By: Dr. Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez, 2025 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
For generations of children, brushing Barbie’s hair has been as central to play as dressing her in the latest fashions. Beyond the familiar brush tucked into countless doll boxes, Mattel has repeatedly returned to hair as a site of innovation—designing dolls and accessories that transform styling into a creative, tactile, and sometimes experimental practice. Barbie’s evolving hairstyles chart a history of play that is as much about identity and imagination as it is about beauty.
A Head of Possibilities: The 1960s
One of the earliest entries in Barbie’s hairplay history is the 1963 Wig Wardrobe accessory set. Packaged with justthe head of Fashion Queen Barbie and three wigs—a blonde bubble cut, a brunette pageboy, and a short titian style—it invited children to swap hairstyles at will. This was a strikingly modular approach to play. Instead of styling hair already attached to the doll, children could remove and replace entire identities in seconds. In doing so, Barbie became something like a customizable avatar long before digital avatars existed.
Hair as Transformation: The Late 1970s and Early 1980s
By the late 1970s, Mattel began integrating hair transformation directly into the doll itself. Pretty Changes Barbie (1978) featured a sleek chin-length bob but came with removable hairpieces, or “falls,” that could instantly alter her look. Blonde one moment, brunette the next—this doll emphasized flexibility and experimentation.
Soon after, Beauty Secrets Barbie (1979) blurred the line between styling and routine. With a push of a button, Barbie could “brush” her own hair, and even her teeth! The doll tied beauty practices to everyday habits, embedding grooming rituals into imaginative play.
In the early 1980s, Mattel expanded these ideas further. Magic Curl Barbie (1981) came with a “magic mist solution” that allowed children to transform her hair from straight to curly. Advertising promised endless restyling, reinforcing the idea that Barbie’s appearance was always in flux. The following year, Twirly Curls Barbie (1982) arrived with a miniature beauty salon: a chair, barrettes, and a specialized curler device. Hairplay here became more immersive, turning children into stylists equipped with tools and techniques.
Styling as Skill: The 1980s
By the mid-1980s, Barbie hairplay had evolved into something closer to instruction. Super Hair Barbie (1986) emphasized elaborate updos, aided by a “magic barrette” and an instruction booklet. These dolls positioned children as active creators rather than passive consumers. They learned how to braid, twist, and sculpt hair, often following step-by-step guides. In this sense, Barbie functioned as an entry point into skill-building: a way to practice dexterity, patience, and aesthetic decision-making.
At the same time, these toys reflected broader cultural trends. The 1980s saw an explosion of big hair, salon culture, and beauty media, and Barbie translated these trends into playable form.
Then Came the Superstar of Hairplay: Totally Hair Barbie (1992)
With hair that reached all the way to her ankles, Totally Hair Barbie pushed the concept of hairplay to its limits—literally. She came with styling gel, a scrunchie, and a comb, encouraging children to crimp, braid, twist, and sculpt her extraordinarily long hair.
The doll’s look was unmistakably of its moment. Inspired by the crimped hairstyles popularized in late 1980s and early 1990s fashion, her textured hair offered both volume and versatility. Behind the scenes, longtime Barbie designer Carol Spencer—who had worked on the brand since the 1960s—championed the hair feature, initially envisioning a crimped style that reflected contemporary trends. When that technology fell through, she reimagined the concept as extreme length.
The result was a phenomenon. Totally Hair Barbie became the best-selling Barbie doll of all time, with more than 10 million units sold worldwide. By extending Barbie’s hair to such dramatic lengths, it became the star of the show and the brand.
Cutting, Growing, Repeating
If Totally Hair Barbie expanded hairplay through length, Cut and Style Barbie (1994) transformed it through cycle: cutting, regrowing, and styling again.
This is my favorite Barbie doll! You might recognize her by the telltale details: unevenly trimmed hair and, hidden underneath, small strips of Velcro that made her signature feature possible. Children could cut her hair and then attach additional hairpieces to make it “grow” back instantly.
