Many activists, though, took issue with the dolls. At the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality in New York City, some marchers asserted their independence with the chant, “I am not a Barbie doll!” ...

The makeup was no doubt applied because Barbie was meant to be older than traditional dolls marketed to preteens ... As an American woman (a child of the mid-’80s, I was weaned on Barbie ...