Consider this: Barbie is a space-age recasting of a stone-age fertility totem, symbol of an ancient, enduring matriarchal faith.
Why now: The now 64 year-old doll is especially hard to ignore these days, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s relentlessly promoted Barbie movie. Her plastic face is everywhere, in high relief against blinding fuchsia backdrops.
Why it matters: If Barbie can be seen as a modern emblem of an ancient goddess faith, much about her starts to make sense. Keep reading for a look at her origins and enduring popularity.
Unlike flash-in-the-pan toys, Barbie is still going strong after 64 years. She’s especially hard to ignore these days, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s relentlessly promoted "Barbie" movie. Her plastic face is everywhere, in high relief against blinding fuchsia backdrops.
Why has Barbie now endured for more than four generations?
Many people suggest that it has to do with global brand recognition that’s on par with Coca-Cola. Others point to her responsiveness to broad social trends — yes, her novel careers and new-fangled accessories, but also new body types and ethnicities. Barbie has even challenged traditional notions of gender.
Still, others credit the low price point at which consumers can hop on the Barbie bandwagon (or Malibu beach cruiser).
There is some truth to all of these explanations. But I believe the real reason runs deeper.
Barbie as a fertility totem
Consider this instead: Barbie is a space-age recasting of a stone-age fertility totem, a symbol of an ancient, enduring matriarchal faith.
True, Barbie, with her cinched-in waist and narrow hips, is hardly a swelling Venus of Willendorf, a type of well-known goddess sculpture made in Europe almost 25,000 years ago. Yet like that prehistoric Venus, Barbie is a small, portable object. An object that nomadic peoples — or contemporary kids — can grab and cradle and carry in their hands.
There are other similarities, too. I rest much of my argument on Barbie’s itty bitty arched feet. Like Barbie, Neolithic goddess figures did not have feet; their legs tapered to prongs. To stand up, they were plunged into the earth, linking them to the Great Mother, Mother Earth, the chthonian (dark/underworld) source of their power.
Nor did all goddess figures have waistlines as wide as they were tall. Barbie, for instance, closely resembles the Cycladic idols — broad-shouldered, streamlined female figures with slender hips that were made in the Cyclades between 3000-2200 BCE, and that are believed to have functioned as objects of veneration.
Replica of Venus of Willendorf.
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Cycladic figurine replica, representative of the Cycladic civilization that developed from about 3200 - 2000 BC , in the group of Cyclades islands.
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If Barbie can be seen as a modern emblem of an ancient goddess faith, much about her starts to make sense. After all, in 1959, Barbie came first, two years before Ken, in the same way that the ancient goddess religions antedated Judeo-Christian patriarchal monotheism. Nor should it be a surprise that Barbie lives in a paradise of consumer goods; there is no garden — no Eden — from which a patriarchal God could exile her.
Likewise, with this perspective, Ken’s second-class status and genital abridgment make sense: he is a eunuch priest in a goddess cult. Per the tagline of Gerwig’s movie: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”
Barbie’s origin story
In The Barbie Tapes, a podcast I co-host with Antonia Cereijido, we delve into the origins of the Barbie we know today, the one who rates a major Hollywood film some 60 years into her time in the spotlight.
The beginning of that global fame was sparked when Ruth Handler, who was one of the co-founders of Mattel, saw a German doll known as Lilli on vacation in the late '50s.
As pieces of sculpture, the Barbie doll and the Lilli doll are almost indistinguishable. But they have very different invented personalities.
An advertisement published in the author's 2004 book "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll."
Lilli was based on a comic character in the Bild-Zeitung, kind of a downscale German tabloid newspaper, like The National Enquirer. In the single-panel comics, Lilli is essentially always seen taking money from jowly fat cats for sexual favors.
The emblematic cartoon, is one of Lilli completely naked, holding up a newspaper — a tabloid — to cover her naked body. She's in the apartment of a female friend and she says to the friend something along the lines of “We had a fight, and he took back all his presents.”
That gives you a sense of how Lilli operated in the world.
