Barbie gets a makeover

Barbara Millicent Roberts has a distinctive look. The doll, better known as Barbie, was in 1959 either blond or brunette, before ditching her dark locks for a long, impossibly sleek golden mane. But even in the early days, Barbie was notable for her lithe limbs, large-yet-pert breasts and, of course, teeny-tiny waist.

Facially, her evolution has been almost constant: 1969’s eyeliner flicks and pixie nose meant Barbie looked like Bewitched’s Samantha. By the late 70s, she was bearing bright white teeth and in the late 80s/early 90s her already big pupils almost doubled in size; who knows why.

Figure-wise, however, little has changed. In 1998, Mattel gave its latest doll, Really Rad Barbie, slimmer hips, a wider waistline and smaller bust, so Barbie would “have more of a teenage physique”. And in 2000 she acquired a tummy button. Progress, it’s fair to say, has been slow.

But there is hope: in 2016, Mattel acknowledged its “responsibility to girls and parents to reflect a broader view of beauty” and gave Barbie a full-on reinvention. Jawlines were softened, thighs thickened, skin tones lightened and darkened. The Fashionistas range included three new body shapes (tall, curvy, petite), seven skin tones, 22 eye colours, 24 hairstyles and 14 “face sculpts”.

It’s easy to be cynical – diversity is good for business – and it may be some time before children choose to play with anything other than the white, blond, skinny doll that has epitomised western beauty ideals for so long. But when they do, at least there’s a taller-than-average, possibly mixed-race Barbie with a supercool undercut just waiting to steal the show. Leah Harper

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supporter holds a picture of Tsai Ing-wen. Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

In a year that saw America pass on the chance to elect its first female president, there was better news from Taiwan: Tsai Ing-wen rose to power as one of the rare self-made female Asian leaders to have succeeded through hard work rather than family connections. In January, she was elected Taiwan’s first female president, becoming the most powerful woman in the Chinese-speaking world.

Her Democratic Progressive party’s landslide win was boosted by young voters disillusioned with stagnant economic growth and rising inequality, and desperate to assert their country’s identity. Taiwan, an island of 23 million people about 100 miles off the Chinese coast, has its own government, currency and military, but is viewed by China as a renegade province. Most nations, wary of offending China, refuse to have formal diplomatic ties with it. However, US president-elect Donald Trump spoke with Tsai on the telephone in December, breaking decades of US foreign policy protocol.

Tsai, a law professor and LSE graduate, came to power on the back of the Sunflower Movement of 2014, when students occupied government buildings and thousands took to the streets to protest at a trade deal with Beijing.

It has, however, seen China retaliate by freezing diplomatic ties and allegedly restricting tourism to squeeze Taiwan’s struggling economy. And as Tsai has walked the tricky line between public expectations on independence and increased jobs and prosperity, her approval rating has plummeted. But the president, who has been called the “Angela Merkel of the east” for her calm, academic style, appears unfazed. “We want to make Taiwan an Asian tiger once again,” she wrote in the Economist in November. “My plan for 2017 is for Taiwan to renew its role as a pioneer.” Nicola Smith

Puddlewatch makes a splash

The first week of 2016 seems like an entirely different place. For proof, look at #DrummondPuddleWatch: a livestream of a large puddle in Newcastle. If this happened now, we would treat it differently. We’d gnash our teeth about failing infrastructures, joylessly share overcooked thinkpieces about how the puddle was Brexit’s fault, brace ourselves for the inevitable moment when president-elect Trump would call the puddle “sad” on Twitter.

But back in the glory days of early January, #DrummondPuddleWatch was a treat: a dog in the playground, the first glimpse of snow. There was real pleasure to be taken from the various ways people attempted to traverse the puddle: on tiptoe, via an island-hopping technique using a nearby lamp-post, or smashing through regardless. It was the most basic personality test, dividing people into varying layers of caution; at once breathtakingly mundane and staggeringly life-affirming. It felt spectacularly British then, and it feels spectacularly innocent now.

