When Mattel’s “You can be anything!” slogan first sang across television screens in 1992 children everywhere—especially young girls—had a role model to look up to in Barbie.
While Barbie has explored many career paths over the years—doctor, lawyer, even going to space as an astronaut before humans set foot on the moon—there are still many male-dominated fields she has yet to explore. One of those is a woman’s career in sports beyond being an athlete. Well, that is, until this year.
Mattel announced Wednesday that Barbie’s Career of the Year is “Women in Sports.” The collection will feature a coach, general manager, referee and sports reporter. The 2022 collection was centered on an eco-leadership team, while the 2021 Career of the Year was a music producer.
Courtesy of Mattel
Mattel also partnered with the NFL’s first woman coach, Jen Welter, to help show young girls that coaching in male sports is not off limits. The now sport psychologist was ecstatic to relay the message to girls across the world, mostly because she didn’t have someone like her to look up to in her role when she was younger.
“To me, it was larger than life, like, No way, a for-real coach Barbie?” Welter says. “I want all the girls to be able to see that. It was probably a big, shiny, pink dream come true that I didn’t even know I was really allowed to dream. It’s been so important to me [to have the coach Barbie] because I didn’t have that. There was no one I could look at and say, ‘I’m going to do what she’s doing.’ To let that Barbie be the spark of a dream, that’s what I say, because now you can see her and you’re like, You know what? I want to do that.”
Welter joined the Cardinals’ coaching staff during the 2015 season as a linebackers coach. She paved the path for over a dozen more women since then, and she imagines more will continue to enter the space, especially now that younger women are seeing this career as a possibility.
Even though Welter had to figure out how to take on the role of a football coach in the NFL by herself, she says it was worth it. Since 2015, many women and young girls have reached out to her and thanked her for paving the way for the future, specifically for showing them that they “belonged in the space.”
Apart from being an inspiration in the coaching sphere, Welter also played professional football in a men’s indoor football league, and many of her fellow women teammates later transitioned into coaching in the NFL, too. Welter was there for her former teammates and rivals in those cases.
Welter said that by being the first female NFL coach, she wanted to make more of a difference than just being a visible representation of the role. She wants to continue showing up for women who want to follow in her footsteps and not just tell them what they can do.
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“As a first, there’s an opportunity and a responsibility,” Welter says. “The opportunity is to show that it’s possible, and to be that first so there can be a second, third, fourth. The responsibility is to ensure that you’re not the last, which means that it’s standard from the front, but also support young girls and their dreams to grow up in that so they can do the same thing as the boys.”
This is why she created her organization Grrridiron Flag Football Camp, for example, as a way to be present with the girls interested in making a career in football.
Flag football is a massive growing sport for girls across the country, as more than 20 states have pilot programs at the high school level, ESPN reported in May. The NFL’s official Super Bowl LVII commercial in February was centered on women’s flag football, with Mexico national team star Diana Flores featured in the advertisement. Flag football is also expected to become an Olympic sport in 2028, when Los Angeles hosts the Games.
With more promotion of women playing football and working in football, Welter thinks the positive trend will only continue to grow. Soon enough, girls will grow up not knowing anything different regarding women in football, she believes.
“To have a brand like Barbie, that just broke the box offices, the most recognizable, iconic female doll turn her attention to careers in sports, you’re going to see a generation of girls who didn’t grow up thinking, I’m not enough or I’m not possible, because they’ve already seen it,” Welter says. “They created that dream there and they can act it out not only with the doll but in real life.”
