Two dolls swivel a dollhouse around so the back is now facing forward. Inside, almost everything is pink and another doll sits upstairs brushing her hair.
Against all odds, Barbara Millicent Roberts bought her first home in 1962. Women were denied mortgage applications because of their sex or marital status at the time, but that didn’t stop her.
The house was modest: a yellow-walled ranch home made of cardboard. For Ms. Roberts — better known as Barbie — it was a dream, and it soon became a national craze. Today according to Mattel, the toymaker behind the iconic doll, a new Barbie Dreamhouse is sold every two minutes.
A doll in a puffy pink dress and blue eye makeup waves.
Barbie’s body, careers, lifestyle and house — a hot pink monument of decadence and desire, now equipped with a swimming pool, slide and elevator — have all been qualities designed for children (and adults) to crave for themselves. Barbie has been the platonic ideal of what a young woman could and should be. “Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future,” Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie, told The New York Times in 1977. She named the doll after her own daughter (Ken was named after Ms. Handler’s son).
Even the dollhouse itself is a status symbol among owners: Its retail value is $199.99, and one must have a home large enough to accommodate the nearly four-foot tall toy.
To bring the doll’s world to cinematic life for the buzzy Hollywood movie “Barbie,” four life-size Dreamhouses were erected at studios in Britain, leading to a shortage in a supply of pink paint.
From the beginning, much of Barbie’s existence — her unrealistic physical proportions, the lack of racially diverse dolls, the toy’s reinforcing of gender roles — has been debated in jest and in seriousness. But her home, which has not been as publicly parsed or praised like the doll, has been a mirror for the various social, political and economic changes the rest of the country was experiencing. It has followed housing patterns and trends, from chic, compact urban living to suburban sprawl to pure excess. At times, it has been out of step, ignoring the country’s ills (Barbie’s never been broke; she has never lost her house to foreclosure).
The house has served as a subliminal, maybe even subversive, blueprint for children, especially girls. Barbie’s Dreamhouse was all her own — Ken was not on the deed.
1962
Barbie’s Bachelorette Pad
Financial institutions frequently turned down mortgage applications for women without male co-signers when Mattel debuted the Dreamhouse in 1962, three years after Barbie shook up the toy world, arriving in a one-piece bathing suit and kitten heels.
“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 dependents on men and that their role was to be caregivers,” said Deborah Dinner, a professor of law at Cornell University and the author of “The Sex Equality Dilemma.” Single or divorced women, Ms. Dinner added, were often denied loans because of the very fact that they weren’t married.
This practice, known as credit discrimination, wasn’t banned until 1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed. Many employers weren’t legally required to pay women equal salaries as men for the same work either, before the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963.
A cardboard dollhouse unfolds. Furniture appears inside. A vintage Barbie doll puts a record on, dances and sits down.
This was also the time of the Playboy bachelor pad and the idea of a single occupancy home for a freewheeling bachelor, but here you have the female version of that,” said Felix Burrichter, the co-editor of “Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey.”
Barbie’s first home was prophetic in one way: today, more single women own homes than single men.
As a young girl in the 1960s, Sue Dalsing never fully realized the significance of Barbie owning a home. “I thought that was just how it was supposed to be,” said Ms. Dalsing, 62, an antique dealer. “Ken didn’t have anything. He came to Barbie’s house.”
Now, Ms. Dalsing lives in Saint Joseph, Mo., in what she called her own dream house. “We got to pick everything out and give our daughters a nice, shiny, new home.” It’s also a ranch home, just like Barbie’s.
While the toy’s debut could have been an act of feminist revolt, it was also about making money — perhaps primarily so. The year the house came out, Elliot Handler, Mattel’s president and husband of Barbie inventor Ms. Handler, told Time magazine how the company manufactured accessories that were part of the Barbie ecosystem in order to boost sales. “You get hooked on one and you have to buy the other,” he said.
That keep-them-coming-back-for-more sales formula is still working six decades later: “Dreamhouse owners buy twice as many Barbie toys as non-Dreamhouse owners,” said Lisa McKnight, the global head of Mattel’s Barbie and dolls portfolio, in an interview.
1974
A Home for a ‘Glamorous, Sophisticated Woman’
By 1974, the Dreamhouse architects seemed influenced not only by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy bachelor pads, but also by Helen Gurley Brown’s seminal 1962 book “Sex and the Single Girl.”
Premarital sex became less stigmatized and a singles culture began to rise with the arrival of the sexual revolution, the F.D.A.’s approval of the birth control pill and the women’s movement. Ms. Brown’s book served as a guide for women looking to fulfill their newfound sexual freedom.
“If you are to be a glamorous, sophisticated woman that exciting things happen to, you need an apartment and you need to live in it alone!” she wrote.
A doll sits comfortably on the second floor of the dollhouse. A Ken doll approaches and holds up a rose.
1979
From Ferns to A-Frames
As the 1970s ended, Barbie — and many Americans — gave up the metropolitan lifestyle and moved out to the suburbs with a prototypical A-frame home. Maybe, she moved back to her home state of Wisconsin.
Cities were shrinking in size and wealth, as white flight followed desegregation efforts and more areas adopted the model of Levittown, a Long Island community of roughly 17,000 homes that look startlingly alike.
Though feminism was now mainstream, some efforts to advance women’s rights were stalling. In 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment, which stated that rights “shall not be denied or abridged” on the basis of sex, fell three states short of being added to the Constitution.
