The Barbie Phenomenon Essay

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.

The object under consideration is the barbie doll. A barbie doll is a toy for children who have moved on from developmental toys to more sophisticated toys. Barbie doll fit an unrealistic size and shape figured doll that kids can play with in various ways. They can play dress up and do different things due to barbie having multiple careers paths she is able to take. It does promote a positive image to young girls because it promotes the idea that you can be anything you want to be, however, it still plants the idea of an unrealistic body image. Barbie is slender and tall and barbie dolls do not deviate from thing and this is problematic because it creates a certain kind of standard young girls begin to believe in.

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.

In an article in Interview Magazine, Emily Prager discuses her opinions of Mattel's toy doll Barbie being designed by Jack Ryan, husband to Zsa Zsa Gabor, and designer of military missiles. The concept that a doll for young girls was designed by such a person greatly shocked Prager." Suddenly a lot of things made sense to me" says Prager. The element that Ryan designed Barbie may explain some of the key aspects of the doll itself.

Prager worms her way into the reader’s emotions by using pathos. Barbie’s are apart of almost every average American girl’s life, with each one owning up to at least ten of the dolls by the time they reach eleven years of age (Mirror-Mirror). The reader’s emotions are unlocked by the author through the use of one simple word: Barbie. Just bringing up the subject of Barbie in an article will make a woman’s ears perk up and cause one to want to see what is being said about the precious childhood toy. Merely mentioning the doll brings many back to the simpler days of childhood and provides the reader with a sense of nostalgia. Prager puts the reader into the mindset of remembering what it was like to play with Barbie and her counterpart Ken, thus allowing the audience to also regain access to questions they may have had whilst playing with the dolls during their childhood as well. Sharing some of her own questions, Prager reveals that even as a ten year old she found Ken’s lack of genitals “ominous” in comparison to Barbie’s voluptuous figure (Prager 355). As aforementioned, the author mentions early on in the article that a man designed Barbie. The author correlates this as the reason why Barbie is portrayed so voluptuously whereas Ken is not. Prager begins to move beyond our emotions, and into the ethics surrounding the making of

     It is my opinion that Prager has failed in her attempts to persuade the reader that Barbie is a tool created from male fantasy or a poster child for modern feminism. If anything this essay has helped me to realize that Barbie is a combination of both worlds. She is both sexually appealing to men and someone that women can admire and even a toy that little girls can play with and hope to be like when they are older. I still remain adamantly devoted to my Barbie dolls, seeing her as neither temptress or sexually frustrated object.

The poem, "Barbie Doll," written by Marge Piercy tells the story of a young girl growing up through the adolescence stage characterized by appearances and barbarity. The author uses imagery and fluctuating tone to describe the struggles the girl is experiencing during her teenage years, and the affects that can happen. The title of this poem is a good description of how most societies expect others, especially girls to look. Constantly, people are mocked for their appearance and expected to represent a "barbie-doll"-like figure. Few are "blessed" with this description. The female gender is positioned into the stereotype that women should be thin and beautiful. With this girl, the effects were detrimental. The first stanza describes the

Picture yourself as the ‘perfect’ woman. Embodying every woman’s dream. You are undeniably gorgeous, weighing in at 100 pounds, standing 6 feet tall and holding nearly 150 careers (barbiemedia.com). Yes, this is the beloved, ever so ‘inspirational’ childhood toy, the perfectly perfect Barbie Doll. Barbie is America’s most beloved toy, considering young girls between the ages of three and eleven own at least 10 Barbie’s throughout their childhood (‘Life in Plastic’). As creator of the Barbie Doll once said, “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented that a woman has choices,” (Handler). However, Barbie has proved to serve the opposite effect and

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

Children’s child play has become a form of an unrealistic world. Although, it is considered for children to begin creating a creative imagination, the mind fascinates children into toys. Some child’s play toys are not ideal for young children, like the one and only “Barbie”. Barbie has become a worldwide toy product for children all over the world, from the North Pole to the South Pole. These dolls have emerged from one ethnicity to another. In Ann DuCille, “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Differences” the author talks about the race and gender differences; found in Barbie. She argues; “Is Barbie bad?” her response, was “Barbie is just a piece of plastic” (459). In contrast, this piece of plastic is not just a piece of plastic to young girls; it is much more than that. A piece of plastic that little girls all over the world wish they could be. Even though, it is only a piece of plastic to adults that Barbie significantly means nothing to them. Growing up, I owned a couple of Barbie dolls. The tall, long blond hair, blue-eyed doll was my best friend and my “role model”. I wanted to become exactly like Barbie. As a child, I thought only beautiful people who looked liked Barbie signified beauty. To my little to no knowledge, I soon came to find out no one really looks like Barbie, except people who want to become like Barbie. In my adolescent years, no one taught me Barbie was “unreal”; no one taught me it was just a figure in my imagination.

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.

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

“Barbie Doll” is written by Marge Piercy in 1973, which owes its title to the famous Barbie toy line. This doll was notable for its unrealistic appearances and standards, with its extremely thin limbs and a focus on outer beauty. Piercy, a poet notable for her feminist approaches in her literature, has written this poem to criticise the strict gender norms that are placed upon women. Especially during the 1970s, when women were still facing large amounts of discrimination and were thought of as housewives, this poem demonstrates the struggles a young girl must go through in a patriarchal society. These struggles have often been linked with women being objectified and having to meet standards they could never reach, and has only led to creating

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

Barbie, at the age of 41, is one of the longest living toys in America. Analyzing her early history can give a person a look into the societal trends and culture of the late 1950's and early 1960's. There is evidence of fashion innovations in Barbie's wardrobe. Also, one can see the perception of females by society, such as what they should look like, how they should act and dress, as well as what their future goals could be. The following essay follows Barbie's history from 1959 to 1963, covering her development, her appeal to children, and her existence as a cultural artifact of the time period.