ttel Creations began marketing the "teenage fashion model" as "a new kind of doll from real life" (Tosa 30). The new doll, deemed "Barbie", was named after her own daughter Barbara, who's many years of play with paper dolls had actually inspired her to begin designing the three-dimensional adult doll (Lord 30). Though Mrs. Handler's version of the doll was not as racy or alluring as Lilli, her imitation of the "German streetwalker" would come back to haunt her many years later ("Bad Girl" 2). But for now, the Barbie doll would launch Ruth Handler and her company, "Mattel Creations", into what was soon to be a successful national corporation. In fact, the Barbie doll was so popular that three years after her release in 1959 Mattel was still filling orders from her first year (Long 17). It wasn't until the late 1960's that critics began "comparing Barbie to a Playboy Bunny and calling her a corrupter of youth" ("Bad Girl" 3). One woman commented, "She's an absurd representation of what a woman should be" ("Bad Girl" 3)-–and that's exactly what many others thought she was, too. With such impossible real-life me
...