The New Body Types Are Petite, Tall And Curvy

It gives the idea you have to be thin to be beautiful. Although, the thinness often resembles being unhealthy. The ultrathin image that Barbie contributes to these young minds is a negative body image and unhealthy eating patterns (Dittmar, Halliwell, & Ive, 2006). “In an exposure experiment three main questions were addressed: Do images of Barbie have an immediate negative impact on girls’ body image? Does exposure to images of a doll with more realistic body proportions result in the same detrimental effects?

Starting young, adolescent girls around the world are becoming self-conscious due to society’s influence upon what they should and shouldn’t look like. Many argue that The Barbie Doll plays a key influence in what young girls assume their bodies should look like. However, some will argue that the Barbie Doll toy is a good role model for young children, especially girls, because of her career choices, how she’s depicted in her movies, and her overall personality.

Young girls have been playing with Barbie dolls since the dolls inception at the American International Toy Fair in New York. Recently, researchers have been skeptical on whether the dolls have an effect on the self-image of girls who play with them. In order to determine if Barbies have an impact on young-girls self-concept, clinicians have carried out several studies where they monitor the interaction between the young girls and the famous figurine. From these experiments, scientists concluded that Barbies can have a bearing on a girls self-image, making the consumers who buy the doll more aware of the issue Barbie

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

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.

Toys like Barbie Dolls already send a complicated message to our kids about femininity, but when the Sports Illustrated magazine’s Swimsuit edition partnered with Barbie’s maker, Mattel, to feature Barbie in a bikini spread, the world got a blurred message of what the doll really stood

Vivian Diller explains,“As part of a general move toward overseeing potentially harmful media influences, the AMA suggests that ad agencies work with child and adolescent-focused health organizations to create guidelines for future advertising...Two years ago [2009], French Parliament member Valerie Boyer suggested that all published images that are digitally enhanced—including advertisements, press photos, political campaigns, art photography and product packaging—come with a warning label that reads, ‘Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person's physical appearance’” (Diller). Also, according to USA Today, “Mattel has been putting Barbie through a transformation for the past two years to bring the doll in line with realistic body standards and reflect the diversity of the kids playing with the dolls. With these steps” (Bowerman, Malcolm). With these steps, we can fight the body image standard and create a society that welcomes young girls to accept themselves as good

Barbie has become a pillar of the children’s toy market since her inception. Forbes reports, “Ninety percent of American girls ages three to ten own at least one Barbie, according to the doll’s maker, Mattel톖.” The doll has an impactful reach on kids today through both the dolls and other products that have been inspired by or created to accompany Barbie. This exposure, which has been proven to damage the self-esteem of women (American Psychological Association 1), impacts the development of kid’s views of themselves and other people. Comparing real women to these images causes these girls to have negative views of themselves as they grow older and judge other women harshly. It also causes boys to hold girls to an unreasonable standard of their appearances, which further damages the girl’s self worth when they don’t meet these standards (ScienceDaily 1). Consequently, the

After reading this article, I am happy to know that Mattel has made many changes to their Barbie dolls. The original Barbies were usually WAY out of proportion such as small waists, large breasts, and incredibly long legs. Not to mention that most Barbies were blonde haired and blue eyed. To top it all off, the Barbies were always seen wearing overly fancy clothes. This set the impossible goal for little children to look like this. Setting such an impossible is terrible for children because not being able to reach their goal can cause a child to berate themselves. Children should be able to be proud of their skin and eye color. They also should feel like they are not beautiful if they are not wearing a dress. No one who is a normal kid person

The results suggest that Barbie dolls are pervasive with girls’ experiences, and that young adolescents believe the dolls influence girls’ developing self-concept.” In fact, according to my experience over Spring break, visiting the toy section in “toys “R” Us” I observed toys such as Barbie’s. I took a closer look at their bodies and how they were dressed. The message I perceived through this observation was: as young girls get older, this is what they’re supposed to look like. They should maintain tight fitted clothing, a slim body with long shiny legs, and always wear makeup to create the illusion of having a flawless face, with “perfect” features. Dressing up the Barbie’s and brushing their hair can be very encouraging to playing with them. They also influence the player to become addicted and take on these stereotypical roles into their daily lives. Therefore, several toy companies not only stereotype body images, but also a woman’s lifestyle. Sharing my experience and visions of what children play with is: although Barbie is known for being the developmental toy, it is very vague and has nothing to do with

As American societies’ problems continue to pullulate burdens on her children consequently, American girls at the age of six starts to emphasize a relation to self-awareness towards their body weight. Specifically, forty to sixty percent of girls who have aged between six and twelve express a deep concern towards their current body image or their possible future weight gain. Consumers have criticized companies like Mattel over the years for their Barbie line of products above all; perpetuate female phantasm of perfection, which is physically unattainable. As a result of this, Mattel has given their Barbie dolls a makeover which includes four different body shapes, seven different skin colors, twenty-two eye colors, and twenty-four hairstyles in addition to this, Barbie also have optional accessories such as laptops and I pads and careers such as president/vice president and video game developer which have historically been male-dominated professions. As was previously stated, Mattel's evolution of the Barbie does show progress for the company in the coming years but on the condition that Mattel actually is fixing the issue of gender objectification that

Despite this celebration of acceptance, women are constantly shamed for their body type. The original Barbie perpetuates this shaming by showing a “beautiful” doll with long legs, a thin waist, and large breasts. We may tell our girls that all body types are beautiful, but most women actually have an underlying desire to look like that Barbie doll. Women still receive judgment for being seen as overweight or unfit when their figure doesn’t fulfill into the image that most girls grow up thinking is the perfect body. The article also described how Barbie created a sort of negative “taboo” around the process of body image and confidence. Creating this doll with realistic body proportions and multiple skin tones seems to be a step in the right direction to close this gap between our ideal culture of acceptance and the very real judgment and shame women face in

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

When Barbie was invented in 1959, Mattel, the company who created her, focused on the idealised small waist, long legs, fashionable clothing, and overall beauty to fit the current era’s style in order to sell the product. The dolls continued to change with time and fashion, but one thing has stayed the same: the unrealistic body shape. If the doll existed as a real person, Barbie would be about 5ft 9in tall, weigh 110 lbs, and would have a BMI of 16.24, which fits the weight criteria for anorexia (Mcqueeney). Young girls feel as though they need to look like the doll and do not realise how unrealistic it is. Some became angry at the dolls for being so unrealistically pretty, forcing them to believe that they themselves aren’t pretty enough until they look like the doll. Some girls took it to heart and have gone so far as to get plastic surgery to have the ideal body shape. A woman named Valeria Lukyanova has been renamed the human barbie because of her unrealistic looks. Jauregui quotes Valeria exclaiming "Everyone wants a slim figure. Everyone gets breasts done. Everyone fixes up their face if it's not ideal, you know? Everyone strives for the golden mean. It's global ...". The new dolls are a way for Barbie to redeem herself and to prevent children from feeling the need to change themselves in the