This is a story that contains many other stories. It's a story about friendship, bullying, disability and normalcy (or disability that becomes normalcy), about a welcoming school, about mothers who listen and mothers who don't, about women who imagine—and find solutions.
«Alberta has a keen eye for her surroundings; she's empathetic, certainly more polite and more sensitive than most kids her age.» Alberta Maria Arcorace is 8 years old, lives in Reggio Calabria with her mom, dad, and little brother Ermanno, and she is a deeply affectionate, expressive, physical child. Last year, in first grade, «she went through a rough time: not all her classmates are used to that kind of warmth, so Alby became a target of exclusion and mockery, bullied by some girls in her class who, by the way, she'd known for a while,» her mother Pamela tells me.
«I was telling Serena—one of my closest friends since high school—about what Alberta was going through. I was at Toys, and I noticed a Barbie in a wheelchair. Maybe it had always been there, but I spotted it that day, and I sent Serena the photo. She texted right back: 'Buy it, it's my gift to Alby—I think it could help her feel safe!' I wasn't really convinced, but Serena pushed me on it and I trusted her.»
This is a story about empathetic girls, bullying, and solutions found
Let's step back. On March 9, 1959, Barbie made her debut at the New York Toy Fair. With her sleek curves and face inspired by stars like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, she arrived in stores wearing a zebra-striped outfit, bangs, and reddish-blonde hair swept into a long ponytail: instant, unstoppable success. Her inventor was Ruth Marianna Mosko, wife of Mattel's founder. The idea came to her watching her daughter Barbara play—she saw a market opportunity—and Ruth convinced her initially skeptical husband to create a line of adult dolls (Ken Carson came later, debuting in March 1961, named after their other child).
From 1959 to now, Barbie has held 150 different careers—astronaut, pilot, firefighter, paleontologist. A global icon (she's been everyone from Cleopatra to Gabby Douglas, the first Black American gymnast to win Olympic gold), she's deflected accusations of racism and of promoting harmful beauty standards. More recently, Barbie finally got prosthetics and vitiligo, went bald, became shorter or taller, rounder (not fat, just normal). Among all these shifts, Barbie managed what many thought impossible: she married beauty to disability. Wheelchair Barbie was born in 1997.
Even she faced hurdles. Within a month of launch, Mattel made a colossal blunder: the wheelchair didn't fit through the doors of her famous multi-story house (architectural barriers apparently tanked sales). Eventually they fixed it, but the wheeled Barbie stayed in the background—forgotten, really. Remarkably, she was absent from the traveling exhibition Barbie. The Icon, curated by Massimiliano Capella, which toured Italy's major cities. Another missed chance, until Alberta gave her a second life.
«She became Alberta's favorite! She carries it everywhere, wheelchair and all. At summer camp this year, for instance. When I asked what the other kids said about it, she looked at me confused: 'What would they say? They liked it!' Her expression said: Where's the story? It's just one of her Barbies—she plays with it and sees it like any other, with its own traits.»
Alberta has been around Unitalsi—an organization serving people with disabilities—since she was small; she sees fragile people in her world all the time. So disability doesn't register for her. She doesn't see it, doesn't notice it. When she spotted Disney princesses on the back cover of Ombre e Luci, she said: «They're like Uncle Piero!» (a friend from Unitalsi). She was curious, and I told her stories about Giusy Versace, about Atzori, about Bebe Vio.
Can a toy strengthen a girl in a difficult moment? Yes. Can the world's best-selling doll—three a second, Mattel says—become a mirror of how we relate to disability? Yes. «Paradoxically,» Pamela points out, «she's supposed to be the handicapped Barbie, but she's totally flexible! Paradoxically, she moves much better than the others.»
Can the world's best-selling doll become a mirror of how we relate to disability?
The school played an important role in Alberta's recovery. «I talked to her teachers about her distress; she didn't want to go to school anymore, didn't want tennis, didn't want any of the activities she loved—because they meant being with the bullies. The afternoon school aide was the only one who listened to me (other mothers brushed it off as 'kid stuff'). She noticed something was wrong, too, and she introduced awareness games into the activities. And the games worked because those girls came to Alberta and apologized: 'We realized we treated you badly, we didn't mean to hurt you.' I asked Alberta, 'What did you say?' 'Nothing, Mom—they're my friends, I had to forgive them.' It's not like everything's perfect now, but things are much better.»
This year, a wheelchair showed up under our tree too—for my son. Santa brought him a Lego skate park with all the extras; among the minifigures is an athlete in a wheelchair. Santa has a name and a last name: an in-law aunt who shops with heart, foresight, and brains. It's Serena, always Serena.
My son makes his wheeled skateboarder do incredible jumps, while the Barbie in the wheelchair (Ken sitting down is on the shelf too, Pamela notes) is glued to Alberta's hand. These are toys that say something about difference as a value—because behind them are children who understood, with a naturalness that gives us hope, that difference is simply normal. Thanks to her mom, her mom's friend, and Toys, Alberta started a revolution.
English version: Alberta and the Barbie Revolution