The Negative Influence Of Barbie's Image On Little Girls

During the time of development and release of Barbie, the feminist movement was in full swing. The concept that Barbie may have been manufactured as a weapon against these feminist groups is plausible as the image of Barbie exploits the female body and challenges the values held by active feminists. Though, from a slightly different perspective, one could argue that Barbie with her freedoms and luxuries supports the ideals of women's equality and rights. Barbie may have been the transition piece of the decade, setting a new path for women and young girls.

Mattel’s Barbie have always faced problems with parents of the young children who play with Barbie such as lowering children’s self-esteem. Mattel tried to address the problem by creating three new body types for Barbie. The question that is relevant; does the original Barbie harms children’s self-esteem and will the new Barbie address the issue? My goal in this paper is to show evidences of Mattel’s Barbies affecting children’s self-esteem by connecting three main reasoning of how Barbie lowers self-esteem and also the opposing view beside Mattel.

Today’s society raises young women to conform to archaic practices with total disregard towards a child self-progression. In Barbie Doll poem by Marge Piercy it is portrayed a young girl who was attacked by society because of having unruly features on her appearance and body. To make clear, Piercy uses the title “Barbie Doll” in her poem to symbolize the cultural American traditions of making young girls live in a fairy tale world; where everything they see or do is perfect. The girl in this poem played with Barbie toys since she was little, but when she reached her puberty people started to criticize her of having imperfections on her face and body; which made her commit a really wrong decision for herself. In today’s society there are a large number of women having plastic surgery, because they do not feel comfortable or confident with their own appearances. Women are not just beauty queens and home makers; they should retreat from female stereotypes at a young age so they do not confront society pressure.

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.

they do not meet the image of the doll. It is known that a Barbie doll

Barbies have changed a lot over the years. Not just Barbies, but kids toys and dolls have made drastic improvements and advancements. The first toy can be traced back to ancient Greece in 10th century B.C. Dolls can be traced back even further. Since then, these plastic toys, specifically Barbies, have affected the body images of little girls. If Barbie was life size, she would be 5’9” and weigh only 110 pounds. Her body’s fat percentage would be so low that she wouldn’t be able to walk or even live a healthy life. Barbies are a positive and negative influence on young girls. She shows them that they can do whatever job they want, but on the other hand, she represents what our society thinks is the “perfect” body.

I feel like barbie is a detrimental object to young girls and should have never been created because she gives off a negative influence on young girls. I conclude that barbie is a negative influence because of the way she dresses, I say that due to the fact she wears skirts, shirts that show cleavage and her body type is skinny. Mattel states in the copyrighted version of the Barbie sticker album that “the shape of the doll, its clothes and the focus on dating activities presents sexual attractiveness as a key to popularity.” This evidence brings me to my conclusion that barbie is in fact a negative influence because she is presenting young girls with sexual images and leaving them with the impression that they can do, wear whatever they want and think they are better than everyone else. For example,  Kim Kardashian acts the way she does because she had barbie as young girl.

All around our world we are constantly being told what we should act and be like for females and males. Barbie was born on March 9, 159 in the American International Toy Fair in New York. The Barbie doll has been influencing young girls ever since she was born. The Barbie doll have a huge influence on the way that girls perceive their role in society and also on the way they develop. Barbie dolls in some way reflect and influence our society values. Especially in our society today many views on the way Barbie dolls influence our society are often negative and their ability to positively influence young females is often denied.

As a young girl, I was not very interested in playing with baby dolls. I preferred playing with my many stuffed animals or the only doll I did like—Barbie. With my animals, usually I was rescuing them from some horrible disaster such as a flood or a forest fire. I was their heroic savior and benevolent protector. But with Barbie this was decidedly not the case. Sometimes my Barbie did normal Barbie things, such as get dressed up for an exciting date with Ken or go shopping with her little sister, Skipper. More often, however, I subjected Barbie to strange, sadistic acts of my imagination. Frequently Barbie, in her pink dune buggy, would have tragic head-on collisions with my brother’s dump truck, or the brakes would suddenly go out on her

In Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" a young girl is troubled by the classification of what it takes to become a beautiful woman. "Barbie Doll" details the image that society projects upon women. From an early age young women struggle to conform to the standards that society has defined for them. Beautiful dolls such as Barbie are frequently the first source of association that young girls have with the image that society has placed upon them.

Barbie has been the main icon for many little girl all across the world. Barbie has the greatest impact on little girl because they often feel like they can’t live with a Barbie Doll. As a child, I could remember my cousin always talking about how Barbie was her role model and how she loved the clothes and shoes that Barbie was dressed in. So I would agree that the image of Barbie has been one that little girls have looked up too during their childhood. The Barbie does have good, yet bad effects on little girls. The good effects are that the Barbie dolls represents a symbol of equality and empowerment. This is done through the maker (Ruth Handler) who was the entrepreneur of the whole enterprise, and put the doll in place for equal pay for

March 9th, 1959 in a Toy Fair in New York, a new toy came out for the first time named Barbie. From then on, this toy has become one of the greatest promoter of imagination in particularly young girls. This toy is formed with parts that try to imitate a real human body. Barbie dolls were made to portrait humans and for kids to use as any regular doll. One can purchase a Barbie doll with different characteristics such as different hair color, clothing, and even profession. The standard height of a Barbie doll is 11.5 inches tall, 18 inches on the waist, 36 inches chest range, and about 33 inches of the hips. As the industry started growing, Barbie’s became one of the most common toys found all across

This front cover caused a big uproar for not only Sports Illustrated, but Mattel as well (Grinberg). The issue of the magazine caused an online debate on social media sites like Twitter (Elliot & Grienberg). Many people talked poorly about Barbie and about the magazine, while other people supported it or counter argued; however, the company did not mean anything negative with the campaign (Elliot & Grinberg). People that counter argued also stated they had never felt bad after playing with Barbie, while others argued that this displayed a negative effect on young girls (Elliot & Grinberg). Although Mattel has always received complaints about Barbie, this event was a major deciding factor in the company changing the styles of Barbie.

As a consequence of Barbie being an “IT Girl”, the fantasies of young girls are ignited to the highest level of amusement. While they dress and make adjustment to their Barbie Dolls, young girls could not resist giggling. Plain to see, young girls idolized Barbie and harbour sensational feelings that when they grow up, they too would be like the perfect and beautiful Barbie, with all the perfect curves and bulges in the right places. This means that, young girls are dreaming that sooner or later, they too would have a perfect anatomy for a

Future examination may wish to evaluate whether these impacts are more grounded when dolls are utilized as introduction material, contrasted and pictures. Third, in spite of the fact that it is profoundly plausible that for all intents and purposes every one of the young ladies in the present research own Barbie dolls, it is enlightening to know what number of they possess and how drawn in they are with them. Such information would not just evaluate conceivable individual contrasts in the criticalness of Barbie as an optimistic good example additionally pinpoint when, formatively, she no more satisfies this capacity. Besides, a variable that may direct young ladies' reactions to perfect socio-cultural models, and that ought to be analyzed in future examination, is their level of body disappointment before presentation in light of the fact that it is likely that young ladies with high body disappointment would be more defenseless against negative introduction impacts than young ladies with low body disappointment. Be that as it may, it ought to be noticed that this confinement of the present concentrate presumably decreased the probability of discovering noteworthy introduction impacts, and the way that the negative effect of Barbie dolls was by the by illustrated—crosswise over young ladies whose