Barbie Dolls Impact On Young Girls

One study took a group of 6th grade girls and had them play with Barbie’s, then later asked them what their views of Barbie were:

Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the Barbie Doll, and the positive and negative impacts she has on society. Central Purpose: I will discuss how Barbie has effected women and the pedestal she has set upon us career wise since our youth. Introduction Quote; Once a wise female said “The first 10 years of a girls life is spent playing with Barbie, and the next 10 years are spent trying to look like one”

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.

Do you ever wonder why teenage girls have low self-confidence and are never satisfied with what they have? As young children, girls are indirectly taught what people think perfection looks like. Barbie portrays that exact image and life. Beginning at a young age girls are influenced by this doll, what they should look like, and what their life should be like. Young girls strive to achieve Barbie’s look which is life threatening to obtain.

The Barbie doll has been a popular play toy for young girls since the late 1950s. Although the Barbie doll seem like an innocent toy, it has had an effect on little girls’ body images. Many studies have shown an association between young girls playing with Barbies and eating disorders. Even grown women want to resemble Barbie so badly that they start to do surgery on their bodies which can be very dangerous. This has led to the term, Barbie Syndrome, which refers to “the drive, often of adolescent girls, to attain impossible standards of beauty, projected by toys—e.g., Mattel’s Barbie Doll—and the media, resulting in failure and frustration, issues related to body

As I was on the hunt for the perfect gift for an 8 year old’s birthday, I discovered the doll market is quite different than my coming of age. Undoubtedly, Barbie is still problematic, but now she has competitors, including Bratz, and Monster High dolls, who are noticeably thinner than barbie and dressed up to look like grown women getting ready for a night of clubbing than a game of tennis. As I pick up the first doll box, I find a doll chained up in a slither of clothing with a blank expression on her face, a prominent thigh gap, with the tagline “GREAT for girls ages 5 and up!” By all means, I never imagined in my life that I would miss Barbie. For that reason, I begin to sit myself down in the toy aisle to start googling everything I could about these dolls on my

What was that one doll every little girl just had to have growing up? What doll made little girls obsess with perfection? What doll set the unrealistic standards for girls starting at ages three or four? Barbie is a children’s toy that was first introduced to the market in 1959. Barbie was the perfect role model for all girls. She was perfectly skinny, had a perfect boyfriend and family, perfect hair, perfect house, perfect everything, but her existence is completely ironic. Although Mattel, creator of Barbie, attempts to make Barbie absolute perfection, all her imperfect buyers are wondering why they cannot look like the beautiful doll. She is responsible for the diminishing young girls’ self-confidence. Lisa Belkin believes girls in today’s society cannot comprehend what true beauty is because they were so entranced with the idea of Barbie in her online article “Banning Barbie.” Barbie should be pulled off the shelves immediately. Barbie’s looks, actions, and lust for materialistic objects are the blame for the degeneration of assurance in young girls and women.

As such, most girls’ childhood stories are filled with their experiences with Barbie such as making Barbie their number one companion by always having her wherever they go, cutting off her long blonde hair, and feeling devastated if a sibling or a playmate ripped Barbie’s head off. Moreover, whether Americans are willing to accept it or not, the Barbie has significantly transformed American culture in so many diverse and subtle ways to comprehend fully. Although some have sweet nostalgic memories about Barbie, most girls’ lives have been negatively affected by beholding Barbie as a major female icon during their childhood (Battistoni 26). Despite being a mere plastic toy, to the young girls, the Barbie life is all they ever want and strive to be in life; hence, most use Barbie as the guiding standard against which they have to measure and assess their lives on all spheres. Nonetheless, since attaining the Barbie blonde status in real life is an elusive endeavor, most girls have subjected themselves to immense pain leading to poor mental health and low self-image. This is because they are convicted

“I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world” was a hit song in the early 90’s. Many girls singing the lyrical tune were demonstrating their love for the doll and the qualities that stood behind the logo: Free spirited fun, a perfect plastic body, and an array of different activities you could do with a Barbie. In the article “Plastic, Fantastic Barbie” author Amy Goldman sheds some light on the controversy society has placed around the doll. Goldman explains the changing view on how parents see a link between Barbies and children’s negative self-esteem due to their “perfectly proportioned” bodies and unreasonable expectations regarding the doll’s “wide-eyed” princess look. Guardians are fearing their children will aspire to become a superficial person only caring about their

Young Girls look up to many people as role models, one role model that plays an immense part in their lives is Barbie. Barbie is defined as being pretty, beautiful, and even perfect. But is she really that wonderful as she seems? Her body shape is completely inaccurate representation of the female body and people get easily influenced by these unrealistic standards. If no one steps up to help young girls realize that Barbie is not perfect then they will have dissatisfaction with themselves forever. Body dissatisfaction is becoming more and more popular and one reason is that Barbie presents an unrealistic body image that affects young girls and their idea of a perfect life.

Look in the mirror. Think of what it would be like to be twenty to thirty pounds thinner. Think of all the negative comments people have to say. Suck in, stand tall, back up, move forward, cry. This is the routine many women in the United States go through daily.

Barbie has become a pillar of the children’s toy market since her inception. Forbes reports, “Ninety percent of American girls ages three to ten own at least one Barbie, according to the doll’s maker, Mattel톖.” The doll has an impactful reach on kids today through both the dolls and other products that have been inspired by or created to accompany Barbie. This exposure, which has been proven to damage the self-esteem of women (American Psychological Association 1), impacts the development of kid’s views of themselves and other people. Comparing real women to these images causes these girls to have negative views of themselves as they grow older and judge other women harshly. It also causes boys to hold girls to an unreasonable standard of their appearances, which further damages the girl’s self worth when they don’t meet these standards (ScienceDaily 1). Consequently, the

There have been several articles calling attention to the images children are exposed in cartoons, or Disney productions, but what about the toys they play with? In the death grip of my two year old sister, like many other young girls, lies a fairy princess Barbie doll. Barbie has been the toy of choice for girls everywhere since her debut fifty years ago, representing the ideal girl with a perfect life to match that can not be achieved. Barbie and other dolls alike negatively affect young girls causing body image issues and low self-esteem.

they do not meet the image of the doll. It is known that a Barbie doll

Future examination may wish to evaluate whether these impacts are more grounded when dolls are utilized as introduction material, contrasted and pictures. Third, in spite of the fact that it is profoundly plausible that for all intents and purposes every one of the young ladies in the present research own Barbie dolls, it is enlightening to know what number of they possess and how drawn in they are with them. Such information would not just evaluate conceivable individual contrasts in the criticalness of Barbie as an optimistic good example additionally pinpoint when, formatively, she no more satisfies this capacity. Besides, a variable that may direct young ladies' reactions to perfect socio-cultural models, and that ought to be analyzed in future examination, is their level of body disappointment before presentation in light of the fact that it is likely that young ladies with high body disappointment would be more defenseless against negative introduction impacts than young ladies with low body disappointment. Be that as it may, it ought to be noticed that this confinement of the present concentrate presumably decreased the probability of discovering noteworthy introduction impacts, and the way that the negative effect of Barbie dolls was by the by illustrated—crosswise over young ladies whose