The Six and Twenty Book Club met Oct. 13 with Karen Buckley, hostess, welcoming members and one guest. Barbara Leeds presented the program, sharing research on the origins of the Barbie doll.

Ruth Handler, who with her husband, Elliot, co-founded Mattel, Inc., vacationed in Germany with her children Barbara and Ken in 1956. There she became acquainted with the German Bild Lilli doll, a risqué gag gift for men based upon a cartoon character featured in the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung. The doll, featuring an adult body with numerous outfits and fashion accessories, later became marketed to German children and was quite popular.

Handler purchased three of these dolls, gave one to her daughter, Barbara, and presented the other two with Americanized revisions to the board at Mattel. They initially rejected the idea, but Ruth Handler persisted and developed an initial line of Barbie dolls with accompanying French-inspired clothing that was eventually presented at the 1959 Toy Fair convention in Chicago. The doll was an immediate hit. In 1961, Mattel brought out Barbie’s ultimate “accessory” — her boyfriend, Ken, followed by her best friend, Midge in 1963, and her little sister, Skipper, in 1964.

Barbie has become a cultural icon. Unlike baby dolls, Barbie does not teach nurturing. Outfitted with career paraphernalia, the doll was a model for financial self-sufficiency. She is not a doll defined by relationships of responsibility to men or family. Barbie has no husband or offspring. She is a career doll with quite a pedigree. She has been issued as an Astronaut (1965), Surgeon (1973), President (1992) NASCAR Driver (1998), Architect (2011), Robot Engineer (2018), and so many more careers over the years. Every second, Mattel calculates, two Barbies are sold somewhere in the world.

Handler, went on to have a second career as founder of the company Nearly Me, an innovative company that designed breast prosthesis for women who have experienced mastectomies. The company served an important need and was later acquired by Kimberly-Clark in the 1990s.

Leeds completed her program giving an outline of the storyline to the recent hit movie, “Barbie.” The film, directed by Greta Gerwig, the Oscar-nominated director of “Lady Bird,” and a recent rendering of “Little Women,” has received critical acclaim and garnered $1 billion dollars in global ticket sales in the first 17 days.