At its peak, around 20,000 people were watching the puddle online. Before long, people brought lilos and surfboards with them. A crowd formed. Around a puddle. It felt like a moment in time, shared by all. One day, we’ll sit our grandchildren down and tell them about the time 20,000 people watched an old lady leapfrog a puddle, and they won’t believe us. “What’s a puddle?” they’ll ask through a gas mask in the concrete bunker they’ve never left, and we’ll be lost for words. Stuart Heritage

106-year-old Virginia McLaurin dances with the Obamas

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Virginia McLaurin with the Obamas. Photograph: Pete Souza/The White House

When Virginia McLaurin, aged 106, attended a White House reception in February, she wasn’t sure if she would meet President Obama. “We were waiting and I kept asking, ‘Where is he? Am I going to see him?’” she says, speaking from her home in Washington DC earlier this month, apologising for being hard of hearing.

McLaurin, born in 1909, grew up on a sharecropping farm in South Carolina. She was used to one entrance for white people at the front of a house and another at the back for black people. “I didn’t think I’d ever live to see a black president,” she says. “And I really didn’t think a poor person like me would get a chance to go to the White House.”

McLaurin, known locally as Ms V, is an active community member: she still volunteers up to 40 hours a week at a special needs school and Sundays are for church. When she said she wanted to meet the Obamas, a neighbour contacted White House staff and she was invited to a Black History Month event.

“When I got close to him, I was so excited, I just grabbed him,” she says. Video footage shows McLaurin, in a matching blue jacket and skirt, throwing her arms open, shouting, “Hi!” and clasping hands with Obama. “I grabbed her, too,” she says of the first lady.

In the video, the president jokes that McLaurin should slow down; Michelle Obama says, “I want to be like you when I grow up.” When McLaurin replies, “You can” and wiggles her shoulders with excitement, the three are led in some dance steps by Michelle.

As they gather for a photograph, the first lady exclaims, “Look at those nails!” McLaurin recalls they were the same blue as her suit and that her “fiftysomething” granddaughter had painted them. “You’ll notice I had on boots. That was because I didn’t have any shoes. But I thought, ‘I don’t care, I’m going anyhow.’”

When the video went viral, people heard of McLaurin’s volunteering and poor living conditions, and she received donations to a Facebook page set up by her neighbour. She was able to move into a more comfortable apartment in April, a few weeks after turning 107. “Everywhere I go, people hug and kiss me and want my picture,” she says. “All my joy came out when I met the president. It meant so much to me.” Candice Pires

The Archers shines a light

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Archers’ Rob and Helen Titchener. Photograph: Pete Dadds/BBC/PA

Paul Trueman has been a fan of The Archers for more than a decade, but at the start of this year, like millions of other devotees of the long-running Radio 4 soap, he found himself seized by one particular storyline.

Helen Titchener, born a member of the titular farming family, now married to a manipulative bully named Rob, was being dragged ever more under his abusive control. Friends started spotting bruises. Now she was pregnant, and increasingly fearful for her young son.

Among the soap’s devoted fans on Twitter, Trueman noted, “There was a lot of, ‘Why can’t we do something? This is awful.’ Then an idea popped into my head. If she were real, we could fundraise to get her out of there. So I thought, that’s what we should do. We should start a fundraising page for a fictional character” – with the profits going to help real-life victims of domestic violence.

Within a couple of hours, Trueman had set up a page on the JustGiving website in aid of the charity Refuge, with a nominal target of £1,000. “I thought if we were lucky we might reach that in a month.”

That was around 9pm. His phone pinged five minutes later, the first alert that someone had donated money. By midnight, he had passed his target. “And my phone didn’t stop pinging for the next six months. It was bonkers.” He didn’t turn off the notifications, “partly because I loved getting them. It was just fantastic, a little bit of a drug.”

Within 48 hours, the total passed £20,000; it was £45,000 by the end of the first week. Most powerful, for Trueman, were the comments from those donating, many anonymous.

