These "Barbie" stars weren't Barbie girls as kids, but now they've embraced their roles

Notifications popped up on Barbie Koelker’s phone for days after a trailer for the “Barbie” movie first came out. Friends were eager to know what she thought.

“They know that I’ve fought for people to just take Barbie seriously,” Koelker says.

The 38-year-old marketing executive in Los Angeles says she was thrilled to catch a glimpse of the film.

The Rev. Barbara Aziz had a very different reaction. When she first heard about the new movie, one thought ran through her mind: “Oh gosh – here we go again.”

For decades, the 57-year-old pastor in Texas has pushed back whenever anyone tried to foist that name on her. ��You can call me anything,” she often says, “anything but Barbie.”

Since her debut in 1959, Barbie’s name has been one of the doll’s most well-known features.

Barbie – which in the doll’s case, is short for Barbara Millicent Roberts – was already a nickname for Barbara long before Mattel’s version hit the shelves, and a name some parents gave their children. But as the doll’s popularity grew, a Barbie baby boom of sorts followed.

According to data from the Social Security Administration, 1964 was the name’s most popular year, with 190 real-life Barbies born in the United States. It’s remained a nickname for Barbaras, too – beloved by some who love the doll, and spurned by others who don’t identify with what they think it represents.

“I love Barbie. I could talk about her for hours,” says Barbie Hargrave, 52, of Baltimore.

Of course, when it comes to the iconic doll, it’s not only real-life Barbies who have something to say. The doll’s unrealistic proportions and forever-arched feet have fueled decades of cultural criticism.

But these days, many women who spent their youth gleefully hoisting Dream House elevators, pushing around stylish Corvettes and keeping track of an endless array of tiny high heels are feeling fired up about Barbie’s big-screen moment. (“Barbie” is being released by Warner Bros., which like CNN is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)

And who better than real-life Barbies, Barbs and Barbaras to remind us why the doll, and now the movie, mean so much to generations of women? Here’s what some of them had to say when CNN contacted them.