Ruth Handler Club children's television show, Mattel invested heavily in television advertising. The TV commercials for the Barbie doll paid off and Barbie rocketed Mattel and the Handlers to fame and fortune. Subsequently, they would add a boyfriend for Barbie named Ken, after the Handlers' son, and many other "friends and family" to Barbie's world. Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970. She had a modified radical mastectomy, which was often used at the time to combat the disease, and because of difficulties in finding a good breast prosthesis, she decided to make her own. Handler went on to found a
Chelsea Handler 9 years old at the time. At age 19, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, California, where she lived in her aunt's home, in Bel Air, and pursued acting while working as a waitress to support herself. At 21, Handler decided to pursue stand-up comedy after telling her story about driving under the influence to a class of other offenders, who found it funny. Handler was a member of the all-female cast of Oxygen network's hidden camera reality television series "Girls Behaving Badly", which aired from 2002 to 2005. Other shows on which Handler has appeared include "Weekends