Black Barbie Review

[00:00:00] Welcome back again to Recap Kickback. It's me, your host Chappelle, and I'm here with another review from another hot topic on Netflix. And this time, I think that this is going to be a fun one. We are going to be talking about the Black Barbie documentary on Netflix.

[00:00:35] It had creeped into the Netflix top 10, but once I saw it, I knew I wanted to talk about it on Recap Kickback. And so I needed to assemble a panel because this might be a surprise to

[00:00:45] some of you. I don't know a lot about Barbie dolls, y'all. It's not really my expertise. I've never seen myself in Black Barbie. I've never really played with no Black Barbies.

[00:00:55] So it's not my realm. So I had to reach out to some people who may be a little bit more familiar with the subject matter. And so first up, welcome back. It's been a while, but my co-host for the Abbott Elementary coverage, Gia Worthy. Gia, what's up?

[00:01:10] Hello! I mean, I already told you guys, I suffered this week. We are recording on the third of July, which is basically Fourth of July Eve. And people were expecting me to

[00:01:22] work today. So I am very sad that I have been through so much today, but I'm very happy that we finally get to talk about the things that matter, which is Black Barbie and Shonda Rhimes.

[00:01:35] And I have a lot of words for Shonda Rhimes and not enough time for all those words. But also, I'd call this person maybe one of the foremost Shonda Rhimes experts that we have

[00:01:45] in the world, but also somebody who I consider a Black Barbie herself, LaTanya Stark. LaTanya, welcome back. I'm so happy to be here talking about Barbie. I love Barbie. I was a Barbie girl. You were? Were you in a Barbie world? No.

[00:02:02] From what I've seen in this documentary, a lot of Black women were not in a Barbie world for a very long time. But eventually, Barbie made some changes and we got this amazing

[00:02:14] documentary to talk about. So first and foremost, I want to thank everybody for being here again for Recap Kickback, where we talk about movies. We talk about media. And then we make sure to highlight the Black stuff when it comes up. Currently, we got House of the Dragon

[00:02:25] coverage with Mario Forth every week. As you know, Gia and I cover Abbott Elementary and various other topics. LaTanya and I cover various topics. So we got a good little hangout here at Recap Kickback. Please subscribe. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, recapkickback.com

[00:02:40] slash subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And then, of course, come to the YouTube page. You can see our beautiful Black faces. And click like, hit the subscribe button, the thumbs up, and leave us some comments and support Recap Kickback while we talk about

[00:02:54] this amazing content. And speaking of content, we got Black Barbie, y'all. This documentary, it really centers the conversation about a timeline of the development of Barbie, the white doll, the white blonde Malibu doll, and then how it develops into what we will

[00:03:11] see is one of the more diverse doll companies in the world. And the development of a Barbie that will change the way people look at representation in toys and help facilitate a lot of conversations

[00:03:24] in Black Barbie. So first and foremost, Gia, what did you think about Black Barbie, the documentary? I loved it. I was so excited. It was already on my to be watched list, right? Like, it

[00:03:39] was in the back of my head. I knew I had to get on it. But this kind of gave it the push that I needed to push it up to the top of the list. But it was, first of all, it was

[00:03:51] 90 minutes, which I am so sick of things that are two hours and more. Like, that is, I need a break in between all of those. So it was concise, which I really liked. But I feel

[00:04:02] like it really explained well, not just the history of, like you said, Barbie, like the basic white doll, not basic, like basic, basic, like it was the first one. And how, like, eventually it developed into like the need for a black doll, but also like black dolls

[00:04:22] in general, not necessarily just like the Barbie brand having a black doll, which was really interesting. But I also really liked how, like, we got to see other people's perspectives. So some people really liked the rollout of the Barbie doll, the design

[00:04:39] of the black Barbie doll, other people wanted it to be a different way. So I like that we got to see a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different opinions about how the black Barbie was created, what the rollout was like, what the advertisements were like,

[00:04:52] if there were advertisements at all. So I just love the fact that it was not committed to one specific perspective. Yeah, this was not a documentary about dolls. It was about the impact of what, you know,

[00:05:07] the black Barbie doll meant to so many people. And then we talked about Barbie as how it started, where it was going and then where it can go in the future in the larger, broader

[00:05:18] scheme of like social issues. Latonya, did you feel like black Barbie or any of the experience you hear about in black Barbie reflect your experience as a Barbie girl yourself? Yeah, for sure. I was just kind of like floored by the history in this documentary and then

[00:05:36] the different psychological studies that they talked about or like showed clips from where they were interviewing the kids. But I grew up in a house with my aunt who was obsessed with dolls. She had all kinds of dolls, just like very similar to that room that we see

[00:05:56] that the director stayed in when she went to go visit her aunt. And I used to hear about, you know, my grandmother growing up in Mississippi making corn husk dolls and never really having money for a real baby doll. And just being, you know, the whole family just

[00:06:15] being kind of like floored when black Barbie actually came out. So that was something that I always grew up. I just always grew up surrounded by dolls with an appreciation of dolls. Yeah. Gia, were you a Barbie girl too?

