So I stumbled through the Barbie aisle at Walmart the other day…

…and y'all, I almost cried. Just look at these. LOOK AT THEM.

So many skin tones!

PLUS SIZED BODY TYPES!

NATURAL HAIR STYLES!!! MULTIPLE SHADES OF DARK SKIN!!!

A WOMAN AS A DOCTOR!!!!!

I’M NOT DONE, THERE IS A PHOTO LIMIT!

LOOK AT THIS PROFESSIONAL LADY!

SO MANY SKIN TONES AND BODY TYPES AND LOOK AT THAT MERMAN!!!

FRECKLES!!!

Y'all, I’m just…so so happy.

I’m 35 years old and I’ve never seen a Barbie that looked like me, and then there I am as a Barbie in a purple sweater with thick thighs and evenly proportioned boobs and pink hair and a cat.

I can only imagine how other girls must feel.

Nicely done, Mattel. Nicely done!

Mattel also just announced some new Barbie dolls who have wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs!!!

Like screw anything calling this “politically correct,” this is what the real world literally is.  And the world’s population of children is just as diverse as its adults.  Kids deserve to see themselves represented.  As a disabled person myself, I can’t tell you how much this would have meant to me as a little girl.

BRO HAVE Y’ALL SEEN THE NEWLY RELEASED ONES

IM SOBBING

YES YES YES THIS IS PERFECT!!!

I only ever saw the one disabled Barbie but their is at least two! And look a ramp!

the OP was made a year ago so for fun I went to check what they’re new dolls were

Guys… Even being confident there would be even MORE added to the barbie range of dolls…. I was not prepared.

I am about to image spam you so forgive but there’s just SO MUCH

holy shit. I’m like… not even a doll person and so many of these I want!

There’s LITERALLY too many to add

(who is she?)

Plus sized Barbie with DIMPLES

They actually have a barbie with albinism and bothered to give her a proper face-sculpt!

This one looks like she could kill me instantly if she made direct eye-contact

This one’s smile is just KILLING me

Nubian girl because we’re not messing around

Also… this doll does not have any name on the product listing nor on the packaging so this might just be me but…. help me out here guys… is this.. ….is this a non-binary barbie? Am I presuming too much or is that what I’m looking at here??

Also final note. Just to REALLY drill this all home, Barbie has some photos of kids playing with the dolls and

Ironically, Barbie did not come to play around.

Also I’m obsessed with this Sally Ride doll

Barbie never played around, barbie played for keeps, why do you think she works so hard in so many fields?

if any of y’all think this is overkill:

i babysat the sweetest little girl who was in a hot pink wheelchair. it was almost brand new, and she was just so excited to finally have a good wheelchair!! the day i walked into the house after she’d gotten it, she wheeled over to me with the biggest smile and said “it doesn’t hurt my back anymore!!”

for her birthday, i got her a barbie doll who looked a lot like her (it was the one with vitiligo) and a little barbie wheelchair and a few other accessories because who doesn’t like accessories?

apparently she’d had a white doll for a while and of course loved her doll but when she saw not only the one with vitiligo but also the wheelchair? and she put that little doll into the wheelchair and pushed her around a bit on the table? she looked up at me and burst into tears, grinning from ear to ear, and murmured to me “she’s like me. i didn’t know there were ones like me” and lemme tell you i nearly broke down right then and there and i gave her the warmest smile and hug i could muster up and her parents called me a few months later (i’d stopped babysitting because they didn’t have money to pay and wouldn’t allow me to babysit for little/free like i offered because i knew they both were searching for jobs and couldn’t be around their kid much bc interviews) and they just thanked me, their daughter was “so happy to have a doll like her that she carried the barbie around with her all the time”. they hadn’t been able to afford the doll and were actually saving up for a wheelchair at least.

this isn’t overkill.

this is giving kids a doll like themself. this is showing them that they aren’t weird or irregular or not normal. this is showing kids that others who are different from them, others who do have a prosthetic or a wheelchair or dark skin or vitiligo, that those kids aren’t weird. if a little girl sees a barbie in a wheelchair, she’ll just think “oh that’s my friend!!” and be exposed to the fact that these “different” kids are kids too, friends and acquaintances and not people to be mocked or bullied.