“To the charity that saved me and my children, eternal thanks.”

“I was a Helen. I came out the other side. There’s a light there at the end of the tunnel.”

Ten months after Trueman’s bright idea – and aided, he stresses, by many, many others – the site has raised more than £200,000 (including gift aid) for Refuge. It’s still open for donations. “Never before in my 33-year career at Refuge have I seen such public support for our work,” says Sandra Horley, the charity’s chief executive. “It has been incredible to see this storyline, and one Archers fan from Devon, inspire so many members of the public to engage with something that goes on behind closed doors.”

“2016 has sucked, don’t get me wrong,” Trueman says. “But I am quietly proud of the fact that, as a community, Archers listeners have been responsible for one of the bright sparks of the year.” Esther Addley

Pink beauty products get a reality check

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Blue for a boy… Photograph: Marlene Ford/Alamy

It’s long been the case that women pay more than men for virtually identical products such as plastic razors and face creams (typically branded pink for ladies, black or blue for men).

In February, Boots bowed to consumer pressure over “sexist pricing” of products by changing the cost of its razors and eye creams. The high street giant made the pledge after a change.org petition set up by campaigner Stevie Wise highlighted the disparity between equivalent products marketed at men and women. Since then, Boots has brought its No7 skincare range into line, ensuring products are sold for the same price across male and female ranges.

Superdrug has also reviewed the pricing disparity and cut prices of its own-brand razors, adding that it is challenging suppliers that charge more for women’s products. Argos, which came under fire after selling pink scooters for £5 more than the same blue ones, claimed the discrepancy was an error that had been corrected. However, in September, the gender equality group Fawcett found in an analysis of supermarket own-brand toiletries (at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons) that women are paying on average 31% more than men for a basket of comparable toiletries. Fawcett intends to keep up the pressure. Rebecca Smithers

Teenage pregnancies plummet

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Teenage pregnancy is now at its lowest level since records began. Photograph: Alamy

The Office for National Statistics published official figures that confirmed a staggering 51% drop in the rate of pregnancy among under-18s in less than two decades. It is now at its lowest level since records began in the late 1960s: in 1998, in England and Wales, 47 out of every 1,000 young women under 18 became pregnant; by 2014 (the figures published this year), that had plummeted to 23 out of every 1,000. The World Health Organisation is exploring how this turnaround was achieved and whether it can be replicated elsewhere.

The key engine driving such dramatic change was an ambitious policy known as the teenage pregnancy strategy, launched by the Labour government in 1999. It was a 10-year project, almost unheard of in quick-fix government circles, with work carried out in schools and colleges, among youth and social workers.

Teenage conception rates have also dropped worldwide, for similar reasons, including more widely available, high-quality sex education, and greater access to more effective contraception. Another theory is the advent of social media - youngsters are busy networking at home via Facebook and Instagram rather than meeting face-to-face over a six-pack of lager. Sally Weale

A giant rabbit is rehomed

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Home-seeking giant rabbit Atlas. Photograph: Scottish SPCA/PA

With spring came the story of Atlas, the giant bunny who was given a new home following a nationwide charity appeal by the Scottish SPCA. Atlas was a then seven-month-old continental giant rabbit, and about the size of a west highland terrier (too large for his previous owner). His new owner, Jen Hislop, 43, from North Ayrshire, was chosen from hundreds of applicants around the world who hoped to adopt the rabbit.

“I burst into tears when I got the phone call saying I had been chosen to rehome Atlas,” said Hislop, who renamed him Attila The Bun Binky Master Jazz Paws – Atty, for short – and who was provided with a buggy to help get him around.

The continental giant is one of the largest and oldest breeds of rabbits, and can grow to 1.2m long, weigh more than 20kg, and eat a bale of hay a week as well as up to 2,000 carrots and 700 apples a year. Nadia Khomami

• Where did it all go right? For a more positive view of the world in 2017, follow the Guardian’s Half Full online series, with reports on innovative ideas and solutions to the challenges of the day. Wishing you all a happier new year.