Handler brings back the doll and shares it with Jack Ryan, a Yale-educated engineer who worked on the Sparrow and Hawk missiles and whom Mattel had hired to do engineering work. He takes it to Japan, where he assists other members of Mattel’s design team in finding someone to make a copy of it
Ultimately those invented personalities — Barbie versus Lilli — were very different, but, you know, a woman in the 1950s had to be the wholesome milkshake-drinking girl next door and — I search for euphemisms — also have the body of a German sex worker.
Barbie as goddess
Greta Gerwig poses on the pink carpet upon arrival for the European premiere of "Barbie" in London on July 12.
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Gerwig, in fact, seems to have homed in on the goddess aspect of Barbie’s identity. In the film, Barbie leaves her idyllic Olympian toy world for the terrestrial one inhabited by humans. This is a familiar trope in mythology. Consider the mess the Greek goddess Athena made meddling in human affairs, not the least of which was causing the Trojan war. (Because Barbie has no navel, she reminds me of Athena. Neither were of women born.)
The hero’s journey of discovery is also a trope in fairy tales. In "The Little Mermaid," Ariel cuts a deal with a treacherous witch to incarnate as a person. She swaps her fish tail for legs and relinquishes her voice — an unfortunate exchange that imperils the very transformation she seeks.
I realize there is a tongue-in-cheek, ivory-tower quality to the idea of Barbie as an ancient feminine archetype. Yet Barbie's first marketers, an unabashedly cynical bunch, relied heavily on the idea of unconscious motivations — and pervasive archetypes — to construct their advertising campaigns.
What a Freudian psychoanalyst had to do with Barbie’s success
Ernest Dichter, a real Viennese Freudian psychoanalyst, revolutionized U.S. marketing in the 1950s and 60s. He analyzed consumers' deep-seated fears and needs, then exploited those fears and needs to sell products. In Getting Motivated, his 1979 memoir, Dichter admitted that in marketing, his “knowledge of mythology came in handy.”
The first sales strategy for Barbie came out of the focus-group research Mattel had commissioned from, yes, Dichter himself.
Not only could Dichter identify people’s unconscious drives, he also saw the ugly social order as it was, not as people may have wanted it to be. His crafty strategy to sell Barbie, however, had less to do with her underlying identity and more to do with the second-class status of real-life women. In the 1950s and 60s, women could not buy property or open a checking account without the sponsorship of a husband or father. This meant that men, in those days, were essentially meal tickets.
During Dichter’s Barbie focus groups, the cunning psychoanalyst saw how dead-set most mothers were against the doll: one referred to her as an over-sexed “daddy doll.” But when a rough tomboy told her mother that Barbie looked “well-groomed,” the mother softened toward the doll.
This, Dichter realized, was a way to position Barbie. Better her daughter should learn to snare a man in a sleazy way than not be able to snare one at all.
What this has to do with the new ‘Barbie’ film
Over Barbie’s six decades of doll dominance, she’s inhabited a toy ecosystem now fully realized on the big screen in Gerwig’s relentlessly marketed film.
Gerwig’s costumes and settings that are often direct quotations from real outfits and playsets that the director herself, age 39, would have encountered in childhood.
Barbie drives the cars, not Ken. Barbie owns the dream houses, not Ken. Barbie is the empowered figure, and Ken, if not literally a eunuch priest, is very much her subordinate.
It is, of course, a fantasy world — and a world that entices viewers through nostalgia. It is also world of exaggeration, of “camp,” a world that is artificial, and defiant in its flirtation with kitsch. Camp is ironic. It presents a world of objects surrounded by air quotes — a world not of lamps but “lamps.”
Viewers will have to determine how well Barbie survives a harsh human world that is still very much controlled by men. I want that archetypal feminine essence to prevail. I hope she emerges as a goddess, not merely a "goddess."
Of course, Ruth Handler once dismissed the goddess idea as "baloney." That said, the designers who crafted the doll did not.
Most were well-schooled in visual art and understood its metaphorical underpinnings. In the 1990s, I asked Aldo Favilli, Mattel's chief of sculpture since 1972 and a former sculpture restorer at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, about the idea of Barbie-as-goddess.
Ken's creation is a big hit for Barbie fans, but he’s facing a few growing pains of his own. In this episode, we investigate Ken's origin story, delve into the inner workings of Mattel, and hear how Barbie's inventor, Ruth Handler, was ousted from her own company.
