Barbie: Good Or Perfect: The Perfect Role Model

1187 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Society beauty standards

Barbie has been a child’s toy since 1959. Over millions of girls have played with them, looking up to Barbie as their “perfect role model.” Who would want their role model to be someone, if she were to be compared to a real person, couldn’t even live on her own? Barbie has many good “jobs” and can influence kids to do very good acts, but in appearance, Barbie is unattainable. In Zali Yager’s article, she says, “The girls who viewed the images of Barbie had significantly lower scores on the Body Esteem scale after being exposed to the images, and indicated a preference for a thinner current body, and a thinner adult body” (“Is Barbie Bad”). They gathered girls from the UK to look at pictures of Barbie compared to her competition, Emme, a more …show more content…

How popular and perfect she is, and so naturally these girls are beginning to want to be just like Barbie, happy and perfect all the time, which starts many of them on their way to eating disorders” (“The Barbie Effect”) Young girls just want to fit in with the social norm, but that same social norm is asking far too much from these young girls. Perfect manners, perfect clothes, perfect appearance, perfect family, perfect friends, etc. And to the girls, Barbie was the only one who had all these things, Barbie had the perfect life, so they naturally looked up to her and some even wanted to be like …show more content…

She’s just a plastic doll.(Counterclaim) Yes, she is just a doll. But, wouldn’t kids love to have a doll that looked like them? Or something that they can relate how they look with one of their toys? To fit the wants for a normal looking doll, a few people jumped to the change. Lammily is one of these more normal looking doll. She looks like an average, normal teen. Lammily even has ‘marks’, little stickers kids can apply to her, which include natural things girls get. Stretch marks, scars, bandages, bruises, casts, mosquito bites, freckles, and acne. As a kid grows, they can relate to their doll more and more when they add these extra’s to her or his doll. There’s even a more realistic doll called Emme. Designed to look like average people with a little life like

Show More
Related

  • Kate Chopin's Barbie Doll

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    For starters the title, “Barbie Doll” holds a meaning. It symbolizes the ideal figure of a female body. Society creates this ideal that is embed into every century. It is never ending. It is intended that she must have the twig like arms and legs, the minuscule waist and nose,

    Read More

  • Marge Piercy’s Barbie Doll

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    Every woman grows up knowing that they one day want to be beautiful. In Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” she gives an in depth look at what negative effects the concept of beauty can have on an individual. From infancy to a full grown adult woman, beauty has been a way of thinking and lifestyle. As a little girl you are given petite shaped, blonde, blue eyed dolls. While boys are given brawny soldiers and mechanical toys.

    Read More

  • Ken Schroeder's Barbie Doesn’t Add Up

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the Article “Barbie Doesn’t Add Up,” the author Ken Schroeder states that Barbie dolls were just dolls that gave young girls false ideas of what they should be and look like as they get older. This article was written in the Education Digest in 1992, which helps understand why the author talks mostly about Barbie’s intelligence. The main audience of this article is directed towards parents of young girls in particular. The author is not very persuasive in the article about Barbie because he does not give enough legitimate examples and proof that his theory is correct. Also he is not in any type of field work that studies how children grow up to be after playing with Barbie. It is hard to find many credible examples to back up Mr. Schroeder’s views and thoughts on Barbie and how she makes girls think they should not be good at math.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Our Barbies Ourselves By Prager

    580 Words  | 2 Pages

    “If Barbie was designed by a man, suddenly a lot of things made sense to me,” says Emily Prager in her essay “Our Barbies, Ourselves” (Prager 354). Prager’s purpose for writing this essay is to explain the history of Barbie and how the doll itself has influenced and continue to influence our society today. Prager is appealing to the average girl, to those who can relate to the way she felt growing up with Barbie seen as the ideal woman. Emily Prager uses a constant shift between a formal and informal tone to effectively communicate her ideas that we view women today based upon the unrealistic expectations set forth by Barbie. By adopting this strategy she avoids making readers feel attacked and therefore

    Read More

  • Society's Influence Over Women

    366 Words  | 1 Pages

    At the beginning of "Barbie Doll", it reads "This girlchild was born as usual". This line shows that their is nothing wrong with this girl. She is your average child that plays with "dolls that pee-pee" and " miniature GE stoves and irons". She does not realize that anything is wrong with her until "a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs". She was normal and happy, then society points out that she is different then the model in Seventeen magazine.

    Read More

  • The Merchants Of Cool Analysis

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    (Steinberg: 271) Barbie is portrayed as this blonde perfect female and was made in the image of the perfect body type. Children idolize Barbie and the way she is advertised causes them to believe that your body is only supposed to look this way, everything is life is perfect and that they will not face any obstacles as life goes on. Steinberg mentions, “Thematically Mattel still hasn't invented the Homeless Barbie, the Abortion Barbie, the Alcoholic Barbie, or the S&M Bondage Barbie”. (Steinberg: 272) After reading this section I agreed with the statement “This Bitch Has Everything”. Mattel has painted a picture in the mind of young children that the perfect life can be created through their imagination and not that there are different paths that we all go through in life. Children lose their agency due to the fact that society has constructed and idea of what life is all about and children look to the media and the items around them for guidance and understanding of what is to be expected. Barbie creates the idea of what is the best and appropriate way to live your life as a

    Read More

  • Ruth Handler, Inventor of the Barbie Doll

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Martin, Melanie. “Negative Effects of Barbie on Girls.” eHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.

