Meh, I’ve seen an autism Barbie before. Just ask the girls who play with her | Opinion
Darn it, autistic Barbie shouldn’t be an girl — she should be a boy. We guys suffer from the condition three times as often as girls, do. Finally, I thought, we had our chance for respect.
But Barbie’s going to do what Barbie does and even the Ken dolls are about the girls, as anyone who has watched the movie knows.
So now we’ve got autistic Barbie complete with “pink finger clip fidget spinner, noise-canceling headphones and a pink tablet modeled after the devices some autistic people who struggle to speak use to communicate.” She joins Type 1 diabetes Barbie, Ken with a missing leg and blind Barbie.
I have news for Mattel. There has always been an autistic Barbie, an ADHD Barbie and a borderline personality disorder Barbie. The autistic Barbie arrived the first time a little girl with autism picked up Barbie and made the little piece of plastic her own. That’s the magic.
Barbie, despite the fact that she has blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin, has always been a blank slate for the girl who owns her. I should know: I have raised three Barbie-oriented children and I’ve watched a lot of Barbie time, packed and moved multi-generational Barbie stuff collections, repaired wounded Barbies and held a girl in tears after a certain boxer dog chewed Barbie’s dainty arched feet. Did I mention Autistic Barbie wears flats and presumably doesn’t have Barbie-typical tootsies?
Anyway, I watched those kids play and have seen Barbie transformed by Black neighbors, Syrian refugee children of friends and a legion of brunettes with varying skin shades. Barbie, at least in the minds of the hands-on Barbie managers kneeling on the carpet in my house, doesn’t stay blonde and blue-eyed for long, but rather instantly transforms into the girl holding her.
And along with the imaginative and magical, er … imaginical … ability to transform physically, Barbie takes on all the quirks, hang-ups and mental challenges of her kid. I have personally played with depression Barbie for nearly 30 years.
Of course, I never held a global celebration or partnered with a depression advocacy group to make my depression Barbie official. You can’t buy her for $11.87 at Target, but I loved her and the adventures she had with my daughters just the same.
My favorite game with depression Barbie was to imagine a bad head day that drove her to be taken abed so that I could both say I was playing Barbies and read an adult book at the same time.
Barbies take on the relationship problems of their operators, as well. There’s been bullying Barbie, divorce Barbie and Dad-lost-his-job Barbie almost since the beginning in 1959.
Barbie and Ken have lived a billion lives, had a billion problems and a billion triumphs. They’ve had so many different manifestations of autism that in a thousand years Mattel could never create enough dolls to reflect the diversity in just that one community. Don’t get me started on bipolar.
So yeah, Mattel, it is great that you made autistic Barbie official, but you should have talked to a struggling little girl. Autistic Barbie has been there all along. Hopefully, she always will be.
David Mastio is a national columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
This story was originally published January 15, 2026 at 1:00 PM.