[00:06:29] I was a Bratz kid growing up. Bratz was, I know, I know. I did have Barbie dolls, but I think around when I was like prime doll, I loved dolls. I love like all types of dolls,

[00:06:43] but I do think like around the time where I was like prime doll playing age, like old enough to take care of the doll, but young enough for it to still be socially acceptable to play with dolls

[00:06:54] as a little kid. Bratz were the new thing coming out. And so that was the one that I primarily played with. And like, they were the hot new thing, whereas Barbie has kind of been like

[00:07:08] the mainstay of it. And I still love Bratz dolls. Like their social media accounts are funny as hell. But there's been something so special about the Barbie brand in the past few years with like the

[00:07:20] movie, a lot of even like the animated movies that came like in the past couple years and all of the different medium, mediums of like Barbie in general have been really great to see. So while

[00:07:36] I did have Bratz and Barbie dolls, there's been like a special appreciation for both for different reasons. I will say though, the Bratz have those feet that detach, which is always so

[00:07:48] unsettling. I do not like their feet on there. So the Barbie, like the feet are attached to the doll. And that is very important to me. So good design on that part. I didn't know Bratz had detachable feet.

[00:08:02] Like they don't have feet on the doll. They are shoes that are like, and you like clip them, you can like Google it, like put in Bratz feet or something. Maybe not that specifically,

[00:08:13] find a way around it. But put it like, they literally, the shoes detach and it's like a little peg at the end of their feet instead of like an actual foot. But then if you have like,

[00:08:25] like if you're like me and you had a multiracial Barbies or not Barbies, Bratz dolls, like across the world, you have like a white doll with little black feet because the shoes matched. And then a

[00:08:36] black doll with like a Puerto Rican feet, like it was, it was a mess. It was a mess, but it was a great time. I learned so much today in such a little, so little time, you know, including-

[00:08:49] Can I just say really quick? I know, like this was important to me when they were talking about how they made like the cloth dolls and everything like that as like a disguise, like basically ways

[00:09:01] to like disguise that they were making black dolls. They had the Topsy Turvy dolls, the ones that start with the, my grandmother definitely had that doll. Like I definitely remember that. I don't remember what house it was at, but I remember that doll specifically, the one where

[00:09:18] it starts as a white doll, I think. And then you flip it over on the other side and there is a black doll on it. I don't know where it is, but I'm gonna find it because it was there. I remember

[00:09:30] that, that like sparked something in the back of my head. It was just like, oh my God, I definitely played with that doll when I was like really, really little. Yeah. You and LaTanya bringing

[00:09:39] up those cloth dolls, it really does bring us to the beginning of the documentary in that the movement for Black Barbie really started in the civil rights era where we have Bula Mae Mitchell,

[00:09:51] who was in the documentary. So that's really cool. Where she's talking about her role going to work for Mattel and how, you know, initially there were no black dolls, you know, they were, I mean,

[00:10:02] she talks about even making a doll out of a jar and putting like hair on it, you know, and just kind of making it like yarn and just calling it a baby doll, just to have something to call her

[00:10:14] own. And then eventually we get people calling for, okay, well, we just don't want any doll. We want a doll that looks like us. So we get the evolution of the doll, the Barbie doll,

[00:10:25] and then the doll that looks and reflects, you know, Black people or people of different shades because LaTanya, that's why they were making these cloth dolls. Not only did they not have one, but they would have like the darker features on these dolls as well.

[00:10:41] Yeah, I mean, we saw even when they finally introduced the Black Barbie doll that they just take the time to paint the skin darker. They don't change any of the features. They don't really

[00:10:53] change the hair too much. So yeah, people were just aching to see something in their own likeness for such a long time. And finally that came out. I think somebody compared the dolls to looking

[00:11:11] like Aunt Jemima back then, which we know is problematic because it's just like a caricature of like the Mamie character. It really like a reductive way of looking at Black people, Black women specifically and saying, here, play with this while, you know, we have fully formed

[00:11:28] Barbie being created by the Mattel company. But, Gia, I will give Mattel a lot of credit. They, I have no clue how open and welcome they were to including diversity way back in as early

[00:11:43] as 1955 in trying to provide Black dolls for people. I mean, without the Mattel company, I don't think we ever get, you know, the growth that we get so quickly from the Barbie doll or

[00:11:57] the toy industry. Yeah, and I'm curious to kind of see like what it, because it seemed like a very, I don't want to say sanitized history, but it seemed like a very clean. It did feel clean.

[00:12:08] Yeah, but it is really interesting that so many of these measures were being made at like the height of some of these landmark Supreme Court decisions like Brown versus Board of Education and that like they were really heightening their brand at that point, like that they were making

[00:12:31] like these big decisions during such a heightened time of racial tension where we're like not even in the civil rights movement at this point. So it was very fascinating to see how much change

[00:12:44] happened so quickly in a time where we really hear a lot of like negative stories about progress being made. So it was nice to see a story be uplifting that we were starting to make changes

[00:12:57] and pave the way for Black dolls to be in the lexicon. Yeah, make no mistake, I'm sure it wasn't as easy as, hey Mattel, you want a Black doll? And they said, sure, you got it. Here's a bunch of money.

