Essay on Exploring Body Image Issues via the Barbie Doll

Millions of women have gone along with this fantasy and have been entranced by the unrealistic standards of appearance and false qualities of life. Sadly, more and more women have accepted these standards as their own and have even resorted to changing who they are to become what they believe to be real. This may be a major contributing factor to the rise of women seeking breast implants and or plastic surgery. Yet there could be a further explanation and meaning behind Barbie.

Emily Prager, in Our Barbies, Ourselves, stated that Barbies have influenced little girls around the world on what the perfect body looks like, when in reality there is no “perfect” body. Our Barbies, Ourselves states “here are millions of women who are

In 1959 the Barbie doll was first introduced by the company Mattel. Barbie was originally meant to be the perfect woman. Standing at what would be 5’9” and weighing in at 110 pounds. As stated before these types of measurements would have made barbie anorexic. As well as that, a book was given out in the ‘Slumber Party Barbie’ set that gave a very vague tip on how to stay skinny. “Don’t eat”. Any young woman that followed Barbie’s tip were sure to result to anorexia. In fact, 8 million people in the United States have this eating disorder, and only 10-15% of them are male. Which leaves the 85- 90% of them to be female. 80% of the female’s are under 20 years old. “Many of the women admitted to worrying about their weight around four to six years old” Said the author, Saren (Barbie Effect).

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.

A novel on the causes of eating disorders says, “Typically, media images often portray unrealistic images of both males and females. Those individuals portrayed often represent a statistical minority or are engaged in extraordinary (and potentially harmful) behaviors to achieve this ideal body type” (Selby). Pictures of models and celebrities observed in the media show practically unachievable physiques, but the world seems to define beauty and health based off their thin statures. On the contrary, these physiques are actually rather unhealthy. The UK National Centre For Eating Disorders says, “The ideal body size epitomized by ‘Gerri Halliwell’ ‘Posh Spice’ or ‘Ally Mcbeal’ is unrealistically thin, their body mass index (BMI) is on the borders of what a clinician would regard as anorexic” (Jade). When the people and bodies teens are idealizing are at the level of anorexia, it is no doubt that they will resort to extreme methods to achieve what is an extremely thin, abnormal size. Studies show that exposure to these body standards may lead to eating disorders. Pediatrics and Child Health says, “Body image was significantly more negative after viewing thin media images than after viewing images of either average size models, plus size models, or inanimate objects. This effect was found to be stronger in woman younger than 19 years of age” (Morris). After

Since the late 1950s, Barbie has come to represent the idealized American woman. She is tall, slender, and blonde. For most, this body type is unattainable and unrealistic. Woman come in all shapes, sizes, and hair colors. Who decided that Barbie was going to be the perfect woman? Obviously, not the vast majority of women that do not fit the Barbie-standard. This 1950s standard should not be what little girls think they should look like in 2016. Little girls need a broader example of achievable beauty.

By age six, girls start to think about their weight and become self-conscious. Forty to sixty percent of girls, ages six to twelve, are concerned about being too fat. This idea, caused by society is carried throughout their life, causing self-esteem issues, which can lead to depression. Sixty nine percent of girls who read magazines said that the pictures influenced their idea of an “ideal body”. Forty seven percent said the pictures made them want to lose weight. This idea, that you have to be skinny to the point of starvation, in order to be beautiful, is affecting girls. In fact, only five percent of American women naturally have the body type that is portrayed on advertisements. The average American women according to the NEDA is five foot four weighing 165 pounds, whereas the average Miss America winner is five foot seven weighing 121

Barbie dolls give a false impression of beauty to young girls and even older women. Since 1959 (when Barbie was created) young girls are subject to the idea of tall, thin, and properly proportioned to be beautiful. The problem is Barbie’s proportions are physically unobtainable. According to Huffington Post, “if Barbie was an actual women she would be 5’9” tall, have a 39” bust, an 18” waist, 33" hips and a size 3 shoe…she likely would not menstruate... she 'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions” (Gregoire 1). A real woman needs to be twenty-four inches taller, take 6 inches off her waste, and add 5 inches to her chest (Gregoire 1). Below is what

