In the 2023 “Barbie” movie, Margot Robbie’s character recoils in horror when her perfectly arched feet touch the ground. “Flat feet!” she gasps, as if she’s been cursed. It was a punchline. But for a team of podiatrists and researchers in Australia, it was a research question.

They looked at modern dolls and noticed that a lot of them actually had flat feet instead of the “traditional” arched ones. They started wondering: when did Barbie’s feet actually start to flatten?

So, they turned to the data — 2,750 Barbie dolls, to be exact — and found something surprising. Since the doll’s high-heeled debut in 1959, Barbie’s posture has shifted dramatically. While she once stood perpetually on her tip toes, today she’s far more likely to stand on flat feet. And that shift says more about society than it does about Barbie.

From Tip-Toes to Work Boots

We have a weird relationship with our shoes. Most of us don’t just wear them for comfort; we also wear them for style or status. We use them to send a message, that we’re cool, fashionable, or we like a particular cultural trend. It’s a strange phenomenon, but plenty of people prioritize style even when shoes are uncomfortable.

“We regularly hear our patients assign labels to their footwear, like “these are my bad shoes” while still choosing to wear them for other non-comfort benefits,” says Professor Cylie Williams, from Monash University, to ZME Science. Williams and colleagues thought Barbie’s evolution might tell a similar story.

“Most of us only played with Barbie’s that had high heels and when we checked with a Barbie collector friend, we realized that Barbies and flat shoes appeared on the increase, so we were interested to see by how much.”

Most of us don’t pay enough thought to our feet. We take them for granted and rarely bother to care for them unless they are sore or something goes wrong. But throughout history, feet — and the shoes they wear — have carried powerful (and changing) symbolism: of beauty, status, gender, even morality. High heels once signaled nobility and masculinity. Today, they’re often linked to femininity and fashion, and sometimes even judgment.

The idea was to study whether Barbie foot positions can tell a story now about how we, as a society, changed how we treat feet. “Who better to do it than a bunch of podiatrists?” asks Williams.

The researchers created a custom classification system for Barbie feet. They called it… FEET: Foot posture; Equity (diversity and inclusion); Employment (job-themed, such as Eye Doctor Barbie, or fashion-themed, such as Twirly curls Barbie); and Time period of manufacture. Using online catalogues, eBay listings, and private collections, they audited Barbies released from 1959 to mid-2024. They didn’t look at special edition dolls.

In the early years, every single Barbie — 100 percent — had feet fixed in the “equinus” position: toes pointed, heels lifted, ready for high fashion. By the 2020s, only 40 percent did.

Why does this matter?

Flat-footed Barbies weren’t just an aesthetic choice. They were more likely to represent jobs: nurses, chefs, eye doctors, athletes. Meanwhile, tip-toed posture clung tightly to fashion-themed dolls. Flat feet aligned with roles requiring mobility and practicality, while tip-toes signaled glamour, leisure, and fashion-first identities.

Simply put, Barbie is becoming a modern woman.

“Barbie appears to reflect what many high heel wearers (mainly women) do every day, and that is to choose the shoe for what they need to do. Barbie still favored heels for parties and socializing, just like many high heel wearers,” says Williams.

This may also reflect changes in public health messaging, which has long warned women about the dangers of high heels. They’ve been blamed for bunions, back pain, and knee issues. But as the authors point out, many of these links are weak, short-term, or based on unrealistic assumptions — like wearing stilettos during sports.

“Many of the dangers have tenuous links. Instead, we know high heel wearing makes you walk slower, and be more unsteady while wearing them, especially the higher you are. We contend that high heel wearers know this and these are the risks they are willing to take in the short term. Instead, public health messaging could see this an opportunity to enhance messaging about footwear that increases physical activity and comfort, or better yet, use public health messaging for those with greater impact on women’s health issues than their footwear choices.”

Barbies are diversifying

Williams also mentions another change.

For decades, the brand was criticized for promoting a narrow and unrealistic standard of beauty — primarily white, thin, able-bodied, and blonde. But in recent years, Mattel has taken steps to diversify the Barbie lineup, introducing dolls with a wider range of body types, skin tones, hair textures, and visible disabilities.

Though these changes did not dismantle the iconic image of the “classic Barbie,” they marked an important move toward greater inclusivity in children’s toys—offering more kids the chance to see themselves, or someone they know, represented on the shelves.

“We saw a small and positive increase in Barbie representing people with disabilities, and diversity of race, a multitude of skin tones and hair colours. While the predominant Barbie model was still blond and had blue eyes, there were Barbies in wheel chairs, Barbies wearing ankle foot orthoses, or leg prosthesis.”

As Mattel’s most iconic creation shifts her stance, she also shifts the conversation: away from what’s “wrong” with high heels, and toward what’s right about choice.

There could be other telltale signs of foot-related societal change. For now, the researchers have no plans to look further into this. But then again, they didn’t plan to look at Barbies in the first place.

“We believe we embody that research can also be fun. This present study was very much an out-of-office-hours hobby (that’s what we have to tell our bosses). We have no future plans for other toy research about footwear, but this was so much fun, I’m sure other ideas will come to us in the future. Researchers have hard jobs but also, sometimes have the best job in the world where we get to ask fun questions and find the answers.”

Journal Reference: Williams C, Graham K, Griffiths I, Wakefield S, Banwell H (2025) Flat out Fabulous: How Barbie’s foot posture and occupations have changed over the decades, and the lessons we can learn. PLoS One 20(5): e0323719. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323719