DALLAS _ All rise for Judge Barbie.
Judges in Dallas _ where women on the bench outnumber their male counterparts _ have snapped up the dolls for themselves, other judges and their kids and grandkids. The doll, released this fall by Mattel, stirs up memories of childhood but also makes judges wish they had Judge Barbie when they were kids. It comes in four skin tones, making it easier for children _ and judges _ to pick out the doll who looks most like them.
"Not only does this Barbie change the narrative for little black girls, it does the same for those of all races," Dallas County criminal court Judge Shequitta Kelly.
Kelly, 42, loved playing with Barbies as a girl. But she never saw herself in Barbie. The dolls were an escape from real life.
Kelly was 5 when her father was murdered, and she was raised by a single mom. She always planned to go to college. But that goal became harder after she got pregnant in high school.
Kelly, holding a black Judge Barbie that looks like it was molded in her image, said she sees herself in this Barbie. Little girls will see themselves in the doll, too, she said.
"It tells a new story on what has been stereotypically implanted into all of our minds," Kelly said. "It sets new beliefs and classifies old accepted thoughts as irrational. Judges no longer look like what society defined for us to see and believe."
Kelly, a Democrat who took the bench in 2015, was the first in her family to go to college. She was an honor roll student in high school, but a guidance counselor told her college was impossible with a baby and suggested beauty school instead. A favorite teacher, though, encouraged Kelly to pursue her dreams of law school.
As a judge, she and three other black female judges, created Pipeline to Possibilities, a program to educate kids about the criminal justice system and inspire them to become leaders.
Nationally, women make up 34% of a state court judges sitting on the bench this year, according to the National Association of Women Judges, which helped design Judge Barbie. That's up from 25% in 2008.
In Texas, just 31% of all judges are women. But in Dallas County, women represent a far higher percentage of the judiciary. For example, in the county's criminal courthouse, all but five of the 30 elected judges are women. Most of the judges are also people of color.
That's nothing like what the courts looked like in Dallas when Lana Myers took the bench nearly 25 years ago. Myers, a Republican on the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas, was then just one of a handful of female judges when she became a Dallas County felony court judge.
Today, Myers is one of five women on the 13-justice appellate court that hears civil and criminal appeals from Collin, Dallas, Grayson, Hunt and Rockwall counties..
Myers, 65, said she isn't sure why North Texas voters put so many women on the bench.
"I have always been told by those who study the numbers that a woman has a better chance than a male of being elected," she said. "I never felt like it hurt me to be a woman running for office."
Myers didn't always dream of being a judge. She recalled sitting with her father in the living room of her parents' home in Irving in 1981 after she graduated from law school at Baylor University. Myers was an intern at the Dallas County district attorney's office and was studying to pass the bar exam.
Her father pointed to a photo in The Dallas Morning News of a Gerry Holden Meier, a woman who'd just been appointed to a Dallas County felony court bench.
"You can do that," her father told her.
"That made an impression on me," she said sitting at her desk decades later, holding Judge Barbie, who is blond like Myers.
Myers, who played with Barbies as a child, keeps Judge Barbie on a table in her chambers next to a photo of young female lawyers she's mentored. She also gave dolls to her granddaughters, 3-year-old Lucy and 2-year-old Daphne.
She wanted to show them they can be a judge just like Nana.
"It's so wonderful little girls can play with a doll that tells them, 'You, too, can be a judge,'" she said. "It's something attainable."
For now, though, the girls mainly like taking off and putting on Barbie's black, strappy high heels.
