Who is Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie who breathed life into the doll and Greta Gerwig's movie?

Did you watch the Barbie movie yet? If not, be warned, there are some spoilers ahead. 

Greta Gerwig had a tall task while creating the Barbie movie. She had to bring to life a lifeless doll, without so much as a personality, preferences, or inner life. This is where the Barbie origin story came to play an integral part in the movie. And it centres around one character that only appeared twice in the movie. 

In the scene where Margot Robbie's Barbie is trying to escape from the Mattel office in the real world, she finds a mysterious old woman sitting calmly in a 50s American kitchen in one of the rooms in the office. We aren't introduced to who the old woman is, but she helps Barbie to escape the Mattel building. 

The old woman once again shows up at the end of the movie, finally revealing herself as the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, while making some off-handed comments about the real-life Handler's controversies surrounding tax evasion. It turns out that despite the Barbie doll company Mattel being run by a male-dominated board, the doll itself was created by a woman. 

So, who was Ruth Handler in real life?

Ruth Handler was born Ruth Mosko to Russian-Jewish immigrants. She was among the ten children in her family. And she is indeed the original creator of the world-famous Barbie doll. It is Handler's story of creating Barbie that Gerwig turned to bring the plastic doll alive on the big screen. 

And if you were among the many mums who brought their children to watch the movie thinking it is for them, only to find out the movie was more aimed at themselves, then once again it is because of Ruth Handler. 

The way many mums brought their kids to watch #Barbie thinking the movie was going to be about their kids but ended up being about themselves instead pic.twitter.com/hAFnFia65J

— M (@mkmalia) July 23, 2023

• Handler and her husband Elliot Handler co-founded Mattel in 1945. It was a photo frame-making company, which later started making toys. 
• Mattel was successful as a toymaking company even before it introduced the Barbie doll. 
• Legend has it that Handler wanted to introduce an adult woman doll for children, but the executives at Mattel balked at the idea of letting kids play with a doll with breasts. 
• Just like the opening scene of the Barbie movie, which shows young girls playing with baby dolls, Ruth Handler noticed that her daughter Barbara wasn't all that interested in the baby dolls available at the time. 

• Baby dolls were the only toys popularly available for young girls at the time, which conditioned them to be mothers. 
• Handler noticed that Barbara was more interested in playing with paper doll figures of an adult woman. 
• That's how in the early 1950s, Handler imagined girls playing with dolls modeled on grown-up women, on which they could project their own aspirations. 
• But Ruth Handler's dream was only realised when she went on a trip to Europe and found the German doll Bild Lilli, not at all made for children.
• Mattel took inspiration from Bild Lilli for Barbie, which was named after Handler's daughter Barbara. A few years later, Mattel introduced the Ken dolls, named after Handler's son Kenneth.     
• While Ruth Handler's Barbie doll took Mattel to new heights, it was not without a lawsuit from Bild Lilli's makers for alleged copyright infringement. The case was settled out of court. 

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• In the 70s, Mattel was embroiled in several controversies, losses, and an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Eventually, the Handlers were ousted from the company in 1975. 
• Ruth Handler also underwent a mastectomy in 1970 after a breast cancer diagnosis. She passed away in 2002 but maintained her innocence with regard to tax matters. 

While in real life, Ruth Handler was a successful businesswoman of her time, who left behind a legacy and several controversies to her name, in the movie, Gerwig portrays Handler as a deity though imperfect.   

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