Barbie has had her controversies, but she had always had feminist messaging, even if it was less mainstream feminism at times. She has always sat at the crux of a feminist debate: does she impress upon girls that they must look a certain way? Or does she impress upon girls that they can be capable and successful regardless of their traditional femininity. When Barbie was developed and released, the masculine, unattractive woman making it in a man’s world was a relatively common trope. The artifices of famininity were seen as signs of weakness and incompetence, while denying your femininity and emulating men meant a chance at more respectable, mainstream success. Barbie was a response to that idea, to the idea that a woman has to become like a man to succeed like one. Barbie can do everything, and she can do it in a dress and heels. Barbie can be an airline pilot and homeowner, and her plane and house can be as entirely feminine as her wardrobe. When times changed and the toxic femininity tropes shifted to slutty women using their bodies for success, Barbie was sometimes accused of playing into that trope. But that perspective misses the original context of Barbie’s disruptive femininity.

Barbie literally started as a feminist icon. Literally go watch the movie it explains this.