Spooky and fortune hunters: vindicating the first Barbie in history in times of 'Barbiecore'

“I want to be like Barbie, that aunt had everything”, reads a poster superimposed in bubblegum pink on one of the almost 5,000 photographs found on Instagram if you search for the term

a new fashion trend that invites you to live life in pink, as Edith Piaf predicted.

Celebrities like Megan Fox, Kim and Khloé Kardashian and her sister Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber or Dua Lipa have already worn the style in different formats, taking over bubblegum pink in some of their public appearances.

The firms Giorgio Armani Privé or Versace are betting on a winter of this color, as the designer Pierpaolo Piccioli anticipated for Valentino in the

collection , which showed a total of 48

in fuchsia in March.

The images of the shooting

, the next film by Greta Gerwig, responsible for

or

, and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, has finished elevating a trend that no longer only focuses on fashion, but on a whole style of clothing, to a viral phenomenon. life that reappropriates a color loaded with gender stereotypes and vindicates a doll that, despite having walked on the moon four years before Neil Armstrong and having multiple and enviable properties, continues to be relegated to the archetype of traditional and cheesy femininity.

Perhaps the new look that Gerwig is betting on is not so new if you look at the origins of the most famous doll in the world.

The forerunner of the Barbie doll was not a product for girls: she was a frivolous, foul-mouthed, fortune-seeking woman.

She was called Lilli and she was of German origin.

Her first appearance was in the year 1952, at the launch of the

newspaper .

She still was not a plastic doll, but a character from a black and white comic strip signed by the graphic humorist Reinhard Beuthien.

There was Lilli, an impressive blonde woman with a wasp waist and her hair in a ponytail, sitting in front of a tarot reader, showing her a photograph of herself.

The caption read: "Can't you get me the name and address of this handsome, rich man?"

The vignette was an immediate success.

Lilli was a post-war product: a hard-working, independent woman, a secretary in an office, but without enough money for her whims and aware of the effect she had on the men around her.

Funny and irreverent.

sexually uninhibited.

She used to flirt with whoever she had in front of her, she always came back or went to a new date and she had a very sharp tongue.

She wore pencil skirts or tight pants, white shirts, fishnet stockings, corsets, and black high heels.

On occasion, she appeared directly in her underwear.

In one of the vignettes, Lilli wears her hair very short in front of a beauty salon, and the text reads: "I promised all my lovers a piece of my hair as a souvenir... this is the cut that stayed with me".

In another illustration, a police officer rebukes her for wearing a bikini,

Since two-piece swimsuits were banned in Germany at the time: "So, according to you, what part of the bikini do you want me to take off?"

Another of the vignettes emphasized her partying side: "The sunrise is such a beautiful thing that I always try to stay late at the club to see it."

In another of them she appears on a date at the cinema with a man, in front of them, on the screen, the actors are passionately kissing: “And what do you want to do after the cinema?”.

In 1955, the first Lilli doll was produced.

In another of them she appears on a date at the cinema with a man, in front of them, on the screen, the actors are passionately kissing: “And what do you want to do after the cinema?”.

In 1955, the first Lilli doll was produced.

In another of them she appears on a date at the cinema with a man, in front of them, on the screen, the actors are passionately kissing: “And what do you want to do after the cinema?”.

In 1955, the first Lilli doll was produced.

Bild Lilli, the official name of the doll, came inside a plastic tube and carried an issue of the

newspaper under her arm, she was dressed according to the fashion of the moment and, in addition to the characteristic blonde version, versions were made with dark hair or redhead.

It had two sizes, 30 or 19 centimeters, and a somewhat high price for a toy.

And it is that it was not a toy for girls, but a collectible figure for those adults who consumed the vignettes of the cheeky Lilli every week.

Bild Lilli was born as a joke among adults and was sold in tobacconists, bars and newsstands.

