The Barbies That Were Just Misunderstood

After watching the dreamlike blockbuster on the big screen, many audiences were introduced to some of Barbie’s most controversial dolls from decades past. Stereotypical Barbie and Ken are supported on-screen by forgotten dolls through history, in an effort to pay homage to the brand’s legacy — both good and bad. But does controversial always have to mean inherently “bad?” Perhaps some Barbies are just misunderstood.

It’s possible that some were ahead of their time. As Barbie is marketed towards primarily a young demographic, maybe some were targeted more toward children’s parents than the kids themselves. Either way, there’s much more to Barbie than perfectly blown-out blonde tresses and mini runway-ready get-ups. Some Barbies, like their human counterparts, are just a little weird.

In true office fashion, we have to recognize the Barbies that didn’t quite fit in. Introducing, the outsiders:

Midge

Let’s start with Midge — because, well, when speaking of Barbie and controversy, Midge may take the number one spot. Introduced in 1963, her full government name is Margaret Hadley Sherwood and she’s Barbie’s ride-or-die best friend. But, as mentioned previously, not every Barbie embraces maximalist hot-pink clothing and voluminous bouncy hair. Midge was launched as Barbie’s more relatable, down-to-earth foil, and when she first hit the shelves she was not pregnant. She was later reintroduced in the early 2000s with a detachable pregnant stomach that was aimed to educate children about parenthood and babies. And people had lots to say about it. Parents began to raise concerns about promoting teen pregnancy to their children and Midge’s production halted in 2002. Though I do believe Midge and her consequences were probably not fully considered before her release, it’s only fair to point out that more widely embraced “baby dolls” pretty much signify the same things that Midge does. And if you watched the Barbie movie in theaters, then you know Midge stood in as comedic relief for both her fellow cast mates and audiences. I found it a little dehumanizing that the pregnant lady became the butt of the joke, but at the end of the day…she’s not a human, she’s a doll. If Midge’s cheeky inclusion in the film demonstrates Mattel accepting its mistakes and reframing the narrative regarding its intentions, then I guess laughing our way out of it is the best way to do so.

Sugar Daddy Ken

Oh, Sugar Daddy Ken. You surely were born in the wrong era. He was fashionable, he was chic, and he definitely knew how to have a good time. To set the record straight, Sugar Daddy Ken is nobody’s piggy bank. He’s just Sugar’s Daddy. Sugar, the cute West Highland Terrier, of course. Sugar Daddy Ken was created in 2009 as an homage to colorpop infused Palm Beach style. He displayed a neon green patterned sports coat atop a crisp pink button down with white slacks, and everywhere that he went his pint-sized puppy friend followed behind on leash. He experienced a short-lived three years on sale before he was shelved — and if I had to guess, I’d say his subversive name most likely bore the weight of that decision. Sugar Daddy Ken would probably do numbers now, so who knows if this is the last we see of him.

Growing Up Skipper

Stereotypical Barbie seemed to have it all figured out. We never saw her in her awkward stages because she had already navigated them with ease. But her younger sister, Skipper, didn’t have it so simple. Skipper first debuted in 1964, but after a few years in circulation, it didn’t really make sense that the youthful doll hadn’t grown up at all. So in 1975, Mattel created a Skipper doll that had the ability to mature in real-time: Growing Up Skipper. With a swift rotation of her left arm, kids could instantly watch as Skipper grew from a child to a teenager, signified by longer legs and larger breasts. I don’t have much to say in defense of this one. Maybe Growing Up Skipper made more sense on paper, but it’s just outlandish to try to prematurely teach children about puberty when they probably can’t even comprehend it. Let alone teach them that it can all be spurred instantaneously by twisting one’s arm. Growing Up Skipper only lasted until 1976, until she resurfaced once more to cameo in the Barbie movie as well.

Teen Talk Barbie

In 1992, Teen Talk Barbie hit the scene. She was different than her predecessors because she fulfilled a wish that kids had been hoping for since Barbie's inception — she could talk! With technology on the rise in the early 90s due to the growing popularity of cellphones, Mattel possessed a new horizon of opportunity to grant to the Barbie world. Teen Talk Barbie came with a pre-programmed voice box that had the ability to spew out four distinct phrases from a 270-phrase catalog. Each specific Teen Talk Barbie came predetermined with its specific four phrases. While many shared sentiments about fashion or career aspirations, some of the dolls spoke the sentence, “Math class is tough,” which didn’t fare well with the general public, specifically educators. Audiences shamed Mattel for even alluding to the fact that math is not a natural or “easy” undertaking for women, and the company quickly removed the phrase from the doll’s library. Let’s be real. Math can be really tough — whether you’re a woman or not! But Teen Talk Barbie doesn’t need to degrade herself like that. I bet she ended up acing her math test and making it home in time to pick out her outfit for a Barbie soiree anyway.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Barbie

Barbie has blazed a trail for what real women can become — and, in this case, vice versa. So why can’t Barbie grace the cover of Sports Illustrated too? This Barbie doll was originally created in 1959 but was repackaged and circulated in 2014 as SI Barbie. She spurred an outroar within consumers that believed the doll was “inappropriate” and further pushed unattainable body standards on women and girls worldwide. Sure, it’s a little strange to mimic a children’s toy after a supermodel, but it’s possible that Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Barbie was a role model to many. Like the many iconic Sports Illustrated cover girls and supermodels that shattered barriers in their respective industries — Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, and even Kathy Ireland, who was photographed for a cover while pregnant — perhaps Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Barbie was an empowering symbol of reclaiming our beauty and presenting it on our own terms.

Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie

And last, but definitely not least, we are graced by the presence of Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie. In 2009, the iconic Barbie doll celebrated her 50th birthday, so to commemorate the day with a bang, Mattel released Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie, a doll that could be inked up in exclusive stickers. This was, unsurprisingly, not a hit with parents around the world. Not only did TST Barbie come with sticker tattoos in different designs and shapes, but she also came with a mini plastic “tattoo gun,” so children could customize her themselves. This time Mattel didn’t fold so quickly — they actually released multiple other iterations of tattooed Barbies in the coming years. I remember multiple other 90s and early-2000s era toys that were infused with similar sentiments, such as Doodle Bears or just temporary tattoos, so Barbie wasn’t the first to experiment with this theme. Now, tattoos definitely carry less of a stigma, so maybe Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie would be less taboo in today’s world.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.