Yesterday I woke up to social feed filled with images of dolls in blue polka dot dresses standing in a highly recognizable shade of pink. Hello Barbie! But this was different. This Barbie was wearing a diabetic device – and they were proudly on display.
American girls did this with a diabetes accessory kit a few years ago. And T1D Barbie is not the first doll living in chronic health or disorders. In recent years, Mattel has released Barbie with wheelchairs, blind Barbie, Barbie with prosthetic legs, Barbie with hearing aids, and Barbie with Down syndrome.
The launch was huge! In sync, Mattel and Breakthrough T1D celebrated the new doll with pitch perfect media rolled out. I was able to see how much this means to a child with diabetes. And T1D adults too! I admit I squeal a bit when I saw her pink pump (like the pink pump I wore for the first six years I was looping) and on patches her heart-shaped CGM. I was just wearing it that way! (And I have a photo to prove it.)
It wasn't just the diabetic medium that picked up the story. Type 1 diabetes Barbie was everywhere! And the story was positive. T1D representation is important and problematic. That makes sense – seeing the toy reflect, reflecting diabetes helps normalize the condition we live in every day.
And I did what I knew I shouldn't do. But because I'm a fool – or maybe humanity wanted me to surprise me – I did that anyway. I read the comment. I hadn't read all of them – there were thousands. There was no surprise, and what I read told me this:
Diabetes remains a horribly misunderstood state, and a lack of understanding creates stigma.
There have been many comments on how unnecessary T1D Barbie is, how it “promotes the agenda” and how children don't need to wear toys to wear in a healthy state. I call trash about it from go because the expression is important. Of course that's true. Looking at mainstream health, we are important and we are not hidden by our experience (and our devices!). So you get excited when you see a diabetic character in movies or TV (though you're ready to criticize when diabetes is reduced to one horrifying moment, or when someone accuses someone who has a hypo with a full insulin injection!).
Then there were comments on whether Barbie praised “sickness” and encouraged “unhealthy lifestyle.”
And bam! Stigma was front and center, and there was great confidence from people who had no idea about any type of diabetes.
People who are not directly affected by diabetes often don't understand it. If I could swing a magic wand, I would simply not say anything to those people. In an ideal world, they'll learn a bit about diabetes, but honestly. I'm starting to realize that it won't happen, and I really don't care. I know nothing about health conditions that do not affect me directly. My brain is too full of other things to learn all the nuances of autoimmune, metabolism, or chronic health.
If that's up to me (and sadly not), I simply say nothing to everyone who has zero or understand diabetes knowledge. But of course that didn't happen. Instead, they treated us by comparing us with a stigma that included “lifestyle illness,” “personal responsibility,” and “she doesn't look like a diabetic.”
And then, people within the diabetic community were in great pain as they tried to justify why this Barbie was important and screamed about different types of diabetes.
I have read many of these comments with the same disappointment as comments from people outside of our community. Because many of them did nothing but add to their diabetes-related stigma. T1D, T2D and the efforts to define who lives with it (Barbie Dream) were thrown under the bus.
I don't know what it takes to help people realize that responding to stigma with stigma is not useful for the T1D community. It hurts us.
All diabetic stigma is bad for people with diabetes. When we reinforce the stereotype damage related to other types of diabetes, we do not benefit ourselves. It is not about to change the attitudes of the wider community. In fact, it would simply make many double downs on their stigma. Stigma hurts us all. I don't care about the type. If you want to end the stigma, you cannot continue adding it.
Our own Barbie launch with diabetes is a moment of joy and offers the opportunity to build confidence for the kids (and adults!) who live with T1D. Start a conversation and think about ways to reduce the sense of isolation. This moment deserves to be used as an instant for greater visibility, greater understanding of the meaning of living with T1D, and for more blessings. Let's go to Barbie!
Disclosure
I work for the Breakthrough T1D Global Responsibility Team.
