Life in plastic? It’s fantastic – until Barbie gets a diagnosis

6 hours ago 3

Living with chronic illness and variable disability is no cakewalk. But some days, the cursed carousel of online discourse serves up a special kind of cruelty.

In our latest instalment of depressingly on-brand ableism, people with access to Wi-Fi are expressing distaste at Mattel’s new release in their inclusivity range.

The new Barbie doll, with type 1 diabetes.

Yep, folks with keyboards are chucking a wobbly about a toy designed to make kids with chronic illness feel seen.

The Barbie, representing a person with type 1 diabetes (the rarest form, predominantly diagnosed in young children, making up an estimated 5-10 per cent of diabetes cases in Australia) is the latest in a range of dolls designed to characterise the disability and chronic disease population.

And the backlash? Swift. “Propaganda to normalise insulin use so health can profit for as long as that human live (sic),” wrote one misguided commenter on a BBC news post on Instagram. “I can’t wait for the heroin junkie Barbie” wrote another. And, as usual, if you value your calm, I’d advise against checking the comments on Sky News.

While not unexpected given the current political climate, this side of the response offers a revealing glimpse into just how little regard the general population has for those living with disability and chronic disease.

For a start, the backlash is an absolute masterclass in misunderstanding. It should go without saying (yet here we are) that everyone, regardless of their health status, deserves representation and respect. But the arguably unhinged response from these internet trolls stems from an embarrassingly fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanisms behind the different types of diabetes.

One confident commenter posted “just do carnivore diet, your diabetes will disappear,” presumably confusing type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition with no evidence of a “lifestyle” cause, with type 2 diabetes, a condition where the body becomes resistant to insulin or doesn’t produce enough of it, often due to a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors.

For some, the presence of anti-fat and ableist biases is so powerful that it overrides empathy. The opportunity to express distaste for anyone experiencing a disease they allegedly “brought upon themselves” – through so-called delinquent health practices – is too delicious to delay, even for a quick Google AI fact-check.

I’ve had my fair share of “helpful advice” when it comes to managing my own disease, Addison’s, and since my diagnosis five years ago I’ve felt an affinity with those who live with type 1 diabetes. The two diseases share similarities. First, they’re both autoimmune conditions, where antibodies develop and target healthy tissue as if it were a threat. And just as those with type 1 diabetes require insulin supplementation throughout the day for survival, I require the same, but with cortisol – an essential, life-sustaining hormone which my adrenal glands no longer produce.

Life with disability or chronic illness can be utterly exhausting. For example, like insulin, one of my life-sustaining medications needs to be refrigerated, and on a trip overseas, I asked the airport hotel to put the gel packs from my cooling device in their freezer overnight ready for a full day of flying the following morning. They proceeded to misplace one of them, leaving me with a now-defective medication storage unit before I’d even touched down in Singapore.

And that’s just the start. Friend and disability advocate Zoe Simmons recently spoke out about her experiences of wheelchair damage while on our country’s flagship airline, Qantas.

Perfunctory as this new Barbie may be when it comes to improving the lives of those with chronic illness, representation matters. It just does.

For better or worse (probably worse, let’s be honest) I was a card-carrying Barbie obsessive as a kid. She came with me on sleepovers, she got married and divorced more times that I can count, and she joined me every night at bath time for a good scrub-down. That lanky, questionably proportioned doll meant a lot to my seven-year-old self, and I have little doubt that she holds the same position in the bedrooms and bathtubs of millions of little kids today.

Since this new Barbie’s release, everyone with lived experience of chronic illness who I have spoken with (even long-time Barbie-haters) have all expressed a kind of catharsis and hopefulness at the thought of children with these conditions feeling less alone. Loz, my friend with type 1 diabetes told me, “At 34 I’ve never been more excited in my life, for a toy!”

The fact is we have a strong and enduring fixation with placing blame on the chronically ill for their predicament. We have a dodgy track record, yes, but we’re not stuck on this path. Visibility is progress, and a company as big as Mattel acknowledging that is a big bloody deal.

And in the end? The joke’s on the keyboard warriors, because this doll is already out of stock across Walmart and Amazon.

Hannah Vanderheide is a freelance health writer and actor based in Victoria.