Barbie and the American Dream: Her Home
Barbie and the American Dream: Her Home
Barbara Millicent Roberts managed to purchase her first house in 1962 despite all obstacles. She didn’t let the fact that at the time women had their mortgage applications declined based on their sex or marital status deter her.
The residence was simple—a cardboard ranch house with yellow walls. It was a dream come true for Ms. Roberts, popularly known as Barbie, and it quickly spread across the country. A new Barbie Dreamhouse is sold today, according to Mattel, the toy company that created the famous doll, every two minutes.
A doll waving while wearing a puffy pink outfit and blue eye makeup.
Barbie’s physique, occupations, way of life, and home—a bright pink monument to extravagance and desire now featuring a pool, slide, and elevator—have all been crafted to pique children’s (and adults’) desire for them. Barbie has served as the archetypal representation of what a young lady should and ought to be. According to Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, “every little girl needed a doll to project herself into her dream of her future” in 1977. Ken was named after Ms. Handler’s son, so she named the doll after her own daughter.
Even the dollhouse itself is considered a status symbol among owners because it costs $199.99 at retail and requires a roomy home to fit it.
Four life-size Dreamhouses were built at British studios to bring the doll’s world to life for the popular Hollywood film “Barbie,” which caused a shortage of pink paint.
Barbie has been the subject of serious and lighthearted controversy for much of her life, including her exaggerated physical proportions, the paucity of dolls representing different races, and the toy’s reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Her house, however, which has not received the same level of public criticism or admiration as the doll, has served as a reflection of the myriad social, political, and economic upheavals the rest of the nation was going through. It has kept up with changes in home styles and fashions, including elegant, compact urban living, suburban sprawl, and outright to excess. It has occasionally been out of step, neglecting the nation’s problems (Barbie has never been poor and has never had her home foreclosed upon).
For kids, especially girls, the house has acted as a subtle, possibly even subversive, template. Ken was not listed as the owner of Barbie’s Dreamhouse.
1962
The bachelorette of Barbie Pad
In 1962, three years after Barbie rocked up the toy industry by debuting in a one-piece swimming suit and kitten heels, Mattel introduced the Dreamhouse. At the time, financial institutions typically rejected mortgage applications from women without male co-signers.
Deborah Dinner, a professor of law at Cornell University and the author of “The Sex Equality Dilemma,” stated that mortgage lenders “had a host of stereotypes about women — the same kinds of stereotypes that were used to discriminate against women in employment, insurance, and businesses open to the public — and that’s basically that women were economic to dependents on men and that their role was to be carers.” Ms. Dinner said that single or divorced women were frequently turned down for loans just because of their marital status.
Before the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, many employers were not legally compelled to pay women the same compensation as men for the same work, perpetuating gender-based wage disparities. It wasn’t until 1974 that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act became law, prohibiting credit discrimination and providing greater financial equality for individuals regardless of their gender. These legislative milestones marked significant steps towards addressing gender-based disparities in both the workplace and financial sector.
