The doll is modeled after fencer Ibtihaj Muhammed, the first U.S. Olympic athlete to compete in a hijab, who said she would sew head scarves onto her Barbies as a child.
Longtime toymakers are broadening their horizons — offering dolls and other figures with hearing aids, wheelchairs and insulin pumps in city scenes, not just hospitals. That's a start, activists say.
Novelist Jane Smiley has written about campus life, farm life in the Midwest, realtors in New England and many other facets of American life. Her latest novel is Private Life, which follows the life of an unlucky woman who marries well but finds other problems that confront her.
