this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Nobody wants diabetes. Diabetics care about their diabetes because it can easily kill them. Before modern medicine diabetes had a 100% chance of killing you fairly slowly. Little girls (and boys I suppose) who see that there is a T1D barbie now might think that there are other people out there who notice/care. I guarantee you that many children get teased about their pump and or CGM, so the existence of a T1D barbie will help normalize diabetes for them and the people around them.
Of course no one wants diabetes. People can choose what they want to be part of their identity and self concept. Yes, it used to be a death sentence until fairly recently. I have ADHD, but I don't particularly consider it to be an important part of my identity. I don't quite understand why diabetes would be part of a person's self concept, but if the Barbie makes kids feel better, then cool. No real benefit in it not existing.
I'm guessing there aren't a lot of people who would know that you have ADHD unless you tell them. Everyone walking behind me can tell I have T1D because my CGM and pump are clearly visible. People tend to identify with things that are so intertwined with their personal lives and that they are forced to spend so much time thinking about.
Oh, people can tell. I act like I'm tweaking out of my fucking mind about half the time. I don't personally find most physical things that important, like a goddamn Pixar movie, I think that the inside is what counts. I've only ever met 1 person I know to be type 1 (my aunt that I'm reasonably familiar with), and she's never mentioned it in any way. Since 5-10% of people have it, I'd expect to have at least met someone else that really cares about it. Maybe I'm just an anomaly.
5-10% of people have diabetes. Globally, 6.3% of people have type 2 and in the US 11.6% of people have it (had no idea it was that many but I'm not surprised). Type 2 can be typically be managed by oral meds, diet, and exercise. In the US, 0.5% of people have type 1 and require insulin to live, globally that's about 0.1%.
Not totally sure where Pixar come into play here but a lot of people do find physical things important. People who have type 1 either care about it or they go blind, lose a foot, or die. They generally don't go around talking to people about their diabetes.
As far as kids go, at least when I was growing up, they are fucking brutal. In 1st and 2nd grade I had a lazy eye which was corrected by glasses and an eye patch (not the cool pirate kind, it was a skin-colored sticker) and I got teased quite a bit. Insulin pumps didn't exist back then, I would imagine little kids with insulin pumps today get teased at most schools. Pretty good chance a T1D Barbie will make a difference to a lot of those kids.
I'm a very teasible person, and I'm certainly awkward. Maybe it was my autistic obliviousness, but somehow, I never really got bullied. I would've never considered being mean about any of those kinds of things, maybe I'm just strange. I get why representation matters to people, but I've never personally been helped by it. If it really helps kids, then that's good. I'm stupid, not a cartoon villain lol
Not strange, just good :)
TBH, ADHD is a part of my identity and my ADHD coworkers clocked me, as did my boss whose daughter has ADHD. (Librarian-hood is not the realm of the neurotypical.)
So, not something folks at the grocery store would notice and mileage varies as to what is part of someone's identity.