Why is there no Kurdish Barbie doll?

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Why is there no Kurdish Barbie doll? A socio-political and cultural history: Is it because she has no country to call her own?

1958 saw the launch of the spectacular, sophisticated, unsmiling Mattel Teen Fashion Model Barbie ™ available as a blond or a brunette in a striped black and white cotton swimsuit.

By 1963, the first travel and theatres series began. Barbie doll – whether black-haired (dark Brunette), blonde, titian (redhead), platinum or white ginger, visited Mexico, Holland, Switzerland, and Japan (where she was designed).

She was clothed in the national costumes of each country: the finely tailored miniature outfits could be bought separately from the dolls that came in their swimsuits and were reproduced down to the smallest detail of fabric, accessories and shoes. Barbie had Dutch clogs, and Japanese sandals as well as slingback heels, ski boots, ice skates, and ballet shoes, a tennis outfit, a cheerleader’s costume and variants for all the sporting activities open to girls of the 1950s and 1960s.

She could be a graduate in her black gown and cap,, a teacher, a nurse, an outdoor living girl in jeans, straw sunhat and checked shirt going fishing at a picnic – anything she wanted Barbie doll could do and that was her ethos, the reason behind her creation.

Girls did not just have to play with baby dolls anymore. It was groundbreaking. Her creator, Ruth Handler (1916-2002) named Barbie after her own daughter, Barbara, and Ken after her son. She was the American-born daughter of Polish-Jewish refugees from Poland. [1]

She went on to become a business tycoon in the toy world with her husband, and later, designed a prothesis for women who had suffered mastectomies owing to breast cancer. She too had been subjected to surgery after being diagnosed in 1970. She called it ‘Nearly Me.’

The Little Theatre series saw Barbie and her 1961 boyfriend Ken doll™ dressed for the Arabian Nights with her genie lamp and curled toe gold slippers, as well as going back in time to play Guinevere and her knight, Lancelot, or with Barbie costumed as Little Red Riding Hood with Ken donning a wolf’s headpiece, and as Cinderella, rich and poor.

Her best friend, Midge looked Irish as did Midge’s boyfriend, Alan, a redhead with a snub nose. Little sister, Skipper was a pre-teen American beauty but her friends, Skooter, and Ricky also got the Irish touch like Midge and Alan. They could wear the same clothes as the dolls of their size, designed by fashion couturiere, Charlotte Johnson.

Little Theatre Barbie and Ken advertisement with the dolls in Arabia (right). Photo: Ebay

Barbie was soon given a lovely young cousin named Francie and an English friend called Stacie. In 1967, the first doll of colour, Black Francie, came along – today this Francie doll is a highly-prized rarity owing to the few that were originally manufactured. She joined blonde and brunette, pink skinned Francie and Japanese Francie.

The Barbie family and friends’ series was still being manufactured in Japan since their creation by American and Japanese engineers and designers working at the new Kyowa Kygaku assembly plant under the Kokusai Boeki Kaisha Distribution Ltd. Company. Boxes from this era show the initials KB.

Special and exclusive Japanese versions of Midge, Francie, and Skipper were produced for the Japanese market with orientalised eye paint like today’s anime cartoons. Expensive miniature kimonos joined the line of fashions. But Ken never got to be Japanese although in 1993 he got an earring [2].

Post Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Barbie was a triumphant product of American-Japanese artistic and technical innovation overcoming the adversity of the war years. Vinyl was formulated over numerous tests on colour, weight, balance, and durability for play and display. Barbie doll got to wear outfits like Commuter Set, and Solo in the Spotlight as a singer – all with catchy 1960s names to inspire children.

Barbie also worked in the same fields as her designers – nothing was to hold her back from her aspirations and she went from being a sophisticated 1960s American Airlines and later Pan Am air hostess to a smiling 1980s astronaut with her own space suit complete with helmet.

The costume for Barbie in Arabia hybridised an Indian sari with a belly dancing outfit, rather like the hit TV show, I Dream of Jeannie – the lovely blond ponytailed jinn that came out of the bottle. looking just like a blond Barbie doll.

A recent edition black Barbie doll with Afro hair (Collection of Sheri Laizer). Photo: Sheri Laizer/via iKurd.net

Ethnic dolls joined the production once the factories moved out to Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and then China. Black Barbie emerged in 1981, Hispanic, American Indian, Eskimo, Asian, Hawaiian, Japanese, Parisian, Royal English, Chinese, Spanish, Indian, – creations gathered from the far ends of the earth – but never a Kurdish Barbie.

In 2024, a lavish new production of Barbie and Ken in the Arabian Nights was launched. By then just about every nation in the world had been represented – even an Islamic Barbie to rival the cheaply produced Middle Eastern Fulla (Rose) doll in a rather drab hijab.

Why did not Kurdish costumes capture the imaginations of Mattel’s ever enthusiastic designers? Is it because Kurdistan was wiped from the maps and only a small area gets to use the name ‘Kurdistan’ today in northern Iraq?

Kurdish children and their lost childhood

National and cultural identity cannot just rely on war to place a people permanently on the map and safeguard them in their own homeland: children’s dreams and aspirations also have a role to play but Kurdish children often experience little of their childhood.

Many Kurdish children come from poor or IDP and refugee families. Some have to work from a young age, in Kurdish areas helping adults with the farming, working in a small shop, shoe-shining on the streets of the town and selling tissues, matches or even petrol at the roadside. In politicised families the children are very swiftly conditioned into politico-cultural or religious stereotypes.

In the Diaspora, refugee parents and migrant are compelled to focus on long running claims for asylum, trying to cope with a different culture, alien languages and values. It is rare for their children to be read a bedtime story or get to go to the park.

Meryem’s window into childhood, UK. Photo: Sheri Lazier

Many children in Kurdistan and the Diaspora never have toys. I have seen boys playing by tying a piece of string to a piece of metal, an old wheel without a tyre or even a dead bird or cat and dragging it round to amuse themselves. Little girls are left to look after younger siblings. When a parent remarries they also run a high risk of being abused and the new children that come alone getting preferential treatment while they become domestic aides in routine household life.

Working for many years in the refugee communities in the UK, I saw children left to their own devices whilst the adults drank endless glasses of sugared tea smoking cigarettes and debating developments back home. Few got to own toys or have fun in the playground or go swimming.

All the refugee centre’s children wanted to come and play, UK. Photo: Sheri Lazier

There were, of course, a few exceptions. Some joined the folk-dancing groups, swiftly learned second languages and aspired to a more creative life. Meryem was one of these gifted children. I would pile as many as would fit into my car and take them to the swings or let them play with my kittens and Barbie dolls. Meryem played well and went on to become a talented actress.

After they grew up, some of these children told me that the hours I spent with them taking them away from the community centre to play were the happiest of their childhood.

Liberated Kurdish Barbie doll, OOAK. Photo: Sheri Laizer/via ikurd net

The icon endures

Barbie doll began ‘life’ as a liberated girl – she was made for everyone as the new hit film, Barbie [3] highlights rivalling Oppenheimer at the box office.

Today, there is a Barbie doll with vitiligo, Barbie in a wheelchair, even a Down’s Syndrome lookalike for inclusivity – but no Kurdish Barbie for Kurdish children. Accordingly, I made a OOAK Kurdish Barbie – a collector’s term for ‘one of a kind’ ad I decided to model her on Jina (Mahsa) Amini and the struggle of all women in Iran. Here she is.

A letter proposing the production of a Kurdish Barbie doll to Mattel dressed in any of the wonderful regional costumes beloved of Kurdish women is ready to go off to Mattel headquarters with the proposal for a Kurdish Barbie doll to join her international counterparts.

1 https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/barbie-ruth-handler-poland
2 1993 Earring Magic Ken that matched Earring Magic Barbie and three other dolls in the series with big earrings.
3 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.