TORONTO –
As a younger lady, Shania Twain says she used to make her personal dolls, modelled after Barbie.
Her household could not afford to purchase her the actual deal, Twain says, so she took issues into her personal palms.
“My Barbie play was all the time at my cousin’s or at good friend’s homes, however at residence I’d make my very own Barbies,” she says. “I’d play Barbie with my very own creations.”
Now, the tables have turned — Mattel has made a Barbie doll modelled after Twain.
The nation celebrity, who’s gearing up for a Las Vegas residency that begins in Might, is one in every of eight girls to obtain a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll of their likeness for Worldwide Ladies’s Day, and Twain looks like it’s kind of of a full-circle second.
The dolls she made have been an outlet for her creativity: characters she invented made manifest. In a method, she says, the Barbie is identical factor.
“This Barbie is kind of a projection — my very own projection of myself,” she says. “This character on stage, it is all play. The costuming, the hair, all the pieces, it is all a part of the identical play that begins while you’re a toddler.”
The doll blends the previous with the brand new. The doll’s hair is the pastel pink Twain has favoured recently, however she wears the outfit from the 1999 music video for “Man! I Really feel Like a Lady!”: a prime hat, a button-up shirt and tie, a black mini skirt and thigh-high boots, paired with a floor-length swimsuit jacket that flares out on the waist like a ball robe.
It has been a giant 12 months for Barbie. There was the blockbuster movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, which is up for six Academy Awards — together with greatest image and a greatest supporting actor nod to Canadian Ryan Gosling, who can even carry out the Oscar-nominated music “I am Simply Ken” on the ceremony on Sunday.
But it surely’s additionally Barbie’s birthday. The doll is popping 65; the anniversary of her creation is March 9.
Different girls receiving their very own Barbie this 12 months embody actresses Viola Davis and Helen Mirren, and singer Kylie Minogue.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed March 6, 2024.