Plastic Makes Perfect?

The thought of having a voluptuous figure is probably a figure that every girl wants to have. With Barbie having blonde hair, blue eyes and a curvy body, many assumptions have been made because of the way she looks. These assumptions are easily portrayed in Mondo Barbie by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody, Forever Barbie by M.G Lord, “Legally Blonde” (2001), Barbie: Mermaidia (2006), “Barbie-Doll, Icon or Sexist Symbol”, and the Wikipedia article: Barbie. All in all, assumptions shouldn 't be made just because they’re really pretty.

In my opinion, I believe that kids should be playing with dolls that have normal features, or with action figures where the superheroes muscles/features should resemble to what an average person’s features should look like. Even though barbies help entertain girls and inspire them, I still believe that girls should be playing with dolls that have normal features. People aren’t really aware about the things kids actually thought about themselves when they play with barbie dolls or action figures. There are girls as young as five that are concerned about their body image. They believe that the way the barbie looks like is the same way they should look like when they get older. It isn’t just girls that think about this boys do to. Boys

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

However, that isn’t true, Barbie is playing a huge role in eating disorders in women. It’s estimated that 8 million people have eating disorders and that only 10 to 15% are men and the rest are women. Out of that percentage, 80% of the women are below twenty. Author of “The Barbie Effect” says, “Many admitting that they started worrying about their weight when they were between the age of four and six years old. That is around the age that a girl usually gets her first Barbie doll, and many of the girls who have or had an eating disorder admitted that Barbie played a huge role on their influences in behavior and looks.” (“The Barbie Effect”) Another example would be a victim of an eating disorder, Galia Slayen, and how she created a ‘Real Life’ Barbie doll to raise awareness. Slayen had created it out of chicken wire and some other things from the store to make her according to the statistics of what Barbie’s size would actually be like if she was real. Slayen was feeling pressured by her peers and with the obsession for perfection that she had had since a young age. After it all, Slayen said, “Despite her appearance, Barbie provides something that many advocacy efforts lack. She reminds of something we once loved, while showing us the absurdity of our obsession with perfection.”

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

In New York on March 9, 1959, Mattel introduced the Barbie doll to America. The thin, teenage fashion model that has a perfect slender nose, big eyes, a valumptuious bust, a narrow midsection, and curvy hips. It is estimated that over a billion Barbie dolls have been sold worldwide in over 150 countries. Barbie is one of the first toys to have a marketing strategy based extensively on television advertising, which has been widely copied by other toys. Barbie has also appeared in a series of animated films such as Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. Barbie’s petite figure, perfectly arched eyebrows, and plastic smile has become the desired American image that many teenage

For girls, everything changes after they start paying attention to make up and clothing. Every girl growing up especially their transition from being in Middle school to High school, change their lifestyle routine where as their mothers would use to lay out their clothes to them to them having to pick clothes out for school every morning. But when you reach that age, girls always have a place in their body they aren’t proud of or ashamed of. Magazines from big companies like, Seventeen, Girl’s Life, etc. that feature many young models and celebrities who are around their age with the perfect body shape and face which leads to lots of girls to know that they aren’t happy with their body. Article: Social Comparisons, Reflected Appraisals, and

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.

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.

Society should be involved up to a certain point, and should have more realistic figures to inspire the youth. Barbie, an unrealistically proportioned doll, should not be the inspiration for the youth, yet it has been a cultural icon since 1959 (Source E). Since 1959, society has been focusing on the woman's figure and overlooked the problem of depression, body loathing, and low self-esteem. Society puts too much pressure, both mental and

If people will speak up about how Barbie affects people, society will start to realize that having the skinniest waist or having no body fat is not what life is about. Many people are starting to take a stand. A man named Nickolay Lamm created a doll called The Lammily Doll. “That’s why graphic designer turned toymaker Nickolay Lamm created the lammily doll — what the Barbie would look like if she actually had the measurements of an average 19-year-old woman’s body” (Stampler). People started reacting in such a positive way. “I wanted to show that reality is cool,” Lamm says. “And a lot of toys make kids go into fantasy, but why don’t they show real life is cool” (Stampler). Women are effected by body image almost every day and it starts when they are young. The article Effects of the Media on Body Image says “from 1988 to 1993 the number of incidences of bulimia in women between the ages of 10 and 39 has more than tripled” (Kovar). Instead of bringing down women society needs to bring them

Imagine going on a hike and there was no sign telling you there is a cliff ahead, or some kind of dangerous animal. You probably would run right off that cliff, or get stuck in the hands of a dangerous bear, what could have prevented that? A big sign saying DANGER AHEAD! Let's talk about something that you may not know could lead to serious problems like, obesity and diabetes. It is everywhere you go pretty much, there when you enter and there when you leave. It is a can of soda. I strongly agree that warning labels should be put on soda. My three reasons include, soda contains an enormous amount of sugar, the sugar in soda is addictive, and the fact that big corporations don't want the labels to be put on their soda.

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

Also, because Barbie’s body proportions are so extreme, she would have to walk on her hands and knees. Her bust is so big and her feet are so small she would just topple forward trying to walk normally (Page, n.d.). Knowing this, why are children still given this doll, if it portrays such an unrealistic body type that young girls are going to learn to strive for?