Delving into Barbie’s world

Thursday, July 9, 2009 | by danielle max

Had Barbie’s creator listened to her husband, the iconic doll might never have been born. “Ruth,” Elliot Handler told his wife, “no mother is ever going to buy her daughter a doll with breasts.”

Fortunately, Ruth Handler disregarded his advice and embarked on the project that would change her life forever.

For Handler, breasts — and the lack of them — were pivotal in her building two successful careers. The first was as president of Mattel, which she and her husband founded, at a time when most women tended only to run their homes. The second came in the 1970s when Handler established Ruthton to manufacture prosthetics for women who, like herself, had undergone mastectomies.

Robin Gerber’s book “Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her” chronicles the rise of Handler as she broke through the boundaries of corporate America.

Gerber also details Handler’s fall, including her ousting from Mattel and her criminal trial for financial irregularities at the behemoth toy firm.

Gerber describes a shrewd innovator whose natural business savvy overcame her lack of formal education, as well as a pushy and sometimes underhanded businesswoman. But, as she reveals, while Handler was busy creating toys to keep millions of children happy, she was unable to please her own.

Handler, who died in 2002, was born Ruth Mosko, the 10th and youngest child of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Circumstances after her birth meant that she was raised by her oldest sister and brother-in-law, living apart from her Yiddish-speaking parents.

The echoes of this disjointed family life were heard when Handler became a mother to her two children, Barbara (after whom she named the Barbie doll) and Kenneth (as in the Ken doll). The children, Ken especially, resented sharing their names with the dolls, and hated that the pressures of the business meant their mother was rarely home.

As Gerber shows, work came first and family second. The disharmony grew between the generations and was only mended after Ken was stricken with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. He died in 1994, just one day before his daughter’s wedding.

Despite Gerber’s extensive research, her interviews with family, friends and former Mattel employees, as well as her use of archival material left behind by Handler, the relatively slim book seems to skim over certain situations and events too quickly.

Furthermore, there is also something missing of the essence of Handler.  None-theless, the book is readable and informative and will appeal to a wider audience than just those who have played with a Barbie doll.

“Barbie and Ruth” by Robin Gerber (288 pages, Collins Business, $24.99)