With 33 new looks, Barbie is finally embracing different standards of beauty

As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There’s just one problem: Despite our demographic diversity, not everyone’s beauty gets equal representation. However, new changes to one of the world’s most iconic (and influential) dolls are set to address this.

Time magazine reported that the 2016 Barbie Fashionista collection will come in three new body types. Now kids and adults alike will be able to play with “tall,” “petite,” and “curvy” Barbie dolls. The new line also includes a wider range of skin tones, hairstyles, and eye colors.

“By introducing more variety into the line, Barbie is offering girls choices that are better reflective of the world they see today,” Mattel wrote in a statement about the new line.

For longtime Barbie fans, the standard doll isn’t going away. But unlike the Barbie “friends” series, the new dolls aren’t sidekicks to Barbie. They are Barbie, too.

In what is unquestionably Barbie’s “biggest change” since the toy first hit stores in 1959, Mattel is making room for other Barbies — 33 to be exact — to have a chance at dominating the shelves. And, to be honest, we’re all better for it.

Last April, Mattel announced that it would creating a “Sheroes” collection dedicated to the female movers and shakers in the world. Among the dolls for the collection was a one-of-a-kind “Ava Barbie” in honor of Selma director Ava DuVernay.

People couldn’t wait to get the doll. So much so that when the doll was up for preorder online in December, it sold out within mere minutes on the Barbie website, and the doll was “unavailable” on Amazon within an hour of going live on that site.

Obviously, this was an economic victory. But it was also a representational one, which studies have shown to be invaluable for how people perceive themselves.

In the 1940s, African-American psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted a series of “doll experiments” that have been recreated numerous times since.

For the experiment, black children were given a black doll and a white doll. The children were then asked a series of questions to see which doll the kids thought was good and which one was bad, including regarding beauty.

Almost always, the children preferred the white doll to the black one.

The experiment showed that white features, even with something as simple as skin color on a doll, have a monopoly on how people perceive beauty. The results imply that black children are conditioned to internalize these ideals early on.

This means that kids who don’t fit that standard, perpetuated in the standard Barbie model, are learning how to reject their looks for no other reason than they just aren’t the “norm” and our society demeans them for their differences.

That’s why the new Barbie dolls are so welcomed.

In order for these ideas to transform, kids and adults alike need to be able to see images of themselves in the world. In doing so, they are reminded that they can exist in the world exactly the way they are. These 33 new Barbies are making sure more people can do just that.