    Read More

  • Negative Body Image

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    The overview of the studies listed below are experimented and tested evaluations of the effects that thin dolls have on young girl’s body image. One study in particular finds and addresses that the dolls did directly affect the young girl’s food intake, but had no effect on body image. In this study the researchers used girls 6 to 10 years old, average sized dolls, and Legos in a controlled condition. This testing also required the girls to do a taste test, and questionnaires. The other study finds and addresses that Barbie’s could be a driver of negative body images in young girls. In this testing there were 162 young girls used, from ages 5 to 8. The young girls were shown pictures of Barbie, which is known to be slimmer, Emme Dolls, which

    Read More

  • Busting Barbie

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    Not many arguments or tests are done on the positive effects of Barbie. Sure, she is a role model but what about when girls set goals for themselves and later in life do not meet these expectations? Unlike Barbie, most of these goals are unrealistic and cannot be met. Barbie provies alternatives to the female stereotype of a mother and wife, but marriage isn’t perfect like the way it is portrayed. She goes through absolutely no struggles.

    Read More

  • The Media's Influence On Body Image

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the early 1960s, Barbie released a “Slumber Party Barbie”. In the set, it included a hairbrush, a weight scale that goes up to 110 pounds, and a diet book that says, “How to Lose Weight? Don’t Eat!” (“Brainwashed”). As for this, Barbie involuntarily unmasked their true message to girls which is if you want to be a Barbie you have to be 110 pounds, and not eat .An expert named Marci Warhaft- Nedler, the author of Body Image Survival Guide for parents, said “Barbie sends our girls one message, and it’s this, You can do anything and you can be anything-as long as you look like this: very tall, very thin, very Caucasian, and very beautiful” (Hains). Nedler exposed the harsh reality of the famous Barbie doll, that it portrays the stereotypical message to young girls that being thin, tall, white, and having a beautiful face will get you anywhere you want to be. Because of the claims made by experts, interrogations were made in order to inform people what Barbie would look like. In real life, Barbie would be approximately 5”6 in height, weight about 120 lbs., and her measurements would be 38 for chest, 18 for waist, and 34 for her waist. This notifies females that Barbie’s measurements are impossible to achieve since her measurements are remarkably off that would be unrealistic to achieve this body. Also, since her body fat percentage is extremely low, she wouldn’t be able to menstruate or live a healthy lifestyle (“Brainwashed”). Additionally, due to her out of place proportions , she would have to walk on her hands and knees (“Brainwashed”). Considering this. Since Barbie’s body is desired by many females, some have spent thousands of dollars to achieve the ideal Barbie look. Specifically, a woman named Cindy Jackson spent $55,000, and underwent 20 plastic surgeries to achieve her goal of becoming a real life Barbie doll (Body Body Image). blah. In the early

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Barbie

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    Those perfect days as a child when your countless days were filled with playtime. The time to set up those houses and dress the dolls up, and act out the future. “Through their play Barbara imagined their lives as adults. They used the dolls to reflect the adult world around them. They would sit and carry on conversations, making the dolls real people” (Ruth Handler). As a young child, it is all you look forward to in your future: being successful and confident, loved and cherished. Many dolls were used to project this. Specifically, the Barbie. Barbie is a positive role model girl should look up to for confidence and inspiration. She is a talented and educated career woman, self-sufficient in every aspect of her life, and a stunning example to young girls the body that is healthy and fit.

    Read More

  • Banning Barbie

    1738 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to Lisa Belkin, Barbie is good for society because she’s fun to play with and she encourages little girls to use their imagination and dream big. Many young girls who play with Barbie dolls have realized that she is just a doll. Some of these little girls don’t have the desire to look like Barbie; they just think Barbie is just a doll that they play with and leave them everywhere. At a young age girls are given their first Barbie doll and thought what “perfect” should be. Barbie portrays the perfect image and life. Not only is Barbie tall, skinny, and beautiful, she has all the luxurious accessories to match her perfect life. To go along with her perfect life she is accompanied with the perfect boyfriend, family and dream house.At a young age girls are also being influenced by this doll, what they should look like, and what kind of life they sgould lead. Young girls strive to achieve this look which is life threatening to obtain. Regardless to the changes they made to Barbie, she is still far from real. Little girls that are mature enough don’t strive to look like Barbie because she’s just a plastic doll.(Debate.org, 9). According to “The Intentions behind the creation of Barbie”, Barbie dolls ...

    Read More

  • