This leads to boys pursuing careers requiring a higher intelligence, and girls being underrepresented in those careers. Mattel has sold over a billion Barbie dolls, making it the company's largest and most profitable line.

A 6-year-old girl giving voice for the first time to curvy Barbie sings in a testing room at Mattel’s headquarters. The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5- to 8-year-old girls". Mix and match among the friends and fashions (sold separately) to create a flawless look - just like in real life.This is cute, but it is sewn onto the longer skirt in the back, which makes for some awkward bunching and hiking. The standard range of Barbie dolls and related accessories are manufactured to approximately 1/6 scale, which is also known as playscale. In 2016, Mattel expanded the So In Style line to include seven skin tones, twenty-two eye colors, and twenty-four hairstyles. This would be the last adjustment Ruth would make to her own creation as, three years later, she and her husband Elliot were removed from their posts at Mattel after an investigation found them guilty of issuing false and misleading financial reports.

The company additionally claimed that Mattel "falsely and misleadingly represented itself as having originated the design". One of the most common criticisms of Barbie is that she promotes an unrealistic idea of body image for a young woman, leading to a risk that girls who attempt to emulate her will become anorexic. In those novels, Barbie attended Willows High School; while in the Generation Girl books, published by Golden Books in 1999, she attended the fictional Manhattan International High School in New York City (based on the real-life Stuyvesant High School).O]ne of the most dramatic developments in Barbie's history came when she embraced multi-culturalism and was released in a wide variety of native costumes, hair colors and skin tones to more closely resemble the girls who idolized her. Barbie was manufactured in Japan during this time, with her clothes hand-stitched by Japanese homeworkers. Mattel teamed up with Nabisco to launch a cross-promotion Barbie doll with Oreo cookies in 1997 and 2001. They switched out Barbie’s voice box with that of GI Joe so that the blonde cried, “Vengeance is mine,” while the macho warrior enthused, “Let’s plan our dream wedding.