[00:13:08] Let's make the doll. You know, of course with most progress and especially in the case of Black people, it takes a lot of work, you know. And we do a lot of like civil rights activism

[00:13:22] in our daily lives where we don't even realize how much we're fighting for, you know. Like I don't think the people who were making the Black Barbie dolls felt like they were making some huge impact

[00:13:32] in civil rights, but eventually like we will see that Barbie is going to reflect a lot of those cases. You mentioned the Brown versus Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, and we talk about

[00:13:44] the Clark test which was what was really one of the most convincing data that they had in that case that would lead to school desegregation. Latonya, were you familiar with the Clark test as

[00:13:55] somebody who I know has studied a lot of law? I was only familiar with that because of taking psychology classes before I was familiar with anything that like anything that had to do with

[00:14:06] the law. But I was really, I'm always glad when documentaries like this exist to bring a spotlight to little known oftentimes history that we experience, have experienced as Black people. So this was a really interesting test wherein they essentially allowed children to play with dolls

[00:14:29] and then tell them what type of attributes, like personality attributes, like if they were good or bad that they would attribute to the dolls based on their skin color. And the overwhelming majority of the results showed that children regardless of their race would attribute all of the bad

[00:14:47] characteristics to the Black dolls and not the White dolls because White dolls had been the standard for so long. And this led to the Brown versus Board of Education saying, you know, like we need to desegregate these schools because people are starting to associate Brown and Black

[00:15:07] features with being negative. And that's on top of all the other evidence that was in Brown versus Board of Education but this was the most convincing thing because these were tiny children. They hadn't

[00:15:17] learned, you know, racism or some of the hateful things. They were kids and they already knew that their self-worth was being downplayed a lot just by the things around them, even in the

[00:15:30] dolls. And so it starts there and then it just takes off. We see that due to the work of Bula Mae Mitchell, I love this woman so much, seeing her in the documentary was so fun.

[00:15:44] And she gets to really tell her firsthand account of, yeah, we were hanging out and at work, you know. It was the 50s and 60s and the Mattel owners like were like, hey is there any suggestions y'all have

[00:15:57] for a doll? And they're like, have you thought about making Barbie Black? And it just becomes Black Barbie. I mean that's pretty much the course of action here. We get Black Barbie who starts off looking

[00:16:09] closer to like Diana Ross or even Diane Carroll, LaTanya. Oh my god, Diane Carroll. Let's just always talk about Diane Carroll. Yeah, the Black Barbie doll. Yeah, I mean she

[00:16:24] was the first Black woman to head up her own TV show in primetime and so they made a doll that was modeled after her and her character. And she was a professional woman that didn't do work

[00:16:40] like inside of a house, like was not a domestic worker, which was something that was really unheard of for the time when showing Black people on television. And of course then the doll

[00:16:52] started to follow. I really do like what Misty Copeland says later in the documentary when she says that essentially just being in a specific place in your Black body is a revolutionary act

[00:17:04] and it can spur other things to happen. And I think that seeing someone who's Black and professional and has their stuff together in the mainstream really did start to spur some change,

[00:17:17] at least in the doll industry if not so much in the world at large. Yeah, and that was the Julia doll. We'll have other Black dolls that are throughout the ages as well and a lot of them

[00:17:30] are really played as sidekicks to Barbie before, you know, Barbie getting a makeover and becoming the Black Barbie that we eventually get. And then different iterations of that that I'm sure spawn offspring like the Bratz dolls or the OMG girls or whatever the little

[00:17:47] kids are playing with now. But these sidekick Barbies, were these like less appealing to younger Black girls or like as opposed to like I think they had like the Karas and the Christies on the sides but it feels like it's slightly different when you have, you know, Barbie,

[00:18:05] the big name. Yeah, I think part of it was that just like there's the Barbie is the brand so like obviously the focal point of all of this is going to be the doll that the brand is named

[00:18:22] after. So like there is Barbie and there are some of the friends of Barbie as well but it just doesn't have the same ring to it. And if we can keep making Barbies with like different jobs,

[00:18:34] different hair colors, why can't we have a Barbie that is a different race other than white? And I think that makes perfect sense especially if they're trying to diversify like the different types of Barbies that they are making when we're talking about like how many careers Barbie can

[00:18:50] have, things like that. Why not also add in like you know especially for a brand as big as Barbie, let's also throw in like having Barbies of different races. Obviously this film in particular

[00:19:04] is about black Barbies so they're focusing on like the black Barbie model and black actresses that or celebrities that were based off of a Barbie or like were made into Barbie dolls in the future. But this can also be applied to other races, other nationalities, other cultures that

[00:19:25] are not represented which we will see in like future Barbie dolls as well which is very nice and also like I loved the Barbie movie for part of that reason because of the diversity

[00:19:37] of Barbie world. So it just worked several levels. Yeah so we got some feedback about the Barbie movie from one of the listeners, Laura. She was saying that she was watching it with her daughter

[00:19:48] and one of the things that stood out to her was that she felt like in the documentary they highlight how Barbie wasn't getting or black Barbie wasn't really getting marketed you know it's like black Barbie existed but could you find it in stores? Were there black Barbie commercials?

