Aspiring Equal Oppertunity Feminist Granola girl.

2024 has brought us the first Barbie doll to have a career in mental health or therapy with Art Therapist Barbie.

Not only does the Barbie playset come with a variety of art tools, but the child doll's shirt has a changeable emoji on it so you can indicate different emotions that she is experiencing.

Naturally I'm pretty excited because Art Therapist Barbie is yet another Barbie depicted wearing glasses for (presumably) vision correction. And not only that - she is actually shown wearing them in the box, not simply holding them in her hand or propping them on top of her head as many other dolls do.

Although Barbie has of course had a great deal of other careers in the medical industry, this is the first that shows a direct addressing of mental health and emotions in a clinical setting. I suppose it's a natural emergence from the wellness and self-care Barbies from the past few years.

Honestly, Art Therapist Barbie is the first Barbie release I have genuinely been tempted to buy since I got back into Barbie.

I've talked before about how Barbie has had hundreds of careers. The official count from Mattel is "over 200", which no doubt is an unspecific number because of how difficult it is to define. Are we talking about just playline dolls, or including careers that were represented in collectibles? If Barbie is in the likeness of a celebrity, is she representing that celebrity's career? Are bakery chef, cookie chef, and cupcake chef functionally different careers, or are they three variations on the same?

Mattel have put so much emphasis on expanding the careers that Barbie can hold - including the Career of the Year line, and increasing the number of Barbies depicting her as a woman in STEM. In the past I've done some posts detailing some of her more common careers: astronaut, ballerina, Olympian, teacher, military, air travel.

But it did get me thinking, what are Barbie's most common careers and what does it say about the Barbie line that this is the case?

Using Wikipedia as my main source, these were the top careers. (I am not counting Fashion Model because not only was this the OG Barbie career, every Silkstone doll for 20 years was technically a Fashion Model, and you could make an argument that so are most Barbies of unspecified vocation depicted in fashionable attire.)

Doctor*: 36

School Teacher**: 28

Food Service Employee (non-Chef): 23

Chef: 21

Musician / Singer: 20 each

Actor: 17

Veterinarian: 14

Non-food service retail: 13

Astronaut: 11

*This includes Doctor, Baby Doctor, Eye Doctor, Surgeon, Army Medic and Dentist, but not Nurse, Paramedic or Vet.

** Including any teachers that appeared to be depicting a traditional classroom, and excluding e.g. sports coaches and other apparent extra-curricular subjects.

I make no claims that this is a completely comprehensive list, but it certainly shows some trends. I am not sure that I would have picked Barbie's most prominent career (outside of Fashion Model) being Doctor, but it makes sense. After all, doctors are people that children are taught to look up to, are likely to encounter moderately often, and who have attire and props that are very distinctive.

Of the different kinds of doctor Barbie has been, she has been a pediatrician 14 times. This also makes sense, as it is the kind of doctor most children would have the most association with. (However, it is also one of the more female-dominated fields of medicine.)

Incidentally, when I was growing up much was made of the fact that Barbie was identified as a "Baby Doctor" or a "Children's Doctor", but these days some Barbies are in fact identified unambiguously as Paediatricians.

This also explains why "teacher" is so high on the list - another career that children are taught to respect and which children have a significant amount of day to day experience of. And of course, it doesn't take too much thought to consider why Musician, Singer and Actress are highly represented - these are careers that are perceived as glamorous and exciting, and as such have wide appeal.

I have plenty more to say on this subject but this post is already really long so I will save the rest and call this... part 1...

I have never verified this but a part of me wonders if there have been more ballet Barbies than any other genre of Barbie.

Obviously there was the Barbie Nutcracker movie which had a whole host of tie-in dolls - both at the time of the movie's release, and in callbacks to the line over time. After all, it was the first Barbie animated movie and there's plenty of material there to refine and rerelease.

In addition to the Nutcracker Barbies, there have been a number of Barbies depicting characters in other ballets, including Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream as well as other famous ballets like Swan Lake.

But more generally, there have been a great number of Barbies simply identified by variations on "Ballerina" - Ballerina, Ballet Star, Ballet Wishes, Fairytale Ballerina, and so on. To my knowledge the first of these was in 1961, but variations on the line continue into the present day.

Most of these - especially the playline dolls - have been very basic doll releases containing just the doll in costume without a great deal of additional accessories or props,

Probably the one with the most interesting props, to my mind, is Barbie Ballet Instructor, in which Barbie is the dance teacher and her child pupils are able to perform on a working dance stage.

I do find it quite a cute little design.

Another strong contender in a similar line would be I Can Be: Ballet Teacher, also featuring Barbie as the teacher with a Kelly/Chelsea-aged doll as her student.

And of course, it would be remiss to talk about this without acknowledging the Barbie Ballet Studio and Stage Set.

This post feels really long and yet I've not even talked about a fraction of the ballerina Barbies and other ballet-themed playsets there are in the Barbie world. You can see what I mean when I say that I think ballet may just be the most prolific career or theme Barbie has.

(This post is for @plasticoctopus as a belated birthday present!)

special education teacher Barbie should exist though