How Barbie’s Creator Helped Empower Cancer Survivors

Ruth Handler knew plastic.

Best known for creating Barbie—the high-heeled doll whose careers have included astronaut, dolphin trainer and presidential candidate—Handler’s plastic innovations didn’t end with the beloved icon.

In 1970, while still working as chief executive officer at Mattel, Handler had a brush with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy the same year, removing her left breast. But Handler, ever the fashion plate, struggled to find breast reconstruction options that didn’t require surgery. One doctor told her to stuff her bra with old nylon stockings—a notion that absolutely repulsed her.

“Ruth was always [about the] makeup and hair,” says Susan Shapiro, author of Barbie (2023). “So when she had the mastectomy, she was extremely depressed. She felt like she lost part of her identity.” 

The typical breast cancer survivor relied on cotton stuffing or padded bras to fit into old clothes or help reclaim a sense of self. These less-than-perfect solutions—“designed by men, obviously,” Handler once quipped to journalist Connie Chung—felt uncomfortable and looked unrealistic. This left women with few choices.

And choices were very important to Handler—and to Barbie. “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be,” Handler wrote in her autobiography Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story (1994). “Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.”

Handler experimented with plastic and silicone and worked with a prosthetics specialist to create a better solution for breast cancer survivors. She called the result—a liquid silicone and plastic form available in a wide range of sizes—the Nearly Me prosthesis.

Handler’s prosthetic cost between $98 to $130 and came in versions for both the left and right sides of the body—a seemingly small design detail that hadn’t been available to women before. “There has never been a shoemaker who made one shoe and forced you to put both your right and your left foot in it," she told The New York Times in 1977.

Nearly Me arrived at a time when the feminist health movement was transforming discussions about women and cancer survivorship, explains Kirsten E. Gardner, a history professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“The hole in the market reflected a hole in the health care industry,” Gardner says. “We didn’t have the home medical products we have today. And this was a moment of change. Ruth saw a gap in the market, and she filled it. I think we can agree a plastic breast imitates the feel more than a bunch of cotton you’d buy at Joann Fabrics.”

But as Handler was battling breast cancer and perfecting the Nearly Me prosthesis, her career at Mattel was in turmoil. In 1975, while the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating Handler and other executives for inflating earnings, Handler left Mattel. In 1978, she was indicted on charges of fraud and false reporting, to which she later pleaded no contest. 

“I’d been opinionated and outspoken,” she told the Los Angeles Times about the ordeal. “I had been running a company making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We had 15,000 employees. I had a big job. But suddenly, I was supposed to whisper about what I’d been through.”

Handler didn't let the experience deter her. At the same time, Nearly Me started to make headlines. Handler ran the media circuit, appearaing at department stores and inviting late-night hosts to cup her prosthetic breast as proof of the true-to-life feel. She employed women who also had mastectomies to best advise potential customers and fit them accordingly. 

By 1980, Handler's company, Ruthton Corporation, was celebrating millions of dollars in sales. She even fitted former first lady Betty Ford—who publicly underwent a mastectomy in 1974—with her own custom-made Nearly Me. Handler ran Ruthton Corporation until 1991, when she sold it to consumer products giant Kimberly-Clark. “She had it all, she lost it all, and she not only came back but came back with something her own,” Shapiro says. “She created what’s missing, what she would have wanted in her life. How many people have two huge successes?” 

Handler died in 2002 at age 85, remembered not only for her inventions but for her humor: “I’ve lived my life from breast to breast.”