Barbie started out as a mother's idea to make her daughter's toys more convenient. The paper dolls that Ruth Handlers daughter, Barbara, played with were hard to dress and hard to play with. Ruth was inspired by the frustation of Barbara and her friends and the inconvenience she saw herself.
           Ruth noticed that when her daughter played with the paper dolls she mostly played with the adult women. They were playing with the most relatable doll. In a stereotypical family of a mother, a father, and a son and daughter they mostly played with the mothers. They wanted to imagine what they themselves were going to be when they grew up, not what they were going to do tomorrow. This is why they did not play with the children as much as the women. "'I knew that if only we could take this play pattern [paper dolls] and three dimensionalize it'...'we would have something very special.'" Barbie was going to be a 3-D paper doll.