The Barbie Tapes: Battle of the Bulge
Ken's creation is a big hit for Barbie fans, but he’s facing a few growing pains of his own. In this episode, we investigate Ken's origin story, delve into the inner workings of Mattel, and hear how Barbie's inventor, Ruth Handler, was ousted from her own company.
A new Mattel team, led by a man who feared the volatility of the toy business, diversified the company and made a big gamble on electronics. It didn’t work. Fortunately, Barbie ends up in the sure hands of some trailblazing women executives. From the workforce to the workout, Barbie was a doll of her times.
The Barbie Tapes: When Girls — and Barbie — Could Do Anything
A new Mattel team, led by a man who feared the volatility of the toy business, diversified the company and made a big gamble on electronics. It didn’t work. Fortunately, Barbie ends up in the sure hands of some trailblazing women executives. From the workforce to the workout, Barbie was a doll of her times.
M. G. Lord is a cultural critic and investigative journalist. She is the author of the widely praised books Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science, a family memoir about Cold War aerospace culture, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll and The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice. A graduate of Yale, Lord was for twelve years a syndicated political cartoonist and columnist based at Newsday. Lord is an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California.
Astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana to lead university
Matt Dangelantonio
directs production of LAist's daily newscasts, shaping the radio stories that connect you to SoCal.
Published January 6, 2026 4:38 PM
Incoming Caltech president Ray Jayawardhana speaks during an announcement ceremony at Caltech in Pasadena on Tuesday.
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Topline:
Caltech has selected astrophysicist and Johns Hopkins University provost Ray Jayawardhana as its next president.
Who he is: According to his introduction video, Jayawardhana goes by "Ray Jay."
His academic work in astronomy explores how planets and stars form, evolve and differ from each other. He's part of a team that works with the James Webb Space Telescope to observe and characterize so-called exoplanets — planets around other stars — with an eye toward the potential for life beyond Earth.
In addition to his time as provost at Johns Hopkins, where he oversees the university's 10 schools, Jayawardhana has also taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan and also had a research fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. He got his undergraduate degree at Yale and earned his Ph.D. at Harvard.
Why now: In April, current Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum announced he'd retire after the 2025-26 academic year. Rosenbaum has led the university for the past 12 years.
What's next: Jayawardhana will step into his new role July 1.
The potential impact on California: The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.
Read on ... for more on the fraud allegations and Gov. Gavin Newsom's response.
The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”
On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.
Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.
“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.
LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.
“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.
“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”
Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program
When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.
A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.
That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.
It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.
Potential impact on California families
The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.
In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.
”It's very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives "at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.
”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”
About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.
“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month - would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.
Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”
It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.
A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.
“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.
“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”
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Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.
“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.
“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”
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Destiny Torres
is LAist's general assignment and digital equity reporter.
Published January 6, 2026 3:30 PM
A home destroyed in the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8.
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Topline:
California is investing $107.3 million in affordable housing in L.A. County to help fire survivors and target the region’s housing crisis.
What we know: In an announcement Tuesday, the state said the money will fund nine projects with 673 new affordable rental homes specifically for communities impacted by the January fires.
Where will these projects go? The homes will not replace destroyed ones or be built on burn scar areas, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. The idea is to build in cities like Claremont, Covina, Santa Monica and Pasadena to create multiple affordable housing communities across the county.
Officials say: “We are rebuilding stronger, fairer communities in Los Angeles without displacing the people who call these neighborhoods home,” Newsom said in a statement. “More affordable homes across the county means survivors can stay near their schools, jobs and support systems, and all Angelenos are better able to afford housing in these vibrant communities.”
David Wagner
covers housing in Southern California, a place where the lack of affordable housing contributes to homelessness.
Published January 6, 2026 3:20 PM
A “now leasing” sign advertises apartment for rent in L.A.’s Sawtelle neighborhood.
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Topline:
Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.
The program: The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of these vouchers.
The numbers: With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday, the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.
Read on … to learn more about the families using these vouchers, and how tenant advocates are responding to the expiration.
Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.
The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.
With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.
“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”
The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.
Homelessness progress could be reversed
Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.
After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.
The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.
With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.
“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”
Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids
According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.
The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.
L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.
Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.
“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”
