All Rise for Judge Barbie

She’s been a ballerina, an astronaut, a computer engineer, and even an Olympic skier. Now, Judge Barbie is gearing up to have her own day in court.

On Monday, Mattel announced via Twitter that this year’s Career of the Year doll will be a judge. “We learned that only 33 percent of sitting U.S. state judges are female,” Lisa McKnight, global brand manager for Barbie, told USA Today of the impetus for this year's career choice.

The new doll, which is available for purchase on Amazon, comes in four different skin colors, with four different hairstyles. Judge Barbie is the most recent in a line of dolls highlighting careers that lack female representation. Past Career of the Year dolls have included a video game developer, a film director, an entrepreneur, and a robotics engineer.

“Barbie has had over 200 careers,” McKnight told USA Today. “We like to say, ‘There isn’t a plastic ceiling that Barbie hasn’t broken.’”

Barbie’s 2019 “Career of the Year” announcement coincides with the one-year anniversary of the company’s effort to close the “dream gap”—the period in childhood when girls begin to doubt their own intelligence. Beginning this year, Barbie is partnering with GoFundMe to raise money to support girls’ education.

Monday’s announcement comes two weeks after Barbie announced its first gender-neutral dolls, and about seven months after the company introduced dolls with disabilities.

[h/t People]

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