This week, Mattel launched its first autistic Barbie, co-produced with autistic young people, and complete with fully bendable elbows and wrists to enable stimming (repetitive physical movements), a fidget spinner, ear defenders, an averted gaze and an augmentative and alternative (AAC) communication device. As an autistic woman, I am joyful.
I must be clear. I do not wear short dresses. Neither do I use an AAC device. Rarely, will I use a stimming toy. My ear defenders are definitely not pink. My joy is not in a doll that looks like me. Indeed, autism doesn’t have a look, although it has, over the years, had many (often unhelpful) stereotypes. It is an identity and an experience of being human that is for each autistic person, dare I say it, unique. My joy then is not in a doll that looks like me. It is in a doll that helps me feel validated as an autistic person.
As an autistic child, I spent so much of my energy trying to appear neurotypical. Masking my autism became a daily routine, even though eye contact felt physically painful, and the effort often ended in meltdowns that left me feeling misunderstood and somehow wrong. It’s taken time to realise that I wasn’t wrong at all - just different, and that difference deserves space.
That’s why this new autistic Barbie feels meaningful. A part of my lived experience, the part I used to hide, now sits openly on a toy shelf, recognised and celebrated. She stands alongside so many other identities that make up the spectrum of human diversity, and seeing that representation genuinely matters.
The Value of Affirming Representation
My joy is two-fold, because this kind of representation marks a sea change in how autism is understood and celebrated more broadly across society. Our research shows that when non-autistic and autistic primary school-aged children get the opportunity to play, even for three minutes, with an autistic Lottie doll, their perspectives on autistic identity become more affirming than when they play with Lottie doll more generally. This Barbie, like the Lottie doll that preceded it, frames autism not as a deficit on the playground, but as a valid and meaningful part of some people’s experience. Dolls that represent a diversity of human experience offer children windows into worlds with which they are unfamiliar.
Beyond the Toy Box
At QMU, the work of the ToyBox Diversity Lab focuses on the representation of disabled people, and neurodivergent people, in children’s material culture. As with children’s books, the toy industry has shifted from confining this kind of representation to medical settings, such as hospital playsets. Instead, there has been a move towards more inclusive toy ranges that feature accessible school buildings and transport, inclusive playgrounds, and diverse characters, including dolls who wear a sunflower lanyard (an indication of a hidden disability), are blind, have limb differences, or are wheelchair users. Manufacturers such as LEGO, Playmobil and Mattel have played a key role in this development, with Mattel’s most recent addition continuing this broader trend toward more inclusive representation.
Similarly, children’s television has seen a noticeable increase in representation, both through disabled presenters and disabled characters. Programmes such as A Kind of Spark (BBC) with an autistic protagonist, and MixMups (Channel 5) place neurodivergent and disabled characters at the centre of the storyline, where they are celebrated for who they are, rather than marked for their difference or deficit.
Returning to Barbie, no single doll will be able to represent everyone’s experiences with autism. Nor should it. And neither is Mattel likely to produce dolls from which they cannot profit - history tells us that in the decommissioning of Share-a-Smile Becky in 1997. The dolls are still held to an unrealistic body shape, and research tells us this is not helpful to children’s body image. However, it is a step in the direction of affirming autistic people’s experiences and part of a wider set of dolls from Mattel that bring disabled people and their lives onto the toy shelf.
For the Toy Box Diversity Lab, inclusive toy design represents a positive and important step toward cultural change. When approached sensitively and with openness to revision, inclusive toy design can contribute to normalising autism as part of everyday human diversity. Representation at scale is never complete, but as an ongoing practice, it can move us steadily toward more inclusive futures.
Take it further
For more ideas, and dialogue around embedding affirming representation of disability into children’s play spaces, why not check out our upcoming seminar on 26 February 2026 or Queen Margaret University’s short online course ‘Disability Confidence for Education Practitioners’ starting again in March 2026. This is a six-week self-paced course that is entirely online.
