Like Real People, Barbie Now Comes in Different Sizes

Barbie just got a redesign. The iconic doll now comes in four different sizes: petite, tall, curvy, and original. You know the original size—it’s the one that, if Barbie were a life-size human woman, would leave her with a 16-inch waist and an inability to walk on her own two feet. It’s also the size that’s outraged critiques for years, prompting Mattel to make a radical design move. That move was unveiled this morning, in a TIME magazine cover story. The TIME story covers the business and design choices that went into launching the new Barbie body styles, but it also sheds some light on the origins of Barbie’s unattainable figure:

Barbie has courted controversy since her birth. Her creator, Ruth Handler, based Barbie’s body on a German doll called Lilli, a prostitute gag gift handed out at bachelor parties. Her proportions were designed accordingly. When Handler introduced Barbie (named after her daughter Barbara) in 1959 at the New York Toy Fair, her male competitors laughed her out of the room: nobody, they insisted, would want to play with a doll with breasts. Still, Barbie’s sales took off, but by 1963 women were protesting the same body men had ridiculed. That year, a teen Barbie was sold with a diet book that recommended simply, “Don’t eat.” When a Barbie with pre-programmed phrases uttered, “Math class is tough,” a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization said the doll taught girls that it was more important to be pretty than smart.

The new sizing lexicon is deliberately neutral, but in plain English it means that in addition to the original doll you can now buy a short Barbie, a tall Barbie, or a Barbie with hips, thighs, and a hint of meat on her bones. It’s this last one—curvy Barbie—that is the real game changer, and the one that’s stirring up reactions. They are, of course, mixed: