Barbie and drag queens share the same dreams

polygon.com:

In 1960, Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II, the chairman of the NASA Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences, invited Jerrie Cobb, an accomplished pilot who held the world record for nonstop long-distance flight at the time, to participate in what would become known as the Woman in Space Program. The project was privately funded; as part of the program, Cobb and about 19 other women had undergone the exact same physical tests as the male candidates for the United States’ astronaut program. Thirteen women, who eventually came to be known as the Mercury 13, passed the exams. None of them would become the first American woman to go into space; that distinction belongs to Sally Ride, who was a part of NASA’s 1978 class of recruits and who eventually, on June 18, 1983, flew into space and broke America’s cosmic glass ceiling.

But Barbie had them all beat. In 1965, Mattel, the toy company co-founded by Barbie creator Ruth Handler and her husband Elliot, released the Miss Astronaut Barbie, the original of which is on display at the Smithsonian. She wore a silver space suit with brown zippered boots and matching gloves. She sported a fully beat face with red lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Her sole non-wearable accessory was an American flag. By the time Ride took her trip into space, an entire generation of girls had been imagining the same circumstance in the cosmos of their own making, with only the plastic of Barbie’s body and the synapses of their own imaginative brains.

Float into our DreamHouse: Barbie World is Polygon’s dive into everything Barbie, from her legacy as an iconic toy to her presence in games and movies.

“What Ruth did was put a doll in girls’ hands and the outfits to go with them that said, ‘You can have