[00:20:05] A lot of the talking heads we see in this documentary even say I was grown before I even knew there was a black Barbie. Like I had black dolls you know we see other dolls, Wanda,

[00:20:15] Nancy, you know other dolls but Barbie itself was not being marketed like as black Barbie as wildly as it was to other people and she brought up the question if black Barbie would have done well

[00:20:27] if it wasn't tied to the Barbie brand. So this question I'll point it at you LaTanya. We saw the kids in the documentary even trying to point out like which was the real Barbie in quotation

[00:20:37] marks and they always went to the blonde white Malibu Barbie. Do you feel like the name Barbie doesn't attach itself to the black Barbie as much as it does the white one? Like why do you feel like

[00:20:49] this came up in the documentary? Yeah I think it's really interesting just because you know when they started out they had that first black doll was supposed to be Barbie's babysitter and friend

[00:21:02] which is right at the same time like Barbie grown right but Barbie grown I'm grown I'm babysitting her but also we home like what is that about? How does that work? I don't know. Okay wait I am glad

[00:21:13] you brought that up because it was so shady that like you could have just said it was Barbie's friend and let it be but like she has to have a she has to be employed to Barbie too. What is that?

[00:21:23] She works for Barbie. She also allows her to be her friend sometimes. Yes and then she's her friend it's weird. That's like my housekeeper is my family member kind of vibe like you know that's

[00:21:35] how it feels. Family but I'm not family. Right so there's that and then all of the other dolls that they introduced they were not Barbies they were also just Barbie's friends so I guess that there's

[00:21:49] something to be said about you know where the majority of the marketing money goes and like marketing in general if you tell people for 80 years that this is Barbie and they have one image

[00:22:02] of Barbie then that's the image that's going to come in their mind when they think of a Barbie. It's like from the Barbie movie the main Barbie that we follow Margot Robbie is called stereotypical

[00:22:12] Barbie because that's the Barbie that we think of when we think of a Barbie but I think that it's important to give the name to Black Barbies because it legitimizes them more. Yeah. And says

[00:22:25] that they can be the focal point of the story as opposed to just being a sidekick to the like basic white version of Barbie that we are used to knowing. Basic Barbie is going to take off just

[00:22:39] because of this podcast. This is the second time it's been used. I think that's a good point. Gia talked about Barbie as a brand like yes the doll's name is Barbie but the name almost like

[00:22:49] supersedes the doll now. It's like yes this is Barbie but it's more than just this white woman with blonde hair right. It is now like the face of the main character in these conversations about

[00:23:02] with little kids and looking at fashion at an early age and looking at dolls that represent them that live interesting lives. Barbie skydives. Barbie's a doctor, a surgeon and stuff like that. It's like

[00:23:13] yeah why would I want to be anything but Barbie. She has all this cool stuff. It makes it feel like anything that's not called Barbie does feel secondary you know in a lot of ways. So I think

[00:23:25] you know I think Barbie's kind of like what like Kleenex and those other brands. Xerox, these other brands have become so big that like you think that's what the the product is called

[00:23:35] but in actuality that's just like the umbrella term that we all have used. It's just stuck. I feel like that's what it is. It's like you think of Barbie doll and yeah you think of the

[00:23:44] blonde Malibu lady but at the same time a lot of that deals with marketing. It could have been anybody. It could have been but they marketed that one specifically you know for reasons you know. It

[00:23:55] was a certain time but we've moved away from that. To me though it looks like a lot of that is still left over like some residual of that. I actually was talking to one of my little cousins one time

[00:24:06] and we were trying to put her on you know like you try to put kids on the new stuff that we liked when we were growing up. We're like hey guess what? I know you ain't never seen Cinderella like this

[00:24:16] but it's Brandy okay. We're gonna show you this cool thing and my little cousin about 10-15 minutes into Roger Hammerstein's Cinderella says when are we gonna watch the real Cinderella and we had to

[00:24:28] stop. We had to stop everybody all right everybody pause let me tell you something. This is the real you know I'm saying so. I never wanted to fight a child more than in that moment. I literally was

[00:24:40] like dang you're really just gonna disrespect Cinderella like this but to her. This is the real Cinderella. Exactly and there's never been another one since then sorry but you know to her

[00:24:50] this face of the the white fairy tale woman was Cinderella Gia. I get it but also no stop it. Stop it. We gotta show the kids there's other stuff out here for us. There and there's definitely

[00:25:08] something to be said about like yes we and we could have this conversation about so many brands not just Barbie like we have we are in the time of reboots of like sequels prequels all of it

[00:25:25] where because of the fact that we're having conversations about diversity it makes sense that a lot of these casts on these new like related to old media type like remakes or reboots

[00:25:39] whatever you want to call them are more diverse and I love that they're more diverse but they're always going to be compared to whatever that original thing is in a time where that original

[00:25:48] thing was probably majority white because that's what was deemed acceptable at the time so I you know and I think this it's a good conversation to have because at some point it's like we want

[00:26:01] our own thing watch epic elementary but also yes but it's also nice to see representation in the already established brands like Barbie like you know I don't know I don't watch Marvel but I'm

[00:26:14] assuming Marvel's in there. This is like yeah there's too many maybe at one point I would have caught up but like there's too many things now. It took 21 years for Black Barbie to actually get

[00:26:27] called Barbie okay for it to sit like for people to sit down and say no this is a bar this this woman's name is Barbie like everybody else and she has uh Black features you know they

[00:26:38] compared her to Diana Ross to Foxy Brown uh not the rapper and they talk about how um she had the short natural Latonya she had like the like the gown that was a little bit more revealing

[00:26:53] and initially Black parents didn't even know how to take it they couldn't tell if it was like it was like what you're trying to say why she got Black why she got short hair why she got a fro

[00:27:01] why you know I'm saying they didn't know how to absorb this and then eventually it started to take off on a life of its own. Yeah it's something that you know uh gave the parents the ability to tell

[00:27:14] their kids there's an alternative to what you have been seeing and this alternative is supposed to the idea is that it's supposed to reflect us so that was really something that you know for people

[00:27:29] who are really into dolls that's like a groundbreaking thing um I I really appreciate the uh the guy that was in there that was saying like I don't necessarily know if I need my Barbies

[00:27:42] to do this you know what I mean like I don't know if I need Barbie to be the thing that is groundbreaking in the world maybe something else that might be able to cause social change

[00:27:52] might be better but like I really do think that it's important what we have our kids play with and that they are uh they should be able to see examples of themselves throughout this world and

[00:28:05] it starts with things like play it starts with a very a kid at a very young age and this is the only like one of the only examples that they have in terms of dolls like Barbie is the one of

[00:28:18] the biggest dolls if not the biggest doll in the world. Yeah and Barbie will go on to teach kids about race in a way that it's talked about you know in a way they understand it you know we saw

[00:28:30] some of the focus groups at the end of this where they have the kids looking at the Barbie dolls and saying okay well which Barbie doll do you think is the prettiest which Barbie doll do you think

[00:28:39] looks closer to you which Barbie like why do you like this Barbie doll they really start to get into the psychology of children because believe it or not kids are learning this stuff at a very early

[00:28:48] age and it's not just school that's teaching it to them they learn it in everything that's marketed toward them they learn it in the things that they see the things that they play with and so they

[00:28:56] start to get an early understanding of you know what is normalized what is accepted and then where they fall in line and in all of that and it was entertaining to me to watch them kind of try to

[00:29:08] figure out okay what is it that the kids are looking at when they see Barbie and some of the kids were just like oh I think this one's the prettiest because it has nice clothes uh or I

[00:29:17] like this one's shoes it maybe not the Bratz kids but these kids are like man I like this one's shoes but as they got older they really start to open up about okay what does it mean like what does race

[00:29:28] mean to you when you look at this Barbie does it reflect what you see as your race do you and they start talking about racism and it really did remind me that you know although you want your

[00:29:39] kids to be kids the world is going to happen to them with or without you and so you want to be able to arm them with as much education and as much representation as possible to make sure they're

[00:29:51] not in a world where they feel like they're not seen so it was a very fun uh but fun documentary but it also it was it got kind of deep uh Gia I love seeing Kitty uh this woman uh who is the

[00:30:04] walking talking Barbie doll that everybody fell in love with she this lady is the first designer for Mattel the first black designer from Mattel who will do uh designer clothes for the Barbie

[00:30:15] dolls and she will pave the way for many people to come in and work uh on her team and to establish future versions of Barbie dolls from all different walks of life and color and race and

[00:30:27] all those things um Gia you you have a very interesting background as well being biracial do you feel like you were able to see yourself in Barbie dolls and in the Bratz dolls as well

[00:30:38] it's hard because like in some ways yes like I definitely had one Barbie in particular that was tan skin and had hair not quite like mine but it wasn't straight and that was like a big thing when

[00:30:51] I was younger is that I was one of the only kids in my class at the time that didn't have naturally straight hair so that was kind of like a um like a racial identifier I guess you could say like

[00:31:04] something to kind of signal that like there's a reason my hair does not look like everybody else is there so in some ways yes there was like that connection to Barbie because at that point they

[00:31:17] when I was young enough for Barbies that like where I would start like to appreciate Barbies I did have like different dolls of different colors and everything like that um which I really

[00:31:29] appreciated but also because and I think like it this happens with a lot of doll brands in general but like there usually are dolls that are black dolls that are white and not a whole lot in between

[00:31:45] and there needs to still be that representation particularly for like dark-skinned women and dark-skinned girls because there is a certain privilege that comes with being light skinned but I would also say that like the more diversity we can put into Barbie the better so that

[00:32:01] especially for like someone like me I had to do a lot of like self-reflection self uh like research I guess to get a better understanding of like what my racial identity is and what that meant

