We have been told to dream big. We have been told that we can be anything we want to be. We have been told that if we really want something we can achieve it. However, inevitably the question arises: is the world ready to allow us to succeed?
This is the dream gap: a phenomenon in which young girls are held back from realizing their full potential. This involves fear of failure and lack of self-confidence as reflections of social conditioning, in a world where a woman is still often underestimated and must work twice as hard as a man to be considered worthy. Mattel's official website reads: 'Although progress has been made towards gender equality, there are still stereotypes and social prejudices that can influence a girl's trajectory and future choices. The Barbie Dream Gap Project is a global mission dedicated to bridging the gap by challenging gender stereotypes and helping to undo prejudices that prevent girls from reaching their full potential." This project includes more than 100 Barbie models, more than 250 career dolls, more than 22 million STEM activities completed and more than 30 million views on YouTube; supports the organizations InspirinGirls and Girl Leadership, whose work is dedicated to empowering girls to reach their full potential and raise their aspirations; and has collaborated on research with New York University, the UCLA Scholars Centre and Cardiff University. It has also produced a podcast in collaboration with Podcastory, in which Barbie herself tells the inspirational stories of 6 Italian women, concluding the series with an episode dedicated to the role of the “Barbie model” in bridging the dream gap.
Many might say that this is a good advertising campaign for one of the products that for years has been the spokesperson for stereotypes and perhaps helped to create new ones. However, we know that society changes and so does the market. A doll designed and imagined as it is today, 60 years ago, would never have been understood, accepted or even conceived. The strength of the Barbie doll is that it adapted to the society for which it was intended, based on messages that only today, for how trivial they are, they could seem discriminatory to us, but for which it was once necessary to fight. Moreover, the underlying message of Barbie's creator, Ruth Hander, has always been that a woman has the right to choose and, if she wants, she can be whoever she wants: from Growing Up Skipper, from 1975, criticized by concerned parents because it showed how a woman's body changes with puberty, to the role models released on 8 March 2023, the American Wojcicki sisters, namely Susan, the historic CEO of YouTube, Anne, one of the founders of the genomics and biotechnology company 23andME, and Janet, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of San Francisco.
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