New Barbie Doll Honours Black Journalist And Suffragist Ida B. Wells

This year of 2022, a new Barbie doll will release to the public for purchase to honour a black female journalist, feminist, and civil rights leader, known as Ida B. Wells; she was an investigative journalist who launched a crusade against lynching during the late 1890s, and was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for all the work that she had done in her lifetime. The Barbie doll will highlight the journalist and activist for her work in racial and gender equality, featuring the doll in a full floor length dress with lace while holding a Memphis Free Speech newspaper.

Born into slavery in 1862, Ida B. Wells famously investigated lynchings of Black Americans and “exposed the horrors of lynching, and [she also] co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People” to give Black people the opportunity to receive recognition for their achievements. She co-owned the Memphis Free Speech newspaper, which the doll is holding and will be available to buy when purchasing the limited-edition doll that was unveiled recently. Sadly, Ida B. Wells passed away in 1931, having spent her life in Chicago.

The Barbie doll is a part of the toymaker Mattel’s Inspiring Women series that began in 2018 on International Women’s Day; focus was put on honouring “historical role models who paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before”. This series is a part of Mattel’s Dream Gap campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the issue of representation for young girls. Previous research has shown “that girls began to view their gender as inferior to boys and develop limiting beliefs about themselves at as young as 5 years old, as a result of cultural stereotypes, implicit biases and media representation”.

As a result of this research, Barbie began to create dolls that “allowed children to play with purpose, modelling Barbie dolls in the likeness of historical figures. One of the first dolls released was in honour of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, followed by more dolls made in the likeness of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, literary icon Maya Angelou, and the Queen of Jazz, Ella Fitzgerald”.

The response to the Barbie has been moving and overwhelming for author Michelle Duster, who is the great-granddaughter of Wells. She said, “We were hoping that the doll would be well-received, but we never expected this level of excitement.” The author worked on the concept for the doll with her brother, Dan, and Mattel’s development team. “My brother really enjoyed it. He just wanted to know how a doll was produced, and Mattel was very inclusive in asking us questions about everything, like her hairstyle and her eye colour. I even looked up what newsrooms looked like in the late 1800s — the typewriter, the desk, all that.”

Mattel designer Linda Jiang wrote in an Instagram post that she began sketching the doll in between the BLM (Black Lives Matter) protests in 2020. Inspired by the suffragette’s life, Linda Jiang aimed to capture the time when Wells was editor in chief of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, which is where she launched her anti-lynching work.