[00:32:14] to me and what it meant to not be 100% white or 100% black in there but especially now as I am older I think that there needs to be just like a level of appreciation for the work that they did

[00:32:26] with the black Barbie doll like it does not have to cater to me specifically for me to still appreciate it. Yeah and the black Barbie doll will evolve and have a different rollout later on

[00:32:39] with the evolution of Shani. Kitty Black Perkins she eventually like will start to pass the torch onto other people and Shani is like a um a like a spinoff of Barbie that was a black woman who came

[00:32:55] in all different uh shades all different skin tones you know and so yeah like Aisha and Nichelle and Shani and they had a huge rollout Latonya they had En Vogue at the unveiling of this black

[00:33:07] Barbie doll uh which is wild to me. But makes complete sense for the time um I mean like there there weren't really very like any bigger musical acts at the time than En Vogue and there was also

[00:33:25] the fact that like all the women in the group looked different so that was more of a model of what blackness looks like from black women. Um yeah that's a really a really cool rollout

[00:33:38] that was way too late for me playing with dolls unfortunately. You're like oh that's one that you're doing it for those children congrats to them. No but I mean like I'm with Gia in terms of admiring the

[00:33:52] progress that they've tried to make um it really does like there are not a lot of corporations out there that actually listen to the consumers like that um especially when it comes to like different populations of the consumer in that industry. So actually having a division that

[00:34:16] was dedicated to producing dolls that were more inclusive and for black kids is a huge thing I think in that industry and something that hopefully other corporations will start to emulate.

[00:34:31] Yeah it's nice to see um you know when when progress is being made but it's wild that we live in the year of our lord 2024 and you see so many things that that we've seen like progress

[00:34:46] really start to regress with uh the political climate like climate you know we're losing a lot of the initiatives that lead to something like a black barber. We even we meet uh Mason Williams

[00:34:57] who is the senior director of DEI for Mattel uh and he talks about how the diversity of Mattel hasn't even increased that much for it to have started and had this long history of you know of

[00:35:09] trying to create a space for a black Barbie doll um but the word DEI Gia has just taken on a life of its own and has become such a dirty word in 2024 that um it's amazing that so much progress

[00:35:24] can be made only for us to still find ourselves in these positions. I mean what do we expect at this point right like earlier this year on Twitter everyone was calling each other my DEIs like this

[00:35:36] is not like because people just like anytime progress is made there are going to be especially for including other people there is always going to be a group of the people that were already

[00:35:51] included that are gonna have a problem with it. We see it for literally we cannot have anything nice without someone having a problem with it. I can't fathom being that bothered by it but you know

[00:36:04] it's gonna happen um and I don't think that it still it still does not diminish or lessen the importance of that word even if it has been treated more like a buzzword I guess I would say.

[00:36:18] I feel the same way about stuff like microaggressions which I think are still like a really important thing to address especially in like workplace situations, schools, things like that but people use it so often for everything that it often gets treated like a buzzword instead of

[00:36:35] a very important piece of information that we should be teaching people and it's the same thing with any DEI initiatives like this like there are going to be detractors people that want to object

[00:36:46] to it for some reason or called it forced diversity like if you were in my neighborhood that is not forced anything that just looks like what my city looks like so it's just one of those

[00:36:56] things you know it's just you can't help but laugh while you cry about it also. Yeah people push back against diversity initiatives but we see how diversity evolves Mattel into one of the foremost

[00:37:10] like largest creators of toys all around because they opened themselves up they were the first ones to open themselves up to the black barbie and then eventually you know they had a black barbie

[00:37:21] like spinoff company basically black making black dolls and that company got shut down because then everybody hopped on the diversity train oh yeah we all gotta make our own uh our own version of this

[00:37:32] and so then the black people are the ones who are left behind you know so it's only people only like DEI when it suits them uh and not uh all the time and that's one of the big uh takeaways that I

[00:37:42] always seem to find and whenever we're talking about diversity equity and inclusion is always like yeah it was fun and games when you were making money money off of it but now you know now it's

[00:37:50] all you know it's reductive and it's not fair and all this other stuff so um uh interesting conversations to have uh about it's just coming for black jobs everybody and y'all know what them

[00:38:02] black jobs be combing black barbie's hair um you know putting black feet on your white bratz doll because you like a black shoes that was my black that is your black job i was a black child laborer

[00:38:20] um latonya mentioned her earlier but we we have to talk about some of the talking heads that we get in this documentary one of the ones being shonda rhimes who yeah shonda if you're

[00:38:33] listening to this i'm not happy with you not about black barbie we got some conversation to have about gray's anatomy i need to talk to you about scandal how to get away with murder there's still some

[00:38:43] questions i have about that second and third season what were you doing um so just put that aside and and and talk to me about black barbie because i i love that she says i was always going

[00:38:57] to be a storyteller i love telling stories and i can remember telling interesting stories about interesting black women as early as i was playing with dolls right when i was playing with the black

[00:39:08] dolls um latonya you're a big shonda fan as as many of us are everyone is yeah what did you think about seeing shonda rhimes in this uh documentary well i'm glad she was there because she's the

[00:39:20] reason it got made you know uh we gotta have somebody to fund things um and the fact that she is a barbie like two or three times over yeah i think she's on her second or third barbie yeah

[00:39:33] yeah um it's always great to see shonda um she's she's normally behind the scenes you know um it was really great to see her in this documentary just kind of i feel like her history with dolls is so

[00:39:47] interesting given that her mom uh was such a fan of them and shonda named some dolls i was like you had what like i have never heard of these dolls before she's like a historian that part was really

[00:40:01] cool and then it was also you know it brought back a lot of childhood memories when she said that she used her dolls to tell stories because my sister and i used to make up stories for our

[00:40:13] dolls every single day and they would always be something different um it's they're just like a really good outlet for figuring out who you are and what you want to be and if someone like shonda can

[00:40:26] come up playing with dolls and like make her life into this then what does that say for the rest of us yeah she used olivia pope as her real life black doll and using kerry washington and uh and scandal

[00:40:39] because that's olivia pope was that you know she showed up for work every day and she was dressed you know to the nine she was a businesswoman she was about that life uh but she had personality

[00:40:51] she was fun she's beautiful and i think that's the essence that barbie was giving barbie was just like hey she could do it all but still look very pretty you know she could jump she can she can bungee

[00:41:01] jump she can drive a mall like a convertible have a malibu mansion all this crazy stuff and then shana takes those experience playing with barbie and says okay now let me start using the barbie

[00:41:13] life that i've been building for these people and turn them into fully fledged characters that i can use in my shows and she does a lot of good uh a good work obviously doing that i mean shonda rhimes

[00:41:24] is iconic in many many ways and i'm not shocked that she has multiple barbies but another person who popped up in the as a talking head in this documentary was uh maxine waters uh from uh the

[00:41:35] u.s representative matching maxine waters the congress the one who is uh reclaiming her time as we know um gia she talked about having a ton of siblings and having to to fight for her life

[00:41:49] when it came to her i know you got a lot of siblings do you uh did it get rough between you civil war brewing between the barbies the brass dolls and the gi joes i swear to god like we had

[00:42:02] we we had a full there were barbies in a swat truck because for some reason i don't know i think for christmas one year my brother got a swat truck that we just like repoed from him

[00:42:15] essentially and now it's stored all our barbies with our shoe but like that whole scene in the barbie movie where they're like in the van like we did that earlier they stood that from me

[00:42:24] personally i did that first but oh my god yes there was like the i feel like the idea of like action figures dolls whatever like though that is universal it's part of the childhood experience

[00:42:36] and i loved when shonda talked about being a storyteller because i feel like toys like that really spark kids imagination and really encourages them to be more imaginative so i just

[00:42:50] love that i think that is so great and it was great to really go in depth about like the magic of dolls like the importance of dolls to a lot of people i really loved hearing from the doll

[00:43:03] collectors and hearing more from them as well it's like i want to be a doll collector now that sounds so fun you know i don't have any experience with the with the dolls i did i did have action figures

[00:43:15] when i was growing up but i was a batman kid i just he wore a mask oh it didn't matter what color he was under there i don't really care but let me tell you about my mom my mom i've never

[00:43:24] known her to do anything about barbie dolls but she like many of the women in this documentary she established a house where if there was a black version of it we were gonna have it

[00:43:34] and my mom's thing is black santa claus so uh every year and i might find the picture and put it in here uh my mom will decorate the house and buy she will decorate i mean i will take out a lot

[00:43:47] of stuff for her to put up uh and it's a tedious task that i have to do every year and it's okay it's fine it's fine i'm not i'm not scarred by that at all yeah clearly at least 70 black santa

[00:43:58] clauses in in her home and i'm not joking um 70 the tree itself decorated with only black santa clauses last year i'm not joking i caught her taking a marker and coloring one of the the like

[00:44:15] beiger santa clauses that was on a pillow and trying to turn it black so that you could then like say like oh no it's black well she didn't want to get rid of the pillow and she couldn't

[00:44:26] find the black one so it means a lot representation just does it means a lot to feel like you can see yourself in something and it feels good to be able to say i can afford this because a lot of times

[00:44:38] those things are more expensive and more difficult to find but also now that it's available i can celebrate it as well you know the story of santa claus does not have to be a white person nor does

[00:44:47] the story of barbie you know their whiteness does not make them a character it is really the other interesting things about them um that play into why they are so iconic it has nothing to do

[00:44:58] with their race or ethnicity and so for people like my mom or something like maxine waters and all these other women in the documentary they were saying like if i could get a black barbie

[00:45:07] doll collection going then i'm gonna have it a black santa claus collection whatever it is my mom was gonna have it because she grew up in a time where that stuff was so inaccessible to her

[00:45:16] that she longed to see it and even if she didn't care to see it um when she did see it it blew her mind right and so she wanted more of that uh you know to call her own so as we wrap up

[00:45:30] i do want to talk about kind of like you know what's next for barbie right we talked about barbie as uh you know as a catalyst for conversations about ethnicity and race and you know the way