As many feminists would like to argue, Barbie is taking a toll on young women’s confidence by bringing up unreasonable and unachievable expectations regarding looks, encouraging infinite consumerism, excluding any bodies out of the gender binary and a terror for aging. In the article “Action Figures and Men” there has been a same approach about Barbie’s unattainable body and lifestyle, alongside with G.I. Joe and wolverine who have unrealistic body measurements and affect young boys’ self-esteem same way as Barbie does to girls. As we read in The Anthropometry of Barbie, she is a doll made to portray the ‘good girl’ image; she is sexy, smart, rich, and extremely ambitious. Barbie teaches girls more than just to be pretty and an ‘eye candy’, as

Ever since Barbie made its first debut in 1959, these little 3-D molded statuettes have been an icon for little girls for many generations. People look at Barbie dolls and portray them as beautiful, perfect and has no flaws. A lot of times you hear people call other people Barbie dolls when they think someone is pretty or flawless. In the poem “Barbie Doll” the author Marge Piercy suggests that an American Barbie Doll typically presents herself as being the "perfect" woman and this leads to people being jeered at for their appearance and expected to have a Barbie-doll-like figure. The doll is symbolic of the ways that women themselves have been made to think that's what they should look like and what they strive for.

I vividly remember at my 6th birthday party blowing out the candles on my Barbie doll cake. Neither my parents nor I knew that would be the start to my obsession with Barbie, a fashion doll manufactured by Mattel, an American multinational toy company. For every holiday and birthday, I received anything associated with Barbie. Over the years, I accumulated an absurd amount of Barbie and Ken dolls, along with clothes and accessories. I even had a Barbie bike and a helmet. My fascination with Barbie dolls is that it allowed me to experiment and imaginatively play out my future as a teenager or adult with my platinum blond Barbie doll. I viewed Barbie as the perfect dream-girl image, she had the perfect hair, skin, toned legs, big breasts and an hourglass torso. Unfortunately, for many years this was how I perceived what an ideal woman was supposed to look like.

For 57 years, Barbie dolls have been the most iconic toys in the market, until society started to blame the dolls for women’s lack of self-esteem. Since society pressures women as young as 12 years old to be physically perfect through social media and parental pressure, they view themselves as physically inferior compared to Barbie’s flawless attributions. As a model for the average idealistic woman in society, Barbie is brought to blame for giving women unrealistic standards of beauty which they feel are a necessity for them to meet. But are Barbies the real issue for depression and unhealthy weight loss habits?” Barbie dolls should not be blamed for women’s lack of self-esteem and struggle with self-image; instead, society

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

This is happening because we give our children dolls that are thin, tall, blonde, and very unrealistic; we give our children Barbies. We are giving our children figures as role models, but those models are impossible to attain. Barbie lives a in a perfect happy world, where she has everything she wants and can be whatever she wants to be. That is what we all want, that is why barbies are enticing toys. But, the problem is that young girls can start to associate the unattainable Barbie figure with happiness. The Barbie body image is planted into their minds. When they can not fulfill the Barbie body image, it makes them feel less confident. Sometimes eating disorders develop because of this. It is

In their experiment “a total of 162 girls, from ages 5 to age 8, were exposed to images of either Barbie Dolls, Emme dolls (U.S. size 16), or no dolls (baseline control) and then completed assessments of body image." The professors discovered that those exposed to Barbie doll images produced “lower self-esteem and a greater desire for a thinner body shape than in the other exposed conditions.” Although, the oldest girls did not have an immediate negative impact from the Barbie doll images. The study concluded that “these findings imply that, even if dolls cease to function as aspirational role models for older girls, early exposure to dolls epitomizing an unrealistically thin body ideal may damage girls’ body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling."(Dittmar, Suzanne Ive, and Emma Halliwell. "Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin?