--- title: Billie Jean King Talks About Getting Her Own Barbie Doll description: Billie Jean King discusses becoming a Barbie doll. Plus: her secret connection with another famous Barbie doll inspiration. canonical: https://time.com/5786905/barbie-billie-jean-king/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-02-20T14:00:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:55.717Z og:title: 'We Define Ourselves.' Tennis Legend Billie Jean King Discusses What It Means to Get Her Very Own Barbie Doll og:description: And she has a connection with another role model who got the Mattel treatment og:url: https://time.com/5786905/barbie-billie-jean-king/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc572f96b76ec0531/698a0a81e76ad2b78363746e/barbie-billie-jean-king-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2581 og:image:height: 1452 og:image:alt: Photographer Paul Jordan / Stylist Jennifer Hoon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'We Define Ourselves.' Tennis Legend Billie Jean King Discusses What It Means to Get Her Very Own Barbie Doll twitter:description: And she has a connection with another role model who got the Mattel treatment twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc572f96b76ec0531/698a0a81e76ad2b78363746e/barbie-billie-jean-king-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'We Define Ourselves.' Tennis Legend Billie Jean King Discusses What It Means to Get Her Very Own Barbie Doll > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME The Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition The Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors. The Brief brings TIME's perspective to the day's most important stories, helping readers understand not just what is happening, but why it matters. 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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: Redesigning Barbie: Inside The Barbie Design Process [Watch (HLS stream): Redesigning Barbie: Inside The Barbie Design Process](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jdzfoNPD.m3u8) (4:08)  _Published 2016-01-27. TIME takes a look inside the design process for the new Barbie body types: curvy, petite, and tall._  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Feb 20, 2020 2:00 PM UTC  Photographer Paul Jordan / Stylist Jennifer Hoon Photographer Paul Jordan / Stylist Jennifer Hoon ©2019 Mattel  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Feb 20, 2020 2:00 PM UTC When [Billie Jean King](http://time.com/vault/issue/1973-10-01/page/126/) was growing up, [Barbie dolls](https://time.com/5188776/barbie-mattel-historical-women/) didn’t even exist yet; the popular brand debuted when she was 15 years old, well on her path to becoming a trailblazing tennis legend, as King told TIME. But today, the Barbie brand is honoring King as one of their new Inspiring Women dolls, complete with an outfit, tennis racket, glasses and sneakers based on the gear she wore when she famously won the 1973 [“Battle of the Sexes”](https://time.com/4938913/battle-of-the-sexes-1973-report/) against Bobby Riggs — a moment that confirmed her place in sports history. She would go on to found the Women’s Tennis Association and Women’s Sports Foundation, be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, while continuing to advocate for further opportunities for women in sports. “It’s really a privilege,” King told TIME of now becoming immortalized as a Barbie herself. A representative of Mattel explained their choice: “She is not only a legendary tennis player, but also an equality champion,” Lisa McKnight, SVP and Global Head of Barbie and the Dolls Portfolio at Mattel, told TIME. “By shining a spotlight on her powerful story, we are continuing to show girls that they can be anything.” She joins a line of dolls that the Mattel brand released in recent years modeled after real women icons, including civil rights hero [Rosa Parks](https://time.com/5662389/rosa-parks-barbie-doll-equality/), artist [Frida Kahlo](https://time.com/5534763/frida-kahlo-brooklyn-museum-exhibit/) and astronaut [Sally Ride](https://time.com/3895806/sally-ride-google-doodle-astronaut-nasa-first-woman-space/). (Ride, in fact, was a personal friend of King’s: “She wanted to be a pro tennis player first!” King said about Ride. “She always told me that being an athlete really helped her at NASA. It helped her be the first one because of her agility. And she was a scientist. These are things that children, they learn about each one of these dolls: they can dream too. They can dream big and they can go for it.”)  Mattel The latest set of three new historic female figures included in the Barbie canon are King, jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald and founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale. “It’s such an honor to me to belong with these women that made such a difference to make the world a better place, and to lead and to show girls that we can be anything: we define ourselves,” King said. Besides creating dolls in the likeness of famous figures, Barbie has also made an effort in recent years to diversify its offerings with dolls in a range of different [sizes](https://time.com/4196229/barbies-new-body-watch-designers-explain-why-they-changed-her/) and [gender-nonconforming](https://time.com/5684822/mattel-gender-neutral-doll/) appearances. ” King’s doll is part of the Inspiring Women Series, launched in 2018, which Barbie kicked off to endeavor to close the [“Dream Gap,” ](https://barbie.mattel.com/en-us/about/dream-gap.html)which researchers [have identified](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389) as the common experience of young girls downplaying their potential in comparison to boys, based on exposure to stereotypes. “All these women are trailblazers who have made a significant impact in their respective areas of focus, and any fan can benefit from knowing their stories,” McKnight explained, nodding at the diversity of the figures that Barbie has selected in the series. “We have to stop teaching our girls they’re never good enough. It starts in childhood,” King noted; girls are shown to develop “self-limiting beliefs” at a young age. “Barbie can help that. You can use your imagination with Barbie doll, which is really important,” King said. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Barbie's body's been through a lot of different changes through the years to really reflect what's going on in the culture. Her face has changed her body has changed as trend in fashion and aesthetics shift, Barbie should go along with that. Two years ago, we launched a project internally that Was a brainstorming project and we said to our teams, if you can start the brand over today and you didn't have any rules. What would you do to make her as relevent as possible? They spent weeks upon weeks talking about the structure of Barbie's face, what her body It looks like and out of that came some big changes for the brand. We're launching a new body. [ MUSIC ] We knew that the new doll shapes would have to be in relationship to that original doll. So a lot of time Time is spent in sculpting, sketching, refining all of those aspects. The sketching for me is always very personal, because it's for me not only is it a way to express myself, but you kind of see all these separate parts start to come together to really create, [ UNKNOWN ] almost starts to develop her own personality. The face painting is another aspect that really starts to lend personality and give the doll a specific look that I think is unique. For designers, that's the really fun. In part because they'll be like I want this doll to have like a beauty mark or maybe she has like, you know she looks like she's laughing. They're the really dynamic part of what makes the doll sort of start to come to life. [ NOISE ] [ MUSIC ] Hair plays a big feature as relates to fashion dolls and Barbie's crowning achievement is her hair. Kids love to brush and comb and style the hair. And we work with a team of stylists who actually root the head on the prototype doll. This process allows us to see the prototype before we commit to any specific style. We have now a variety of hair textures and colors that are great, so working with our stylists in our hair department, we're able to kind of Make a bunch of different varieties of hairstyles to really reflect the different kinds of girls that are out there in the world. [ MUSIC ] To allow for new variety in body type seemed like the natural progression of an evolution of a brand that always strived to really reflect The culture and be current. You've got a tall doll, a curvy doll, a petite doll, and then the standard doll. And when you see them all together it looks like this tribe of young girls the way a kid might see that reflected in their own circle of friends. Or their family, or at school. Making a huge change like this on a brand with a 56 year history is complicated. We are disrupting a system of play that has existed for a very long time. We now have two sizes of feet. We have clothes that may not fit perfectly across all of the dolls. Not all of the dolls fit in all of the cars In the houses. But that's okay. We'll be uncomfortable for a little while. It's short term pain for a long term gain of really changing this brand in a way that's gonna make a difference in the world. It's exciting to be sort of the end, about to reveal the launch to the world. This is the way Now things are going to look. It's a new day, it's a new era for the brand. There's no limits to what the Barbie brand or Barbie can do, and it's very exciting. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5786905/barbie-billie-jean-king/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5786905/barbie-billie-jean-king/"},"headline":"'We Define Ourselves.' 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