Race, as Americans conceptualize it today, is a legacy of the cultural divisions established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traits such as skin color, facial features, and hair textures were used to classify human differences under the guise of a binary racial system ​(i.e., White or Black.) [2] The usage of these classifications justified laws and societal norms that preserved acts of discrimination and racism. The way society behaved as a result of human differences directly impacted the way marginalized individuals perceived themselves as well as enacted agency. The media in the American market commodified dangerous caricatures geared towards the Black population, which further complicated the relationship Black people had with their genetic markers. It is this conscious awareness that propelled generations of Black women to become intentional with their children’s exposure to the material culture geared toward Black children.  As a child, my mother was deeply intentional in her decision to surround my sister and me with various Black Barbies. The subconscious power of the dolls’ representation manifested in the way I viewed my skin tone. I felt comfortable within my skin and found pride in my appearance. Many Black mothers, like mine, essentially wanted to curate a space that empowered their daughters’ differences.

Mattel’s historical releases of their Black Barbie dolls mark cultural shifts in how popular dolls have shaped the way both Black and non-Black children began to confront representations of race and ethnicity. As a first attempt to diversify their doll collection, a Black version of Barbie’s European cousin “Francie” debuted in 1967. Labeled “Colored Francie,” the indeed darker version of the doll was fashionable and racially distinct from the famously Eurocentric dolls that had come before. Both versions of Francie wore the mod-style aesthetic, a sub-youth culture in 1960s London known for their tailored clothing. Although this was a step in a new direction, the Black version of Francie faced much controversy as the only distinction between the two was the change in the mold’s skin tone. “Colored Francie” had the same facial features, flipped hair, and clothes as the other Francie. The Black American market did not receive the doll well.

The rejection of the “Colored Francie” doll was due to its failing to reflect Black American ethnic identification. In cultural studies, the term belonging-in-difference refers to the process of individuals navigating and negotiating belonging and differentiating themselves in communities. To imagine and belong to a community involves differentiating yourself from another community. [3] Although race can often be treated as synonymous with ethnicity, it is ethnicity that “enables people to think through how (and with whom) they experience a sense of identity and belonging.” [4] According to Stuart Hall, ethnicity is a reflection of the way people articulate their identities and communities, which involves a higher degree of self-agency. The power of self-agency is reflected through the styling practices that directly respond to the external conflict placed on the Black body. A black plastic doll in the mass American market needed to, therefore, reflect the articulations Black Americans were navigating aesthetically.

After a first, and much-needed, success of the Julia doll, in honor of Diahann Carroll’s sitcom Julia, Mattel introduced the Christie doll, released in 1968, which addressed the failures of the Black version of Francie. Barbie’s new friend had her own identity with a different mold, creating new facial features, darker skin color, and short straight hair that mimicked the traditional press and curl popularized among Black American women and girls of the time. Variations of Christie existed in the market until the early 2000s. When young Black women today refer to the Black Barbie dolls of their childhood, Christie is often the doll they remember, whether the actual doll itself to her coordinating bed sheets and cake decorations. I believe that Christie marked a dynamic shift in young Black children’s affinity for their features once deemed inferior.

A new era arose in 1980 with the release of Black Barbie. Unlike the previous characters who had been introduced as Barbie’s friend, Black Barbie was Barbie too. Designed by Kitty Black Perkins, Black Barbie represented the ethnic re-articulations that expressed Black American identity. Reading the box, one finds a carefully written slogan: “She’s black! She’s beautiful! She’s dynamite!” The eyes will then land on a fashionable Black Barbie wearing a red gown, golden hoop earrings, a gold necklace, and matching red heels. What really marks this doll as revolutionary compared to Mattel’s previous Black dolls was her Afro. The hairstyle synonymous with Black pride and resistance had slowly lost its reign by the 1980s. Despite this, Black Perkins’s intentionality to use the Afro spoke to the Black parents and children of the American market that this Barbie was culturally sound and embodied Black pride in our racialized looks.