Customer Reviews

Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her

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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was an employee of Mattel during the time of Jill Barad's "reign." This book by Ms. Gerber completely puts into context the Mattel culture that evolved from its founder. Ruth Handler was an intriguing blend of an entrepreneur who carved the way for others and someone who complacently towed the line of gender-based expectations. For example, she was the keynote speaker at a men's club, but while her husband was escorted the proper way to the room assigned for her engagement, she was taken by way of the kitchen and garbage. Most importantly, while no one can underestimate the unfathomable wealth she accumulated due to her business acumen, her true successes came post-Mattel but most probably would not have been achieved without it. She helped survivors of mastectomies re-gain their self-esteem, re-connected with her children, inspired legions of executive women et al, and supported troubled youths. As a sort of B-story, I found it amusing that while Ruth's son Ken (who struggled with his sexuality) resented his name having been given to the Ken doll, the doll is well-received by the gay community. Ms. Gerber is indeed a masterful storyteller.

Barbie and Ruth is primarily the story of Ruth, and Barbie isn't in it as much as I'd like, but I will say that Ruth Handler makes a great subject.

She was driven and that's the word for her. Married to a man she considered a genius, she moved heaven and earth to make his toys happen, and after awhile, she began enjoying the power of being one of the few female toy executives. Her own two children, Barbie and Ken, were brought up almost in absentia, even though their Los Angeles home was designed and decorated within an inch of its life, including many factors ordinary children could only dream about having--such as a live tree growing up along the staircase, and a operating soda fountain in the basement! And still they were dissatisfied with their lives.

So was Ruth, and the book goes to great pains to show how Ruth's dissatisfactions led her down the primrose path of crime, so that idiotically she risked her company's future by participating in an ill thought out plan to conceal losses and to protect its credit during some lean times, by inflating to its stockholders the amount of profit Mattel was making. After years in court, she saw defeat, yet by this time she had another enemy to surmount--breast cancer, which for a woman who had always prided herself on her figure, was especially devastating. She did not take cancer lying down and instead started a new company with a feminist consciousness--Nearly Me, which developed and manufactured breast prosthetics from a female point of view. This part of the story was inspiring.

Forty-five "overt acts" of fraud were mentioned in the indictment, as her enemies rejoiced how the mighty had fallen. A lie detector test helped clear her beloved Elliott of any charges.

Anyone interested in the toy business might find BARBIE AND RUTH to be just the book they were looking for. So many inside facts I had never accounted for! For example, Mattel succeeded where others failed because it owned no factory equipment and merely outsourced all of its physical requirements to other, smaller firms--neoliberalism at an peak. And also why even a great toy like the little 17-key "grand piano" Mattel pioneered was doomed to fail, because it was made of so many contrasting materials that it was bound to roll up huge deficits from breakage in shipping--who'd a thunk it?

Who knew that the creator of the Barbie doll was a felon, a cancer survivor, a daughter of Jewish immigrants, a founder of Mattel, and that the real Ken that inspired the Ken doll was a victim of HIV and resented the materialism and negative effect of the doll that bore his name. It's an absolutely riveting and fascinating story. I couldn't put it down. Gerber's command of story telling helps us to understand Ruth Handler, scorn her, sympathize with her, and learn from her successes and failures. I'm surprised there was so little known about this pioneering woman behind the doll that we all know and love or hate. I loved this book from start to finish.

One of the selling points for the Barbie doll and all her accessories is the perfectness of her life. Barbie and Ruth reveals the extremely messy back-story of the creation of Barbie and her maker Ruth Handler. The idea for Barbie came from the European doll Bild-Lili whose origins came from the sex toy industry. Starting with Ruth's unusual upbringing, she was the only child of ten not raised by her mother, Robin Gerber reveals a woman with seemingly unlimited drive. Marrying her husband Elliot despite her mother's objections, Ruth was driven to succeed. When she conceived of the Barbie doll, she didn't allow anyone to stand in her way. Soon the most popular toy and the cornerstone of a toy conglomerate, Barbie was a valuable prize. Ruth faced being tossed from the company she essentially founded, she also faced separation from her second family. In a compassionate but unflinching book, Gerber not only reveals the story behind the doll, but the woman who was ahead of her time, the businesswoman who focused on the job and the family at home who was lost in the shuffle.

