Doll and being called one is degrading. “ Even though people call me Barbie, I never tried to look like a doll. It just so happens that dolls are based on the image of refined girls." I just like everything beautiful, feminine and refined”. (humanbarbie.org) Valeria also speaks of her secrets to getting her look, it just takes tons of makeup that take hours to apply and flattering lighting. But she constantly denies Photoshop and cosmetic surgery and she loves how unreal she looks and she is flattered that people thinks she’s fake. Another replica of Mattel Doll is thirty-four-year-old Justin Jedlica. Justin has undergone one hundred and ninety cosmetic procedures to transform into a human Ken Doll. (daily mail). It all started when Justin …show more content…
“As a very detail oriented person I always find something new to critique and fix.” (the gloss). All because Justin Jedlica was unhappy with his nose, he’s found other things about himself, that he created to be flaws. Once you start to focus on the wrong things, everything else becomes wrong as well. Besides feeling insecure about their looks, other fans go to the extreme extent and get thousands worth of surgery to not look like Barbie’s but some to duplicate the look of certain celebrities. Just like Kylie became really popular with her lips, regular teens want to be just as famous. So they get extreme makeovers to copy their exact face. Before seen on Botched, the late Tobias Strebrel was once a regular male, but became better known as a plastic surgery junkie who wanted to look like Justin Bieber. He appeared on different shows such as my strange addiction and more. He spent over 100,000 dollars to get the baby face of the 21-year-old Canadian singer who became known as America’s heartthrob in 2010. Tobias received Botox injections, smile surgery and hair transplants to complete the youthful look of star Bieber. …show more content…
This paper is a prime example of what this generation has turned into. Eager to change themselves because they see it done on social media. Beauty is only skin deep, but it is mistaken from makeup to cosmetic surgery. The world empowers it so much instead looking down on people. This hurts young adolescent’s way of growing up, because they think it is ok to be artificial. If you cannot accept yourself, because of your favorite celebrity cannot then how will you get through life. Again, what does beauty mean to you? Going under the knife to make yourself pretty or accepting yourself for how God made
Following Joan Jacobs Brumberg throughout her conveying research of adolescents turning their bodies into projects the reader is able to see where all of the external beauty fascination came from following up to the 21st century. Brumberg effectively proves her point, and any girl of today’s age knows the struggle of which she continuously portrays throughout her book. Beauty has become such a preoccupation that it has gone from soap and washcloths, to makeup, to cosmetic reconstruction of body parts.
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.
Piercy, Marge. "Barbie doll." Portable Legacies. Ed. Jan Zlotnik Schmidth and Lynne Crockette. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 589. Print.
For this, I am most certain that Barbie doesn’t need a makeover. If Barbie needs a makeover, shouldn’t every girl featured in Sports Illustrated also get a makeover? Or should Sports Illustrated always use the same girl? No, both would be ridiculous, because there is not one kind of beautiful, there are many. The fact that Barbie was unapologetic, gives the doll a confidence in who she is. That is a message I would happily pass on to my children.
The GI Joe doll portrays the image of a man in the military. He dresses in camouflage and carries around guns. Wagner-Ott describes the GI Joe doll as a "...butch version of Barbie with the same realism and detail, but applied to the toy soldier concept" (249). Considering Barbie's beautiful looks and countless perfect accessories, the GI Joe doll can relate to her. He has defined muscles, a smooth tan, and all of his accessories fit him perfectly. These two dolls display sexist attitudes in many ways. Barbie only moves in five different places, her neck, shoulders, and top of her legs, whereas, GI Joe can move in twenty-one different places. The movements of the dolls show that the male can be more active and mobile, but the female is restricted to a perfect posture and cannot do much outside. Even though Barbie has many career options varying from a nurse to a firefighter most of them she is not even physically capable of. Wagner-Ott states in her journal, "Because dolls and action figures are emotionally close to children's lives, they can become the source for discovering and analyzing how popular everyday objects help construct "students" sense of identity, politics and culture" (252). Children are beginning to see these dolls like Barbie and GI Joe and want everything they have to feel like they can be
In 1945, Ruth and Eliott Handler founded Mattel – one of Americas leading manufacturing companies of today. The idea for the Barbie doll was conceived when Ruth watched her daughter play with adult paper dolls. She noticed the importance of being able to change the doll's clothes, and decided to create a three-dimensional fashion doll, naming her Barbie after Barbara (her daughter). At the time, the toy market was dominated by baby dolls and toddler dolls. Barbie was a new conception that became a worldwide hit. Since her debut in 1959, Barbie has remained one of the most popular toys of all time. There are two Barbie's sold every second, and more than one billion dolls have been sold around the world (Maine, 2000, cited in Slayen, 2011).
