When Barbie represented achievements of women in different sectors

Here's why Barbie made headlines this week:

Doll?
Yes.


What about Barbie?
To mark International Women’s Day, toy maker Mattel unveiled 17 new dolls of ‘sheroes’ — the Barbie Inspiring Women's Series line of dolls.

Sheroes?
Yes. The role model Barbies represent different women in history and around the world. Women who’ve shattered glass ceilings, busted through doors, and paved the way for us all and have been an inspiration to many girls.

That’s inspiring!
It is. Mattel paid tribute to heroines of art, aviation, mathematics and many more.

Who did they include?
Inspiring women like Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, Frida Kahlo, a legendary artist, and Katherine Johnson, a mathematician hired by NASA to calculate the trajectory of the first American-manned flight into space. They also have Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding Chloe Kim in the lineup.

Go Barbie!
'All three of these courageous women took risks, changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before!' said Mattel.

Agreed.
But there’s some glitch.

What?
The dolls are unrealistically skeletal. Too thin to be true, which seem like some major impediments to the feats accomplished by the powerful women here. Also, Kahlo's family has insisted Mattel was not authorised to base a doll the artist.

HMMM... The Frida Kahlo doll is indeed missing the artist's famous unibrow.
True, but the dolls represent achievements in several different sectors. There’s a chef, a dancer, a gymnast. Scientists and explorers and artists and athletes. In a time when plenty of parents worry about the types of role models their kids are exposed to, these 17 real and amazing women give them someone to look up to.