Cut and Style Barbie embraced something deeply compelling about hairplay: the desire to experiment without permanence. Hair could be cut short, restored to long, and reshaped. More than once. Without regrets! In practice, the included child-safe scissors were not always up to the task—I remember them as barely cutting at all. Notably, television commercials often showed full-sized scissors achieving dramatic transformations that the packaged tools could not quite replicate. Yet this gap between promise and performance did little to diminish the doll’s appeal. What mattered was the idea. Cut and Style Barbie took a central tension of real-world hair—its permanence—and reimagined it as reversible.
Beyond the Doll: Styling Heads
While hairplay dolls transformed Barbie herself, another product line took a different approach: the Barbie styling head. Introduced in various forms since the 1970s, styling heads offered a larger canvas for experimentation. With oversized heads, rooted hair, and often makeup features, they allowed children to brush, braid, and accessorize with greater precision. Some even included makeup kits, further blending hairstyling with cosmetic play.
Styling heads shifted the scale of interaction. Instead of working on a small doll, children engaged with something closer to life-size proportions. This made the act of styling more immersive—and, in some cases, more aligned with real-world practices.
Importantly, styling heads also expanded accessibility. They did not require a full doll body or narrative context. Instead, they focused entirely on the act of styling itself, foregrounding hairplay as its own form of creative expression.
Color as Transformation
Hairplay has not only been about length and style—it has also been about color. Beginning with Color Magic Barbie (1966), Mattel introduced hair that could change color. Using chemical solutions, children could shift Barbie’s hair into vivid new shades, making color itself part of the play experience.
This innovation also reflects something children had already been doing on their own. Many recall using highlighters, markers, or other improvised tools to streak or “dye” their dolls’ hair—sometimes with messy, semi-permanent results. Mattel’s introduction of color-changing features can be read as an early recognition of this impulse: the desire not just to style Barbie’s hair, but to reimagine it entirely.
That idea reappeared in later decades with new technologies. Dolls like Splash N Color Barbie (1996) responded to sunlight, while more recent lines like the Barbie Dreamtopia Rainbow Magic Mermaid (2020) dolls and Color Reveal (2020) Barbie use temperature or water activation to transform hair from one color to another. In these cases, the act of styling becomes a moment of surprise.
So, What Makes Barbie Hairplay So Enduring?
At one level, it is tactile. Hair can be brushed, braided, curled, and restyled. It offers immediate feedback and visible results, making it deeply satisfying as a play activity. At another level, it is imaginative. Changing Barbie’s hairstyle can transform her identity: from casual to formal, from everyday to fantastical. Hair becomes a storytelling tool, enabling children to construct and reconstruct narratives through appearance.
But hairplay is also cultural. Hairstyles carry meanings tied to fashion, identity, and social norms. Barbie’s evolving hair—from structured 1960s wigs to free-flowing 1990s lengths—reflects shifting ideals of beauty and self-expression.
At the same time, these toys raise important questions. What kinds of hair textures are represented? Whose beauty standards are being centered? While dolls like Totally Hair Barbie celebrated abundance and versatility, they also largely adhered to Eurocentric beauty ideals—a dynamic that Mattel has increasingly sought to address in more recent lines featuring diverse hair textures and styles.
The Legacy of Hairplay
From the Wig Wardrobe to Totally Hair Barbie, hairplay has remained a constant thread in Barbie’s history. Each iteration builds on the same core idea: that hair is not just something to look at, but something to do. Even today, as Barbie continues to evolve, hair remains central. Whether through dolls with textured curls, vibrant colors, or interactive styling features, the legacy of hairplay endures. There is even a contemporary, self-aware nod to this long history of hairplay in the 2023 Barbie film. The character of Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, is immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever really played with a doll. Her hair is unevenly chopped and colored with markers; her face is marked up and her body posed in exaggerated, permanent splits. She is, as the film suggests, the Barbie “who was played with too much.” It humorously reflects the same impulse to experiment that animated decades of hairplay dolls.
From the interchangeable wigs of the 1960s to the extreme length of Totally Hair Barbie, children have always left their mark on Barbie’s hair.
So, which hairplay Barbie do you remember—or wish you had?
This post draws on research conducted during my fellowships at The Strong National Museum of Play. Readers interested in learning more about Barbie’s history can explore some of this research in my Audible lecture series, The Life of Barbie.