Robin Gerber's biography of Ruth Handler is well researched, thoughtful, insightful and obviously written out of a genuine curiosity. With all this in mind, why did this biography leave me feeling a bit slighted? I think the answer lies in the title, which implies a dual biography that simply doesn't exist. Part of the problem obviously exists with the marketing of the book. The cover clearly shows preferential treatment of Barbie. Look at the sweeping title and font of "Barbie" and then the rather diminiuative "Ruth" below "Barbie" and the title. Truth be told, there is really very little about Barbie doll that most folks haven't already heard about decades ago. Her humble beginnings are not revelatory here. By the end of the book, you know very little about Barbie but a lot more about her "mother".

The reader is treated to not only a chronological biography of her inventor but also an emotional history as well. Under Gerber's pen, Ruth Handler becomes someone more than just a name once linked to scandal. Gerber portrays the tough as nails Handler also as a vulnerable and at times insecure woman. There is little sentimentality here. Gerber doesn't try to make Handler out as a saint--as perhaps many of her admirers do to a fault. This is perhaps one of the real achievements of this book. Love her or hate her, the Ruth Handler legacy will always lie within glint of the child's eye when dreaming with her invention.

Anyone interested in developing their own business from the ground up can learn something by reading Robin Gerber's book about Ruth Handler's experience. This well written story describes the challenges and triumphs over the years that the Mattel company introduced the Barbie doll and so many other popular toys. It is up to the reader to make a judgement (or not) regarding the personal and business decisions made by Ruth as she rose to the top, and later hit bottom. Whatever you think about the Barbie doll and her creator, you will gain a new appreciation for what it takes to succeed in a very competitive environment, whether it be the retail business or any other business. I think you will find it worth the time to read this book.

WHAT A GREAT READ!
This book really surprised me. A friend gave it to me, but I didn't expect that much. The "Ruth" in the title is an amazing person. She had an incredibly dramatic life starting with being raised by her sister. She married her teenage sweetheart and they started Mattel in a garage in LA. She was a natural at business, incredibly tough and smart. Then she created Barbie (an amazing story right there). But after succeeding beyond her wildest dreams she commits corporate fraud, loses her company and almost goes to jail, AND she gets breast cancer. She comes back in a great way. This really reads more like a movie than a real story. I highly recommend it, especially if you're interested in business.

I began this out of curiousity, since Barbie's has been getting a lot of press -- and found myself sitting up at night for "just one more chapter" as if it were a gripping thriller -- which in many ways it is! The insights to the personalities and to the business are presented in a way which is completely accessable to even those of us who are on the outside of that world. I found myself caring about the people and understanding how a simple beginning became such a complex melodrama.
Gerber's writing is up to the standards of her other wonderful books.

As I read Ms. Gerber's latest book, I had a revelation that should have come much earlier. Every day I casually pass through the puzzles of my life, without wondering not only how the pieces fit together, but how they came to be at all.

In my child-rearing years I bought many a Barbie (but also books on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. I was never able to isolate my daughter from Barbie,but damn, she was
going to learn about women who were giants as well as one 11.5 inches tall!)

But it never occurred to me to wonder how Barbie came to be---- and what a story precedes her birth! I was in a toy store a few days ago and passed through the Barbie "kingdom" and thought "Wow! I know what happened here!" The store was all but empty, or I would have done an impromptu "Story Time."

Now, when something catches my eye my curiosity is aroused; the same "who what when where and why" we were taught in fifth grade to judge a report, but now in the Barbie context: Who are the other Ruth Handlers, and is Robin going to write a book about them? Or maybe---encouraged by Ms. Gerber's literary success---I will.

I was surprised at how interesting and well-written this book about Ruth Handler, the founder of Mattel Toy Company and the creator of the Barbie doll was. Having read and reviewed the disappointing, "Toy Monster", I was afraid this was going to be the polar opposite, nothing more than an adoring eulogy to an exceptional woman.

It is far more than that and far more even-handed than is usual in these types of biographies. Plus the writing is first-rate. It reads like a novel and as the friend who gave me his copy said' "I couldn't put it down." Personally, I read it while traveling in one day.

The book covers her entire life, warts and all, and uses her relationship to Barbie, the ubiquitous fashion doll, as a way of showing what drove Ruth Handler and what, in some ways, defined her. As the leader of Mattel, she put in motion actions that totally changed the toy business, forever. As a woman she broke down walls so that others wouldn't have to.

The books sub-title is a little mis-leading in that the book is not about Barbie but about Ruth Handler. Other than that, it is a fascinating story and one I can recommend to anyone interested in the struggles of women for equality in the business world, in the toy business generally, in the development of the world's largest selling toy: Barbie, and in the very human story of a driven successful, failed and eventually redeemed, almost bigger than life person, Ruth Handler.