We’re getting another Jewish Barbie!
After the Carrie Fisher Barbie and Iris Apfel Barbie, a new Jewish icon is being turned into the beloved doll, invented by Jewish mom Ruth Handler: WNBA star Sue Bird.
Bird’s doll is part of the Mattel’s Role Models doll line, and celebrates both the company’s 65th anniversary and their summer of sports initiative. The doll was announced this week and the 43-year-old former Seattle Storm player told People that it was a dream come true.
“Now little girls and little boys are going to see a professional women’s basketball player in the form of a Barbie and they’re going to tap into that story, they’re going to tap into that career and they’re going to think ‘Oh, this is something I could do. And that’s really powerful,'” she said about what she hopes will be the impact of the toy.
Bird not only joins a legacy of incredible Jews who were fashioned into the doll, which also include Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and Goldie Hawn, but she’s also part of a group of incredible women athletes who were announced as new Barbies just this year, including Venus Williams and soccer player Marry Fowler. The doll comes with her own miniature basketball, Sue’s signature curly dark hair and her number 10 Jersey. She’s also flexible enough to replicate some pretty impressive basketball moves thanks to her “Made to Move” body sculpt.
“Throughout her 21-year career as a trailblazer in the women’s basketball league, Sue Bird’s perseverance and authenticity have paved the way for more representation and attention on women in professional basketball and in sports,” Krista Berger, senior vice president of Barbie and global head of dolls at Mattel, said to People about the player, who retired from professional sports in 2022.
Bird is Jewish on her father’s side. Her father, Herschel Bird, is a cardiac rehab doctor, and his parents immigrated from what is now modern-day Ukraine, changing their names from Boorda to Bird.
Bird is not just Jewish — since 2006, she’s an Israeli citizen. She got her citizenship to be able to play basketball in Europe. “With my father being Jewish and still having relatives in Israel, it was an easy connection,” Bird once told the Washington Jewish Museum. “When I tell this to people outside of basketball circles, it seems a little odd. But in our world, it’s like very normal. So that’s how it all came about. It was cool, because what I found was in this effort to create an opportunity in my basketball career, I was able to learn a lot about a culture that I probably wouldn’t have tapped into otherwise.”
Since retiring, Bird co-founded the women’s sports brand togethxr, and along with her wife, retired soccer star Meghan Rapinoe, is co-founder of A Touch More productions (obsessed with this power couple). The two are revamping their podcast of the same name with Vox Media and are working on producing a TV scripted series based on the soccer romance novel “Cleat Cute.”
The Sue Bird Barbie is available now and quite affordable, all things considered. After all, $30 isn’t an unreasonable amount of money for one of the most decorated basketball players of our generation.