It also pressures women to constantly try and strive towards this ‘beauty myth’ the media have constructed and make men’s expectations of women’s beauty unattainable, however this is how the media has represented women as for years, Bodyshockers and 10 Years Younger, are just two examples of this. To this extent cosmetic surgery could be considered to be an obligation rather than a choice due to how the media has represented this now normalized technology of science.
The media has had an increasingly destructive effect on young people who are becoming worryingly obsessed with their body image. The media is saturated in sexual imagery in which young people have to face every day. The sheer volume of sexual imagery in the media today has resulted in the vast majority of young people to become hooked on looking as near to perfection everyday by using the latest products and buying the latest fashions. This used to be enough but lately the next step to achieving perfection is cosmetic surgery. Everyone wants to look attractive, especially teenagers who are not only put under massive strain to succeed but to look beautiful and climb the ranks of the social ladder, and it seems that the only way to achieve the much desired beauty is to turn to drastic measures.
The American Girl Dolls of this generation are focused on the outer beauty more than the inner beauty and intelligence of a girl. Areson comments on this in her
In a world where many are led to believe that they fall short of what society depicts as “perfect”, it is still true that everyone is beautiful in their own way. There are even more demands on girls now a days than there has ever been before. Some may think they need to fit in, so they become someone they are not or they begin to act like a totally different person. “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, illustrates society’s high and unrealistic expectations on the physical appearance of women, while failing to see that a woman’s self-esteem is at risk of being diminished.
To many, the notion of a teenager undergoing plastic surgery is appalling and unbelievable. For others, such as eleven-year-old Julia, a nose job was able to help her lead a happier and more normal life. To eighteen-year-old Kristen a breast augmentation is a traditional rite of passage of the family. She claims that she “just wanted to look normal,” and that after surgery, she does. (Sweeny, 2009) In these types of cases, cosmetic surgery can be beneficial to the confidence of teenagers in what Ann Kearney-Cooke calls “an epidemic of low self-esteem among girls.” (Sweeney, 2009) Whether it is a physical deformity, such as protruding ears, or simply a lack of something that other peers have, such as large breasts, cosmetic surgery can help teenagers cope with self-worth in a world where beauty is ridiculously selective. However, aside from the confidence-boosting possibilities resulting from teen cosmetic surgery, there are many reasons why it should not be taken lightly for an adolescent. Although cosmetic surgery can potentially be beneficial, there are also many extreme risks for teenagers, including medical complications and in some rare cases death, and thus should be solely a last resort after meticulous analysis for serious cases. Furthermore, neither the adolescent brain nor body is even fully developed.
Stone, Tanya Lee. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us. New York: Penguin Group, 2010. Print.
Flipping through the pages of Vogue's latest edition, 23 year-old Susan seems quite upset. She struggles with the thought of lacking the perfect body and delicate features in order to be considered attractive. Surprisingly, Susan is not alone in this kind of an internal struggle. In contemporary society, every other woman aspires to have the lips of Angelina Jolie and the perfect jaw line of Keira Knightley. Society today looks down upon individuals that do not fit in, whether in terms of body shape or facial attractiveness. This forces them to consider the option of 'ordering beauty.' Since cosmetic surgery is no longer a social taboo in America given its widespread popularity, more people are promoting it which ultimately affects the rest of the world due to the unwavering influence of American culture. Cosmetic surgery should be deterred in the US because it promotes the idea of valuing appearance over ability, gives rise to unrealistic expectations, and brings with it high cost to society.
One day, as Ruth Handler watched her daughter play with paper dolls, she noticed that often the dolls were put into adult scenarios, such as grocery shopping, working, et cetera (“The Creation of Barbie”). As most dolls in this era, the 1950’s, were either babies or small children, Handler got an idea: what if she created an adult doll (“The Creation of Barbie”)? So, she drew up a design for one, and she named her Barbie, after her daughter, Barbara (“The Creation of Barbie”). Then, in 1959, Mattel, a huge and very popular toy company, picked up the idea (“The Creation of Barbie”). Barbie made her first appearance in New York, at the annual toy fair (“The Creation of Barbie”). That year, 351,000 Barbie dolls were sold, which was a sales record in America (“The Creation of Barbie”). Today, Barbie continues to be the most popular doll in the world, with two sold every minute (“The Creation of Barbie”).
Barbie was first launched in March 1959, after Ruth Handler, president of Mattel, Inc., went on a trip to Europe and discovered a unique German doll, “Bild Lilli.” The aforementioned doll was special in that she was an adult, whereas man...