Barbie World

Western society has a relatively strict idea about how a woman should look, think, and act. It lauds thinness and is disgusted by fatness. This kind of notion causes women to seriously question themselves. Ideal bodies and faces are all over the media and are a very large

Dolls before Barbie were designed incorporating the ideals of a mans era and the conformity of a women's role in the world. Barbie may have set the stage for the 1960's generation by exposing the youth to verity and free choice. Yet there is another matter in which Barbie may flawed.

Just from looking at the title of the poem, we can see that the author believes society's expectations of women are unrealistic. A barbie doll is supposed to be a figure of a “perfect” woman that is tall, skinny, and flawless. This look is obviously unachievable for a human being to accomplish. Barbie dolls are also only given to young girls. They are shown at a young age what they are supposed to look like and how they are supposed to act. This is where girls are first introduced to their female roles in society. A doll is fake and made of plastic, incapable of being intelligent and having a mind of its own. These are the issues that Piercy addresses throughout her poem “Barbie Doll.”

However, we live in a society where women are being exposed by the media. Typical stereotypes suggest that woman are suppose to be beautiful, skinny, and have flawless bodies. Carl’s

Thesis: The media puts pressure on women of all ages to conform to their standards of what looks best, and this pressure results in women having a negative body image.

The media has been perceived to be in fault for portraying thin women as perfect models ideals as such ,some will have different opinions stating that these images are false and un realistic expectations for young women by young women looking to deeply into their outer appearance it will manipulate them thinking they will not beautiful unless they change their appearance to look like these thin models doing so this can cause eating disorders and can also have effect on their mind which can lead to body dysmorphia. Referring to Eva Wiseman March 2016 in the Guardian website ,It is estimated that approx. up to one in 50 people suffering from body dysmorphia , it has also been said that at least 20 % of people who suffer from this condition receive cosmetic surgery because of it, Eva Wiseman et

Barbie dolls are trying to improve their race representation by creating more diverse Barbies so that little girls of different ethnicities don’t feel left out. According to Kristina Milnor, “between 1993 and 1997 the American toy company Mattel produced the “Great Eras Collection,” a series of Barbie dolls dressed to represent historical moments ranging from Eighteenth-Dynasty pharaonic Egypt through 1920s America” (215). Mattel released ten different Barbies in the Great Eras Collection in hopes of having a more diverse line, along with Mattel’s trademark Barbie. The ten different Barbies come from different historical periods that have different skin colors and have different clothing to represent racial diversity. In hopes of trying to boost little girls of color self-esteem, Mattel tried to make the line as diverse as possible, but there is a problem. According to Milnor, “here are ten dolls in all, beginning (since they appeared out of chronological order) with Gibson Girl Barbie, proceeding to Flapper Barbie, Egyptian Queen Barbie, Southern Belle Barbie, Medieval Lady Barbie, Elizabethan Queen Barbie, Grecian Goddess Barbie, Victorian Lady Barbie, French Lady Barbie, and finally Chinese Empress Barbie,” which are all considered high class status (215). This is a problem because it does not reflect all little girls. There is race representation in this line but having all the dolls portrayed as high social class does not represent most of the little girls playing with

Barbie was first introduced to U.S. toy markets in 1959 by Ruth Handler, a mother who noticed that her daughter would tend to reimagine her infant dolls as having adult characteristics (Abramson 2009). Handler, realizing there was a gap in the market for dolls that represented an older demographic, created the initial design of the American toy sensation. Barbie was originally based off a German adult doll called Bild Lilli, which was a doll that was based off a comic strip character that would utilize her sexuality to get what she wanted. Handler’s initial design was intended to be mutable, in the sense that

Perfectly perky and popular, slim waisted and long legged, silky plastic hair and a flashy smile frozen in time, Barbie has been lining toy store shelves and influencing young girls’ dreams since 1959. The teenage fashion model has managed to secure close to 150 careers, represent 40 different nations and cultures, and has collaborated with more than 75 different fashion designers, all amounting to an impressive resume theoretically thicker than a phone book. A cultural icon for the American wasteland of plastic and hollow female beauty standards, labor ideals, and domesticity, she remains the world’s most popular toy doll.

As you’re walking down a street you may notice a young group of girls or women walking and they see a huge billboard of a beautiful model. They might stop and stare at her and then discuss about her perfect her body is. Not knowing in the next five minutes they’ll be comparing their bodies to the model and feeling bad about themselves wishing that they had her body. Not to mention, that the photo may be photoshopped to make it seem as her body is perfect, or she had plastic surgery to fit the idea of having the perfect body. The fact that the media thinks they’re encouraging young girls and women to embrace their beauty, they’re influencing them that they have to have a perfect body in order to get attention. The media has put a lot of pressure on young girls and women to look perfect and second guess their bodies, when plastic surgery is never the answer to build their self-esteem up.

Self-esteem plays a big part of body image. People have to feel good about themselves and be comfortable in their own skin to be happy. In today's world, it feels almost impossible to be happy, this generation is all about the media which makes having self-esteem 10x harder. Millions of pictures are posted of expectations of how women should look. In an article written by Pavica Sheldon, she states that ”The average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds, whereas the average female model portrayed in the media is 5’11 and 120 pounds”. Women are placed into a box telling them they have to look a certain way and if they don't they're simply not good enough. Besides being put into a category women numerously get called nasty names like slut or whore if they show too much. Piggy and fatty if they're overweight. Or “stick” if she's too skinny. Nothing is ever good enough is what it feels like. For example, Kylie Jenner, if you grew up watching “Keeping up with the Kardashians” you know how she looked before all the plastic surgery she got done, she now looks completely different. An account wrote, “What are they giving Kylie?” and someone quoted the tweet and said plastic. So even if women try to fix their imperfections they still get shamed down for it by calling them fake.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

Images produced by the media will make people do almost anything to fit American standards of the perfect body. Plastic surgery offers a quick fix to help achieve this goal but no matter how much surgery nothing is perfect. Images produced by media, quick fixes and the outcome of the fixes are problems that women of all ages deal with.

In addition to a different body, Bud Westmore, the "make-up czar" at Universal Pictures, gave Lilli a makeover (Lord 32). He discarded her "bee-stung lips, heavy eyelashes, and widow's peek eyebrows" (Lord 32). Following these improvements, Ryan modified the doll's joints.

Society creates a standard of beauty for women that often changes along with society due to a new perspective on what it means to be beautiful in our culture. These standards for beauty create what our society believes makes a woman desirable, attractive, perfect, and overall beautiful.  Which then enforces unhealthy and unrealistic beauty ideals that negatively affect women's self-image and their body image because society has attributed beauty to self worth. The result is with the ever changing standards of beauty means women use various ways to alter their bodies and appearance by clothing, makeup, hair, dieting, exercising, and even taking extreme measures to perfect their looks through surgery.