Why Is Barbie Fatal Or Flawless

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.

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.

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.

In fact, “...Barbie is so exceptionally thin that her weight and her body proportions are not only unattainable but also unhealthy”( Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). This fact creates potentially dangerous situation for young girl to be influenced to emulate an unattainable body type. One particular research study conducted by Helga Dittmar, Emma Halliwell, and Suzanne Ive in 2006, found out that young girls, ages 5 to 8-years-old, who were exposed to Barbie, experienced self-esteem and body issues. “This is the first study in which an experimental exposure paradigm has been used with young children, thus offering a methodologically rigorous examination of Barbies as a cause of girls’ feeling of unhappiness with their bodies and their desire to be thinner” (Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). When 162 U.K girls, ages 5 to 8, were given picture books with either no pictures of bodies whatsoever, images of Barbies, or images of Emme (a doll with realistic body proportion), they young girls who looked at the books were more unhappy with their body image than those girls who read Emme or non body books (Diep par.4-5). Their study did not find these same finding in the oldest girl, however the evidence that Barbie is not influencing this younger population of girls, still points to the need for some type of change as this early pattern of looking up to an unrealistic body image

Unfortunately, it also is highly unattainable and instills unrealistic goals in girls’ minds. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, there are up to 24 million people suffering from eating disorders and 86% of those are under the age of 20 (anad.org). That being said, negative adverse effects are often the results of our world placing the upmost importance on body image. At Radboud University, Doeschka Anschutz and Rutger Engels conducted an experiment designed to test the effects of playing with thin dolls on body image and food intake in 6-10 year old girls. After splitting the girls into three different groups where they either played with a thin doll, an average sized doll or a slightly oversized doll, as seen in figure one, the results yielded that indeed there were significant differences between the girls’ body image and food intake which was completely dependent on which doll they played with (Anschutz, Engels 625). For example, a girl that played with the thinnest doll, the Barbie Doll, consumed the least amount of food following playtime when girls that played with either the average sized doll or even slightly larger doll consumed significantly more food. This experiment explicitly highlights the unknown dangers associated with playing with Barbie Dolls at a young age. Immediately the doll caused young girls to see themselves as ‘too big’ or

A website stated that “58% of girls that are currently attending college stated that they are not satisfied with the size of their body” (qtd. in DoSomething). Throughout the world, little girls are being negatively affected by the assumptions set forth by companies and society that being fat is bad for oneself. The creation of Barbies have set unrealistic and unobtainable goals for little girls, which won’t allow them to reach the good life because they will never reach this “Barbie” body. The central argument being addressed is analyzing how a girl’s image of herself affects her ability to reach the good life. Even though society and companies have engraved into us that the shape and size of our bodies is so important, Prager and Whittal show us that to achieve the good life one must focus on their self image rather than letting society influence them.

Barbie is more than just a doll for young girls, it became a role model for them. Barbie was a friend, a fashion archetype, and a stylist who transformed young girl lives. Many young girls were impacted with Barbie’s in a materialistic way. For instance, Barbie’s clothing style and accessories became an obsession for young girls to be just like them. Young girls wouldn’t even play with other toys and only focused on their beautiful Barbie, who became their best friend. It was like these young girls were infatuated with their Barbie Dolls. As time went on, Barbie started to influence young girls and the media to believe that outer beauty matters, and girls were taught that they needed to be thin. After looking at these ads in more detail I

Everyday we see young girls look to idols such as people and even play toys. Such thoughts make young girls feel they are not good enough and to strive to look like a doll a very important topic is slightly broken down in an article written by Cynthia Tucker called Barbie Madness. While she touches on the topic of how kids love their toys such as Barbie dolls, she discusses how obsessed they become in looking like them. However, even though she points out that children look up to Barbies, she turns it back around on the parents, stating that they play a much bigger role in their lives than any toy would. Breaking down the article the writer really shows how children are influenced by their environment, their parents, and how its important to encourage them to be themselves.

In today’s society everyone has imagined to have that perfect body. Many experts have suggested that Barbie is a root cause for many problems with women

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

They found that exposure to Barbie dolls led to poor body esteem and a strong desire to be thinner. As the authors report this was because the Barbie doll signified what the cultural ideal was. They also found that when exposed to the more realistic body image looking Emme dolls, that the eight year old girls' body dissatisfaction also increased. This suggests that the ideal body types might be already in place according to the study's authors and that the negative feelings may be arising from the fear of never reaching that body ideal. These findings probably extend to other toys and other forms of media as children nowadays have access to the internet and all the impossible body sizes

Barbie has gone through tremendous criticms mostly around concerns that kids think Barbie a a rolemodel , so they copy her. The iggest problem id that Barbies body encourages an unreliable idea of body image, which wil enciurage girls to become anorexic.

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