sister’s doll either,

“I think of her [the Barbie doll] as a bimbo. Like she hangs out at the beach and doesn’t have a brain in her head.”

As nice a life as Mattel and Barbie provided for the Handler kids, the constant references to the dolls grew tiresome. It’s not that being the name of the toys was a dark memory from their childhood, but it was an exasperating constant to be always reminded of in their lives.

Kenneth’s comments about Barbie being a “bimbo” are notable considering that’s a charge levied at Robbie’s character in the film by Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Barbie does indeed hang out at the beach and live a charmed life, but her journey throughout the 2023 film that she finds depth and layers, and proves she is anything but a bimbo. While Gerwig’s film came out many years after Kenneth’s death, Barbara Handler is rumored to have given a thumbs up to the trailer (via TMZ), so perhaps the power of Robbie’s performance and Gerwig’s storytelling has changed her mind.

Barbara Handler Is Not The Woman On The Bench In The Barbie Movie

Ann Roth, A Celebrated Costume Designer, Plays The Character

There’s a moving scene in Barbie where she sits on a bus bench next to an elderly woman. Barbie begins to tear up as she starts to recognize all the things that make being a human complicated. She looks over and sees an older woman smiling back at her. “You’re so beautiful,” Barbie tells her. “I know it,” the woman cheekily responds. It’s funny, surprising, tear-jerking, and an important plot point as Barbie learns the beauty of being human.

Some speculate that the woman on the bench in Barbie is Barbara Handler, as her mother Ruth (Rhea Perlman) plays an important role in the movie, but that is not the case. The woman on the bench is played by Ann Roth, a two-time Academy Award-winning costume designer who has worked on films such as Midnight Cowboy, The Talented Mr. Ripley and her Oscar-winners, The English Patient in 1996, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 2020. Gerwig needed someone older, and fortunately, she knew Roth, telling the New York Times,

“Do you have many friends who are, like, 90? I do, weirdly. I have three real friends, not pretend friends, who are now 91, 90 and 91.”

It’s a critical scene in Barbie that Gerwig got to cast her friend in. She said of the scene,

“The idea of a loving God who’s a mother, a grandmother — who looks at you and says, ‘Honey, you’re doing OK’ — is something I feel like I need and I wanted to give to other people.”

When Gerwig was asked to cut the memorable Barbie scene, the director refused, telling The NYT,

“If I cut that scene, I don’t know why I’m making this movie. If I don’t have that scene, I don’t know what it is or what I’ve done.”

Barbie

Barbie is a film adaptation of the generational iconic toy directed by Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach. The film centers on Margot Robbie’s Barbie who is expelled from Barbieland and travels with Ken (Ryan Gosling) to the real world in search of happiness. The film also stars Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, and several other famous celebrities in cameo roles.

Release Date

July 21, 2023

Cast

Margot Robbie , Ryan Gosling , Simu Liu , Ariana Greenblatt , Helen Mirren , Nicola Coughlan , John Cena , Will Ferrell , Ritu Arya , Michael Cera , America Ferrera , Alexandra Shipp , Kate McKinnon

Runtime

114 Minutes