Barbie's Girlfriend

About

Barbie's Girlfriend refers to jokes about the doll Barbie having a romantic relationship with a woman due to a picture on the BarbieStyle Instagram page in which she is wearing a shirt reading "Love Wins," an LGBTQ+ community slogan, alongside a doll version of blogger Aimee Song, who is also wearing a shirt with the slogan. After first appearing in 2017, the image was rediscovered in January of 2021, leading to a new wave of jokes about Barbie having a girlfriend and being bisexual.

Origin

On November 21st, 2017, the BarbieStyle Instagram page posted a picture of the iconic Barbie doll alongside a Barbie-version of blogger Aimee Song.^[1] The two are wearing shirts that say the LGBTQ+ community slogan "Love Wins." The post is captioned, "Proud to wear this “Love Wins” shirt with @songofstyle! Did you know that her exclusive t-shirts benefit different causes and non-profits? Such an inspiring initiative and fabulous few days I have spent with Aimee, she’s a doll!" The post gained over 55,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The idea Barbie had a girlfriend first started spreading on Twitter shortly after the post was made. On November 21st, 2017, user @mindsout^[2] tweeted the picture, saying "Barbie is gay now, it's official," gaining over 47,000 retweets and 136,000 likes (shown below, left). User @syd_222^[3] wrote, "barbie is gay, her skin is glowing, just got her hair done, got a cute emo gf who wears chokers. literally living her BEST life," gaining over 180 retweets and 460 likes (shown below, right). Jokes were covered by VT,^[4] who wrote, "Yes, Barbie came out this week. And about time too. Official photographs of Barbie and her new girlfriend were featured on Mattel's "Barbie Style" Instagram page, and they're both pictured sporting marriage equality and LGBTQ awareness "Love Wins" T-shirts… While it doesn't explicitly state that Barbie is gay, it's made pretty clear – and in any case, we're not going to challenge it."

2021 Resurgence

On January 11th, 2021, Twitter user @kissevermore^[5] posted a screenshot of the Google summary of VT's article along with the picture of Barbie and Aimee Song, writing, "JUST LEARNED BARBIE HAS A GIRLFRIEND," gaining over 41,000 retweets and 233,000 likes (shown below, left). The post resulted in a new surge of jokes regarding Barbie and led Song herself to clarify that she was the "girlfriend" in the post^[6] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References