All the buzz about Barbie will send thousands to the movie theater for opening weekend.

There's decades of history behind the material girl that the Strong National Museum of Play's toy and doll curator, Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, says has shaped how the doll is constantly changing with the times.

“She’s definitely a time capsule. If you look at her from every decade, you can learn a lot about history, especially gender roles and what women were expected to be like during certain periods of American history,” She says.

Barbie was born in 1959 after Mattel co-founder, Ruth Handler, was inspired while on vacation by an earlier 1950s German doll. During a time that men were to go to work and women to stay home and care for the kids, Barbie had other plans. 

“I love to talk about Barbie as a sort of feminist. A lot of people, you know, think about her body and critique how she looks, which is very anti-feminist, but she owned a home before most women could get a mortgage. She never married Ken. She decided to stay single and she was always pursuing different careers and learning,” Parnett-Dwyer said.

Throughout the years, Barbie was a surgeon, an architect, Olympic athlete and an icon. She quickly became a trend-setter.

“I’ve seen a lot of change in Barbie, especially in recent years as they’ve been developing inclusivity and diversity initiatives, which is really exciting to see,” Parnett-Dwyer explained. “The original Barbie was blonde or brunette, white complexion, very fair, very curvy, very sexy. And now we have every skin tone, every hair texture. It’s come a long way.”

Diversity became a priority as times changed throughout the years.

“Look at the first Black Barbie, which came out in 1980. It was designed by Kittle Black Perkins and she was a Black woman, the first Black designer at Mattel. So that was a really big deal. And I think it sometimes gets overshadowed. They didn’t market her well. She kind of just sat on the shelves and now people are like, wow, I had no idea that was so progressive for the time,” she said.

As Barbie hits the big screen, she’s adapting to the world, moving more toward technology.

“In terms of Barbie, I think of the things even in the 1990s when they had the first Barbie fashion designer game where they wanted to get girls involved in video games, so they thought it provided a more feminine approach to it. They had a lot of different advances in technology. They have her as a computer engineer, a gamer, so they’re trying to cater to the younger audience,” Parnett-Dwyer said.

It’s a way for her to connect with the Millennials that grew up playing with her, and the next generation’s time in front of the screen.

Barnett-Dwyer plans on seeing the movie right away with her husband. She’s never seen the community so excited.

“The anticipation for this film is so high. I haven’t seen that in a long time. So I’m very excited to see what they do with it. I think Barbie fans will be pleased either way,” she said.

The Strong National Museum of Play has a historic online Barbie collection in the works. The project will be completed by December. It will bring the museums 3,000 Barbies, her play sets, board games, clothes, and more, to a larger audience of Barbie lovers. That collection and updates are available at MuseumOfPlay.org.