This is the year of Barbie – BarbieCore is the new fashion trend, BarbieStyle is featured in the magazines, Barbie’s Dreamhouse is getting a makeover by HGTV, and her movie will be out this summer.
My realistic Barbie-Sized world that I share across my Social Media accounts is nearing a million followers. Barbie and I have had a complicated relationship over the years. I played with her as a child and then followed in her tiny footsteps and became a teenage fashion model. For a lot of reasons, I rejected Barbie as a toy for my young daughters. I spend years speaking and writing about body image and I taught women that we need to “Live Beyond Barbie.” Our relationship came full circle when I became a grandmother and Mattel introduced dolls in “new sizes, shapes, and skin tones.”
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Not only did I buy the dolls, but I began posting the photos on Instagram. Five years later, I work full-time collecting realistic one sixth scale miniatures and creating videos and photos. My storage room is overflowing, I have a photo studio with 15 dioramas (including two kitchens, a living room, bedroom, bathroom, grocery store, toys store … you get the idea), and my Barbie attic has hundreds of dolls waiting for their close-ups. We’ve come a long way, Barbie.