Furniture moves around within the house, and the dollhouse itself visible separates into three sections. Two dolls are present – one inside and the other outside.
1990
Pink, Pink and More Pink
Barbie’s signature pink began increasingly popping up in the 1970s, part of Mattel’s effort to brand toys to stand out from competitors, said Mr. Burrichter. Though it might’ve been successful marketing, Mattel’s pink dousing would later be criticized for perpetuating gender stereotypes.
Two dolls swivel a dollhouse around so the back is now facing forward. Inside, almost everything is pink and another doll sits upstairs brushing her hair.
Women made several economic and cultural strides throughout the 1990s. The median age women were getting married was trending upward, women’s labor force participation increased and the “girl power” movement, popularized by the Spice Girls, was taking off.
As a child, Maddie Bone, a 28-year-old brand designer, was given a hand-me-down Dreamhouse from a family friend. She felt like she hit the jackpot — it was in mint condition, and it even came with furniture.
Ms. Bone, who lives in Waldoboro, Me., recalled creating highly-involved scenarios with her Barbies, making them go on “Homer-esque” journeys, traversing through her yard to the living room to a “super fun party blowout” in the Dreamhouse propped on the family coffee table.
“I think we were all dealing with my mom’s cancer diagnosis in different ways during that time. Barbie was a world I could pour myself into and see this perfect house while ours … wasn’t,” Ms. Bone said. “There was no hospital bed in the Dreamhouse.”
2015
Escaping Reality
In the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, many Americans saw their chances of achieving homeownership squashed.
About 2.3 million homes in the United States had at least one foreclosure filing in 2008, more than triple the amount from 2006.
Women, and women of color in particular, were disproportionately affected by the crisis, said Amy Castro, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice. “In the early 2000s, single women were the fastest growing group of home buyers in the United States,” she said. Predatory lenders then “super included” them when selling risky loans. “African American women were 256 percent more likely to have a risky subprime loan than a white man with the same financial profile,” Ms. Castro pointed out.
A car driven by a doll zooms behind the dollhouse. The garage door opens, and it backs inside. The doll then walks through her home, takes the elevator up and settles on the couch.
Moving the furniture around within the Dreamhouse helped Isabelle Roy, an 18-year-old content creator, form her design instincts.
“Even placing things in my home now, I’m asking, ‘what’s the best angle, what’s the best thing?’ I thought about that 10 years ago, too,” said Ms. Roy, who lives in an apartment in the Canadian province of Alberta.
She shares her place with her boyfriend, “but it’s mostly mine, most of the stuff is mine, was designed by me and put around by me. He’s just along for the ride.”
2021
A Luxe Pandemic Pad
It’s an Instagrammable approach to design and décor — a skill influencer Barbie perfected through her @barbiestyle Instagram account, with a following of over 2 million.
As the houses became increasingly excessive, they were slow to be made inclusive.
In 2019, Mattel introduced a new Barbie in a wheelchair. But her wheelchair didn’t fit in the Dreamhouse elevator, and Barbie couldn’t go to the upper floors of her own home, just like versions of a doll that accompanied her and the Dreamhouse more than two decades earlier.
One Barbie is seen working on a laptop on the third floor of the dollhouse. A Barbie in a wheelchair then takes the elevator up the home’s second floor. A third doll in a mask is standing at the edge outside.
2023
Interiors and Identity
In 1980, Mattel launched the first Black and Hispanic Barbies. Before that, Barbie had a Black friend named Christie, but this was the first time the main character was Black.
At the top level of this dollhouse, dolls that range in dress, body type and race are shown in flashing intervals. Another Barbie rides a spiral slide and splashes in the pool.
Outside of Barbie’s world, there are many ways in which one’s home can reflect their racial, cultural and gender identities — whether that’s through the art on their walls or the spices in their kitchen.
“Homes are made up of, or at the least contain, the materiality of aspirations, joy, despair — so many things. Tied up in that is identity,” said Catherine E. McKinley, the author of an upcoming book on Black homemaking. “To paint the doll but not the house is really a gesture towards the dollar.”
Barbie Is Not Like the Rest of Us
Now she’s hitting the big screen in the “Barbie” movie, reportedly made for $100 million. Production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer aimed to create an “idealized version of Palm Springs,” Ms. Greenwood said..
A doll with straight long hair and purple makeup nods.
Aspects of the Dreamhouses are meant to appear “architectural implausible” to keep things toylike, said Ms. Spencer. The four Dreamhouses had no walls, and there were also no toilets, no shadows, no color white. They used cheap fake grass — the higher quality fake grass appeared too realistic.
The stark reminders that it’s a fantasyland might put some viewers at ease.
Society has held up “this promise of homeownership as part and parcel of the American dream,” for centuries, said Ms. Castro. More than 60 years of Barbie’s Dreamhouses have further instilled that in us from a young age.
To own a home at all, especially one with a three-story slide, can feel unattainable for most. From July 2021 to June 2022, home buyers were richer, whiter and older than they had been in decades. The share that were first-time homeowners was the lowest its been since at least 1981. And, the median home price exceeded $400,000 for the first time.
It’s called a Dreamhouse for a reason. We can all dream, can’t we?
Produced by Phaedra Brown, Gabriel Gianordoli and Michael Kolomatsky.
Photographs and video by Tony Cenicola.
