Barbie Doll Research Paper

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Launched on March 1959, the Barbie doll is a toy that was first put on display in New York. It quickly garnered a lot of attention with the target audience of the creators, young girls. This doll was different than its previous dolls because it was a doll that was an ideal representation of a woman. Thus allowing young girls to use their imagination to create and act-out what this doll’s life is like and what their future would potentially be. To successfully understand this toy, we must think like C Wright Mills, a sociologist who asks to use our sociological imagination, the intersection of one’s biography and history. This artifact reflects and perpetuates the dominant ideology of how to perform your gender the “right” way in the early 1960s. I will argue this demonstrates West and Zimmerman’s concept of “doing gender” which is clarified with Judith Butler’s concept of socialization of gender.

Early in the 1960s, Mattel had made over $100 million in sales, due largely to Barbie (Woo). The company was based in Hawthorne, and annually made out new versions of Barbie as well as a huge wardrobe of outfits and accessories. Soon enough Barbie grew an exponentially amount of friends and family. Ken, named after the Handler's son, invented in 1961; Midge in 1963; Skipper in 1965; and African American doll Christie, Barbie's first ethnic friend, in 1969. The first black Barbie came much later, in 1981. In the 1970’s The National Organization for Women and other feminists targeted Barbie, arguing that the doll promoted unreachable expectations for young girls. If Barbie was 5 foot 6 instead of 11 1/ 2 inches tall, she would be the “perfect woman”. An academic expert once calculated that a woman's possibility of being shaped like Barbie was less than 1 in 100,000.

Unfortunately, it also is highly unattainable and instills unrealistic goals in girls’ minds. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, there are up to 24 million people suffering from eating disorders and 86% of those are under the age of 20 (anad.org). That being said, negative adverse effects are often the results of our world placing the upmost importance on body image. At Radboud University, Doeschka Anschutz and Rutger Engels conducted an experiment designed to test the effects of playing with thin dolls on body image and food intake in 6-10 year old girls. After splitting the girls into three different groups where they either played with a thin doll, an average sized doll or a slightly oversized doll, as seen in figure one, the results yielded that indeed there were significant differences between the girls’ body image and food intake which was completely dependent on which doll they played with (Anschutz, Engels 625). For example, a girl that played with the thinnest doll, the Barbie Doll, consumed the least amount of food following playtime when girls that played with either the average sized doll or even slightly larger doll consumed significantly more food. This experiment explicitly highlights the unknown dangers associated with playing with Barbie Dolls at a young age. Immediately the doll caused young girls to see themselves as ‘too big’ or

Mattel’s Barbie have always faced problems with parents of the young children who play with Barbie such as lowering children’s self-esteem. Mattel tried to address the problem by creating three new body types for Barbie. The question that is relevant; does the original Barbie harms children’s self-esteem and will the new Barbie address the issue? My goal in this paper is to show evidences of Mattel’s Barbies affecting children’s self-esteem by connecting three main reasoning of how Barbie lowers self-esteem and also the opposing view beside Mattel.

Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” describes a woman who has only been seen for the different qualities of her appearance and not her many great personality traits. This girl is constantly put down and asked to change for the purpose of being more like other girls, but this prospect of having nothing left of herself has brought her to a dark place. This poem uses imagery and figurative language to explain that society often forces young women to change different aspects of themselves in order to be accepted and fit into the perfect mold.

Through the history of human knowledge, women have always been put second to men. They are typically seen as either a symbol of purity and innocence or desirable and lustful. These two common types (along with many others ) are some of the stereotypes that have molded females for generations, to the point we naturally portray women in the media as one or the other. So the question really isn't why anymore, but how. How do we still have these stereotypes and always create women to be items of lust and innocence (or in other words,) this new generation of Barbies?

Since it is assumed that Barbie is meant for little girls, who just so happen to still be trying to figure out the world and how it works, these little girls look at their Barbie dolls and think that that is what a woman should look like. To a little girl, this plastic doll could be her best friend and her role model. The main issue with a little girl wanting to be like her Barbie doll is that Barbie’s physical

“Barbie Doll”, is a poem written by Marge Piercy in 1936, that clearly delivers strong feminist views about the pressures and standards that women are forced to live with. The poem is a depressing take, describing a young girl’s life beginning with her birth and ending with her ironic death. The poem progresses and tells how the pressures of being a woman affect the girl’s life and influence her actions. The poem shows problem in society is inequality between sexes and the answer is feminism it is equality for all.

It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that critics began “comparing Barbie to a Playboy Bunny and calling her a corrupter of youth” (”Bad Girl” 3). One woman commented, “She’s an absurd representation of what a woman should be” (“Bad Girl” 3)-–and that’s exactly what many others thought she was, too. With such impossible real-life measurements of 5’9” tall, 36”-18”-33” bust, waist, and hip (Benstock and Ferriss 35), it’s easy to see why mothers across the country banned the doll from their homes and refused to let their impressionable young daughters be influenced by a piece of painted plastic (Bestock and Ferriss 35). Since dolls have often been responsible for teaching children what society deems important or beautiful, many concerned parents wondered why Mattel did not design a doll that taught more valuable lessons than dressing pretty and being dangerously skinny (Edut 19)? Who said a runway model was best suited for teaching a child what is beautiful anyway? “According to a Mattel spokesperson, a Kate Moss figure is better suited for today’s fashions” (Edut 19), and that is one reason why Barbie must be so disproportional. Actually, another reason for Barbie’s anorexic figure can be traced back long before Kate Moss and the fashion runway. Barbie was

The poem “Barbie Doll” written by Marge Piercy contains several denotations and connotations throughout the work. Denotation, signifying the literal meaning or dictionary definition, whereas connotation signifies the various meanings related to the word. In the poem, the words “cosmetics” (20) and “happy ending” (25) stood out. The poet writes, “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on, / a turned-up putty nose, /.” (lines 19-21) Cosmetics as presented in Webster’s Dictionary is “relating to or making for beauty especially of the complexion.” The reader could also interpret that word as maybe not just to look better but to also mask the internal struggle that the individual is dealing with. Using make-up, women more-so like to paint a facade to feel and look a certain way to attract others, as the woman in the poem does. Going to the next phrase, “happy ending”, denotes that it will end on a good note for the protagonist. “To every woman a happy ending. (line 25)” Happy ending could also be characterized, especially in this poem as the opposite. The woman throughout the poem is struggling to appeal like a “Barbie Doll” on the exterior and wants to fulfill society’s own preference for beautiful causing the female to resort to physical harm. “She was advised to pay coy, / exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle.” (lines 12-14) As emphasized she was someone that she is not for

Modern day stigmas and norms force men and women to put forth a lot of attention on their bodies. These societal demands create insecurities, and lead to various troubles in people such as eating disorders, addictions, or even suicide. Many advertisements create rude images towards women, insulting their intelligence and self-esteem. In Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” (1971), a girl described is healthy and smart, but becomes engulfed in her self-image when a classmate points out “You have a great big nose and fat legs” (6). It is important that we become aware of this negative culture and how it affects men, women, and children. A few intellectuals have written pieces on this subject to bring awareness to the public. Jeam Kilbourne is all about connecting male and female roles in advertisements to social problems. Immergut further analyzes how our culture cultivates a world in which men must be more high-maintenance towards their bodies in order to adhere to social norms. Psychologists Sara Cahill and Alexander J. Mussap conducted a study to see people’s emotional states change after exposure to ideal body images and same-sex models and report their findings. Linda Smolak tells of children’s premature concerns about their own bodies based on her own research. These writers display the toxic culture we live in today, and how hurtful it is to society.

When I was younger, I was fascinated with and by many things. Barbie shoes was a major thing I loved to play with. I didn't really care too much for the Barbie itself, just the shoes. Another thing was Polly Pockets, my sister and I used to sit on the floor and make up names for and stories for them. Those are just things that I liked, my all time favorite toy was my Dora doll.

Starting young, adolescent girls around the world are becoming self-conscious due to society’s influence upon what they should and shouldn’t look like. Many argue that The Barbie Doll plays a key influence in what young girls assume their bodies should look like. However, some will argue that the Barbie Doll toy is a good role model for young children, especially girls, because of her career choices, how she’s depicted in her movies, and her overall personality.

Have you ever heard of Hot Wheels? Or Monster High? Or Fisher Price? These are all creations of Mattel Inclusive. Mattel Inclusive is a company that creates toys for children.