The recent Barbie movie sent a message of diversity and equality by casting a wide range of ethnically diverse actors, including actress Issa Rae (who played “president” Barbie), Ncuti Gatwa, Ramzan Miah, Alexandra Shipp and Ritu Arya. In this report, we’re going to try to find the “average” Barbie movie character and see how they compares to an “average” American person in terms of skin, eye and hair color. 

How representative is Barbie, really? Let’s find out.

PS. This report is best viewed on a desktop. You'll be able to see the details of our graphic better.

Barbie Verse vs. America

Takeaways

• Barbie’s got skin tone down. Light medium is the most common skin tone in Barbie (66%) and America (48%)
• The Barbie-verse’s eye color distribution is very much like real life. The two most common colors in both worlds are blue and brown. More people in the US have brown eyes in the real world, and the opposite is true for Barbie-verse
• Barbie love unnatural hair colors. 34% of Barbie characters have a hair color that isn’t brown, black or blond, but that number is less than 1% in the US
• The Barbie-verse has a lot of blonds. If we exclude the 34% "other" color category,  37% of characters in Barbie are blond. This is way higher than the 5% in the US

The Average Barbie Verse Character

Eye Color

• Blue: 36.2%
• Brown: 35.8%
• Green: 12.9%
• Others: 12.3%
• Purple 2.9%

Observation: Green and blue eyes are overrepresented in Barbie. 

Skin Color

Skin tone was measured using the Fitzpatrick scale.

• Light medium: 67%.
• Light: 18.6%.
• Medium: 8.6%
• Deep Medium: 2.9%
• Deep: 2.9%

Hair Color

• Colorful hair of various kinds (not brown, black or blond): 34.6%
• Brown: 33.7%
• Blond: 24.7%
• Black: 7%

Observation: There are about 5x as many blonds in Barbie as there are in the US

Gender

• Women: 58%
• Men: 39%

Observation: In the US, the split is 50/50. Barbie characters skew female.

The Average US Persons

Eye Color

• Brown: 45%
• Blue: 27%
• Hazel: 18%
• Green: 9%
• Others: 1%

Observation: Where’s hazel eyes in Barbie?

Skin Tone

Skin tone was measured using the Fitzpatrick scale.

• Light medium: 48%
• Light: 35%
• Medium: 5%
• Medium Deep: 3%
• Deep: 9%

Hair Color

• Black: 83%
• Brown: 9%.
• Blond: 5%
• Other: 1%

Observation: Most people have black hair (92%), but almost no barbie does (7%) 

Gender

• Female: 50.5%
• Male: 49.5%

Methodology

Barbie data was collected via observation of 751 Barbie characters across 42 Barbie movie and TV shows. US demographics data is collected from a variety of sources, including World Population Review and the US Census. 

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