(RNS) I never had a black Barbie. But I grew up surrounded by images of the inimitable white one — usually a bombshell being few women could compete with. She was the ultimate in “good-looking” in the annals of popular American dolls.

So I was intrigued to read about Grace, Kara and Trichelle, Mattel’s three new dolls in the “So In Style” line. They have fuller lips, wider noses and more pronounced cheekbones than their forebear, Christie, Barbie’s first black friend.

The new dolls plopped into the celebrity-driven world of American culture soon after the nation’s first African-American president and his family moved into the White House. Michelle Obama, the nation’s first black first lady and her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, offer new and needed role models for American children.

The new Barbie line is a good thing, way too long in coming. Yet its potential impact illustrates a disturbing and repetitive trend: the link between what our children play with and how those toys shape their self-understanding and their worldview.

Launched as a fashion doll in 1959, Barbie celebrated her 50th birthday this month. Her creator was Ruth Handler, an American businesswoman who is said to have modeled her doll on a German one named Bild Lilli. Handler suggested making an adult-bodied doll for children to her husband, Elliot, the co-founder of Mattel, after watching their daughter dress paper dolls in fashionable outfits and put them into adult roles. At the time, the majority of children’s dolls were depicted as infants.

I well remember both kinds of dolls: the “doll babies,” as we called them, and the Barbie dolls. The babies were wonderful for girls to coo over, mimicking a mother with her infant. But Barbie — now there was a doll that could stimulate a young girl’s imagination into simulating dates with boys, rides in cars, dance parties, and the like. The problem was envisioning Barbie in situations beyond such activities.

My Barbie — as delivered by Santa one Christmas morning — was too limited. Giving me and lots of other girls a Barbie to play with sent subtle signals, messages I think Barbie’s immaculate, model-like appearance helped emphasize.

Be beautiful. Be fashionable. Be glamorous. Be graceful. Be cute. Be a cheerleader. Be a prom queen. That’s the sort of message sent by the early Barbies, including mine with her bouffant blonde hairdo and convertible-driving boyfriend.

The unsent messages were even more powerful.

Barbie didn’t dream about being a rocket scientist. O.K., maybe she did, but that seemed an unlikely choice for the leggy, tiny-waisted Barbie I owned. She didn’t have the right clothes to climb trees in. She didn’t ride her bike until sweat dripped down her brow. I think she had a record player and albums, maybe even a piano. But I don’t remember her owning a single book.

To put it simply, my Barbie didn’t look a bit like me. And therefore, I concluded, she couldn’t possibly do the things I wanted to do: be an astronaut, fly an airplane or write a wonderful novel. Nor could I do what she did: be a model, be tall, wear the latest fashions. Owning my Barbie was like being taken to the fashion runways of Milan and then being told to go buy clothes at discount stores. The message: not being like Barbie was being second best.

Indeed, one of the most common complaints is that Barbie (and her companions) stress a type of beauty that is unattainable. Her critics note that even Barbie’s physical vital statistics — estimated in one report as 36-18-33 were the doll a real woman — promote an unrealistic body image.

The new “So In Style” line created by veteran Barbie designer Stacey McBride-Irby is running into its own problems, linked to the sort of cultural messages the newer dolls send. Some like the new dolls, and some don’t.

I tend to side with the people who like Grace, Kara and Trichelle, but who disfavor their long, straight hair as yet another assault on black girls’ beauty issues. I’m not black, but my one and only Barbie looked nothing like me — and I spent my adolescence striving to be someone I was not.

(Cecile S. Holmes, longtime religion writer, is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Her most recent book is “Four Women, Three Faiths.”)