Barbie’s 60th, in fact every March 9th when Barbie turns a year older, I get calls from reporters. Since I wrote the biography of the doll’s creator, Ruth Handler, who also started Mattel, I’m a ‘go to’ expert on Barbie’s life.

The truth is that I had found Ruth much more interesting than her creation, but this year I was asked to write Barbie’s 60th birthday book for Mattel, and I learned some things. Over the last six decades, Barbie’s had up’s and down’s in sales, but in the last few years there’s been a sharp positive turn forward and backward. The Barbie brand is reaching back to Ruth’s original vision, that girls just want to play at being grown-up women.The modern tagline is “You can be anything,” and Ruth would love it. But the passionate and creative brand team is also looking forward. Barbie now has five body types, she’s in a wheelchair this year, and gets a prosthetic. Her feet can go flat. She has almost three dozen hair types, and seventeen skin tones, and she’s going into nontraditional jobs for women, like bee-keeper. Barbie doppelgangers aren’t just celebrities like Oprah, they are historic figures like Amelia Earhart, and modern inspiring women who are activists, artists and athletes.

Ruth Handler had a high concept idea: little girls just want to play at being big girls. She had no idea that she was creating a global icon that would endure because she was so right about girls’ dreams.