As the journalist Jennifer Latson told in an article in

about the inspiration of the most famous doll in the world, at that time, men bought their Lilli dolls as joke gifts at bachelor parties, it was common to find them on the dashboard of their car or see them hanging from the rearview mirror, and they were they gave to their girlfriends as a suggestive souvenir.

However, Bild Lilli was also a sensation among girls and preteens and, very soon, a whole market of accessories opened up so that the little ones in the house could change their clothes, put them in a car or put them in a little house.

From right to left: one of the first models of the Barbie doll, similar to Bild Lilli, the emblematic Barbie Malibu and one of the versions of the Barbie president of the United States. Mattel

One of these teenagers was the American Barbara Handler, who in 1956 was vacationing in Switzerland with her mother Ruth when Bild Lilli caught her eye.

Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, had already noticed how her daughter cut out figures from magazines to play with them, leaving aside the rag dolls or plastic babies that, at that time, were the usual toys among girls. girls.

Although her daughter was too old to play with dolls, Ruth Handler listened to her still childlike instinct.

That summer she bought three Lilli dolls and took them to her home in California.

Three years later, in 1959, the world was introduced to the Barbie doll.

Bild Lilli, her inspiration, ceased production in 1963.

Barbie could seem like a sweetened version of Lilli, a girl who could have it all: a 10 body, a boyfriend, a house in Malibu, a convertible and a multi-page resume in which she has practiced more than 120 professions, including find a veterinarian, a scientist, a pilot, a stewardess, a fashion editor, or the president of the United States.

Her very long, thick black eyelashes and crimson red lips remained in Germany, as did her fishnet stockings.

The black and white that had been Lilli's hallmark became Barbie pink, a color that, until the 1950s, was not associated with any gender, as babies used to dress in an always neutral white color.

Barbie did not invent pink, but she did appropriate the fashion of the moment: most historians date the association of pink with the feminine to 1953.

It was during Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural ceremony as President of the United States that Mamie Eisenhower, the new first lady, arrived at the ball in a pale pink gown adorned with rhinestones.

Mamie Eisenhower embodied the image of the perfect American wife and pink was her fetish color, to such an extent that the White House was baptized during her husband's presidency as the Pink Palace, due to the amount of furniture and details of this color that They abounded in his home.

When Barbie was born a few years later, pink was the color that embodied femininity and trend, and Barbie couldn't dress any other way.

The vindication of the figure of Barbie and its inevitable association with the color pink is cyclical.

Three decades ago, in 1997, there was already a first glimpse of

.

It was when the Danish group Aqua released their first album

and used the catchy

with which they sold more than eight million copies and became one of the great

of the end of the 20th century.

In her video clip, Lene Nystrøm, singer of the group, played a flesh and blood version of Barbie in a world colored in pink.

The catchy phrase before the chorus: "Come on, Barbie, let's party" (

) seemed to be a call to Lilli rather than her American sister.

In 2004, with the premiere of

, the high school comedy written by Tina Fey and starring Lindsay Lohan, which showed a world of girls that resembled a jungle, rescued the trend again thanks to phrases such as “Beware of plastics” (in reference to the group of girls popular high school whose leader, Regina George, looked like a complete doll) or "We wear pink on Wednesdays!"

In 2016, after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, pink – bubblegum, fuchsia and pastel – became fashionable again, this time in the form of a claim, flooding the streets of Washington in a massive march of women that was replicated in many other cities in the United States.

Those responsible for the pink tide were the women of the Pussyhat Project, who encouraged the participants to take ownership of the color as a form of protest.

Pink has shaken off the boudoir dust and whimsy to become a symbol of girl power and celebrities who decide to become flesh and blood dolls can afford to be loose-tongued, flirtatious, funny, complex or irreverent.

Part of Lilli's success also came from her imperfections, which managed to humanize her despite being an inanimate being of a few centimeters: her cracks, seams and hairpieces were noticeable in the same way that her faults and ambitions were noticeable and, even well, the public loved her.

It may be that the new versions and constant revisions towards Barbie are nothing more than a return to the origins, an acceptance of everything that was right from the beginning.