The Beauty Of The Barbie Fashion Doll

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.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius. Beauty has had a specific image or ideal for the past 100 years from the help of pop culture and advertisements that women are constantly viewing daily. We can go through the different ideas of beauty through idolized women in the past who were often considered to be the ideal beautiful. With the help of makeup and the aid of different styled clothing, women were able to fit in to form into the ideal beauty.

In the past couple of decades, we have experienced exuberant advancements in every category imaginable, including toys. The well-known toy brand Mattel introduced a thin, blonde doll named Barbie in 1959. Since her debut to the market, Mattel has sold well over 1 billion Barbie dolls. But the dramatic changes made to Barbie since her creation are extremely evident. As much as the doll has changed with the times, the most noticeable changes seem to be over the course of the past few decades.

In her lyric “Barbie Doll”, Marge Piercy talks about society's desires from ladies, especially young ladies. Society expects that young ladies ought to be flawless, similar to a “Barbie Doll”. The sonnet is about a character who quarrels with herself over having an immaculate self-perception. This character battles and demonstrates that society just focuses on physical appearance and not on inward magnificence. Piercy additionally keeps up that individuals put more social desires on young ladies. In conclusion, she specifies that society never acknowledges young ladies who cannot be perfect ladies. As young ladies grow up, the general public needs them to look and carry on a particular way, however when

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. At least, that’s what is taught to believe at an early age. Elline Lipkin, however, holds fast to the understanding that as true as that saying may be, there are outside forces that are intent on readjusting our vision to “true beauty”: the kind that can be bought off the shelves. In her article, “Girls’ Bodies, Girls’ Selves: Body Image, Identity, and Sexuality”, Lipkin employs several different external resources to help demonstrate her belief that young girls’ (“Before they even abandon their teddy bears…“ (Para 2)) definition of their own appearance is polluted and distorted by the vastly massive world that is the American media. Besides pulling from other articles and fact sheets, she also effectively utilizes a clearly logical train of thought, an operative tone, and countless examples of emotional appeal.

The argument of The Beauty Myth is that as women have received more eminence, the standard of their personal appearance has also grown. Wolf’s position on the issue is that this type of social control is potentially just as restrictive as the traditional roles of women. The Beauty Myth discusses how society’s viewpoint of beauty is detrimental to women because it causes many emotional and psychological problems to women who strive to become “perfect”. This book is important due to the fact it raises awareness to the issues that many young women are currently facing.

In society today, the world view of women has changed drastically. From plump, voluptuous figures of the Roman Empire, to today’s goddesses who wear eating disorders and insecurities as a badge of honor. Society and mass media have played a key role in changing the history of women today. Marge Piercy has beautifully depicted what it is like to be a young woman on the other side of society’s pressure on women for perfection. Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” presents the act of preparing future house wives, constraining the natural woman, and the ultimate sacrifice of the divine feminine to show how impossible societal standards of beauty are.

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.

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

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.

Beauty Isn't Everything The beautifully touching poem "Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy, made me recognize a predominate issue that has been around for ages. Which is, that in our society, there has and always will be the desire, especially for women, to appear perfect on the outside. There is simply too much pressure and concern for women to give in and try to look as perfect as a Barbie doll ( which is physically impossible by the way).

Women around the world are continuously striving to reach the beauty ideal set forth by media, literature, and music and although the beauty ideal differs from culture to culture the pressure to achieve this look is enforced just the same throughout each. In many cases, young women will go to any means to achieve this look, completely disregarding a healthy lifestyle. When looking at female American culture, an unachievable body image has become idolized and women are ridiculed if they do not have all the criteria. It would not be wrong to assume that nearly all women would like to feel beautiful, or attractive, however, today’s perception of beauty limits many woman from feeling so. Lilka Areton writes, “[We] have come to believe that as soon

Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" offers plenty of food for thought, no matter who you are, it makes you think about the ways the adult world can make or break the younger generations. In lots of ways, Piercy's poem explores those nagging anxieties that come along with puberty and self-image in a world that demands so much of everyone. We've all been through puberty, so we know how tough it can be when kids our own age poke fun at us because of the superficial expectations that the adult world has imposed upon us. Eventually, the "girl” in Piercy's poem is "worn out like a fan belt" because of all of the pressure and humiliation.

Every country has their own definition of what beauty is, but they all share the same unrealistic expectations that women and more recently men, in every society fight to obtain. Beauty is cultural, it is learned, and in modern day it is over glorified and dangerous. Being beautiful has become an epidemic in western cultures, causing low self-esteem, low self worth, and high eating disorder rates. Although this is a pressing topic it is nowhere near a new topic, society defines a person by their gender from the moment they are born and idealistic body types have been around since the 19th century, paving the way for new, extreme, and unrealistic expectations every decade. Focusing mainly on the 21st century and how third wave feminism has made

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.