On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Ruth Handler created Barbie, she was a girl standing behind the counter of her family’s Denver deli, learning how people reveal themselves in the smallest choices. She carried that intuition with her as she and her husband began building Mattel from almost nothing.

Years later, it was her daughter who brought that old instinct into focus. As Ruth watched her play with her dolls, she noticed a gap the toy world kept overlooking: young girls didn’t want to play pretend only as mothers—they wanted more. Ruth believed that offering them a figure shaped for possibility could change the way they pictured their own futures. Acting on that belief pushed Mattel into uncertain territory and started the story we now recognize as Barbie.

Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, follows how one woman’s way of paying attention altered the direction of American childhood.

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