MitchellTalks Film Series: Lagueria Davis' 'Black Barbie'

Love her or hate her, almost everyone has a Barbie story. For filmmaker Lagueria Davis, it all started with her 83-year-old Aunt Beulah Mae asking a seemingly simple question, "Why not make a Barbie that looks like me?"

Black Barbie is a personal exploration that tells a richly archival, thought-provoking story that voices the insights and experiences of Beulah Mae Mitchell, who spent 45 years working at Mattel.

Discussing how the absence of Black images in the "social mirror" left Black girls with little other than White subjects for self-reflection and self-projection, Beulah Mae Mitchell and other Black women in the film talk about their own complex, varied experiences of not seeing themselves represented and how Black Barbie's transformative arrival affected them personally.