[00:45:42] children look at themselves and their identity but uh latoya do you feel like there is a place for barbie in those conversations uh it's really interesting because the one of the examples that

[00:45:56] they give is uh the message that they recorded with barbie and her friend during uh 2020 when all of the like police brutality was really getting a spotlight and we were marching and

[00:46:14] everything um and i think that that video that they did was well written because it drew on actual experiences from one of the talking heads that they had to write it but it's it's also a

[00:46:31] little bit awkward as well um just because you wonder like one of the people even said this doll uh that like this black doll that's delivering this message never even gets her own storyline

[00:46:45] right um so they're just using her essentially as a prop in this discussion about race because she is a black doll but on the other hand i know that a lot of parents have a really hard time

[00:47:00] talking to their kids about race and talking to their kids about you know subjects like police brutality for example so why not have like a study aid essentially that you can show your kids

[00:47:13] that will talk to them about those issues in a way that they can relate to and understand and has been like focus grouped essentially for them to uh act like activate their imagination and participate

[00:47:25] other than doing nothing at all i think that everybody kind of has a responsibility at this point to stand up and say something yeah g well how did you feel when you saw the uh

[00:47:37] the black barbie propaganda talking about race in the more recent uh barbie uh media that's dropped ah it's interesting i i get it i liked hearing the process of it like the fact they used actual

[00:47:55] examples from uh that woman's life and from the other um other individuals lives so like this isn't things that are just like being made up they made it child friendly so like learning more about

[00:48:08] the process made me like it more but also it's like it's for kids so you need to address it in like a easily digestible way so while i'm listening to it and be like this is kind of

[00:48:20] corny it's like it's supposed to be corny because it's for children like this is for kids that are going to be like looking for age appropriate content that they're listening to so i liked

[00:48:31] it i like that they used the i like that they use both barbies to tell that story in there because i think that there are some parents that wouldn't click on it if it wasn't if it was just the black

[00:48:44] barbie in there like let's be serious right now so i i think for what it is and for who that content is made for it was fine like i'm not gonna get like any advanced critical race theory from

[00:48:58] barbie video from anywhere nowadays yeah because it's made up anyway so that said i love the documentary it was a great time it was a great watch it was very informative informative and i

[00:49:10] think that anybody should be showing this to the family members who have had experience in barbie dolls and i think most people at least can remember a time where they've seen these things

[00:49:19] barbie was everywhere at least last year it was everywhere i mean the largest movie of last year was barbie she was a phenomenon and so it's very important to know that you know barbie comes in

[00:49:30] all shapes and sizes now there's a lot of diversity uh a lot of representation for uh differently abled people in barbie as well so barbie's making a lot of strides but it doesn't just stop at a

[00:49:39] conversation we have to find actionable items as well to really start talking about race and ethnicity and diversity and inclusion in a healthy way that leads to positive change but the

[00:49:49] conversation could start with barbie so this was been this is fun this was great i'm so happy i got i managed to get you to just it's i'm so excited for y'all to come here obviously every time y'all

[00:50:00] are here latonya thank you so much it's been a blast thank you thank you for having me of course and could you tell everybody what you are working on yes um well first of all follow me on twitter

[00:50:12] at lkstarks if you don't already um i am doing a podcast over at screen and page pod with rich uh aka dm philly where we talk about house of the dragon every week a familiar topic to people who

[00:50:28] tune into the recap kickback and uh hopefully i will be uh coming into the recap kickback for some coverage on hot d myself um we're also going to be covering the bear over at screen and page and i

[00:50:42] recently did a podcast about the acolyte which is a great star wars series that is currently on um that's just thirst trapping every episode uh it's wonderful and uh yeah i think that's about

[00:50:56] it for now yeah follow me on twitter for more yes please follow latonya and tune in for more from latonya coming soon to recap kickback uh jia yes where can people find you and what do you have

[00:51:07] going on in your life you can follow me on twitter instagram and tiktok at classically jia for all of my reality tv shenanigans and i'm on a little bit of a break right now because uh

[00:51:20] normally i'm doing survivor recaps and there's no survivor right now so until we while we wait for the asia well show um yes yes that is um it i know it by no other name now while we are waiting

[00:51:34] for that there will be more projects in the summer but primarily it will be um inside survivor has posted their 50 for 50 um they started posting our 50 for 50 articles so me and four other writers each picked 10 survivor contestants that uh we would like to see return for survivor 50

[00:51:56] and basically make a case for why we want to see them return so definitely check that out my first article has just been released in there so uh please take a look at it and support the cause

[00:52:08] support the people i want to see returned for survivor 50 because i think my decisions were the best ones thank you i co-sign per usual uh and yes listen follow jia follow latonya and of course

[00:52:23] follow recap kickback wherever you get your podcasts and on all social media platforms at recap kickback uh again uh this has been fun but we have a lot more recap kickback content coming

[00:52:34] your way soon so tune in and for latonya and jia and for myself you ain't gotta go home but you gotta get the hell up out here we'll talk to y'all next time peace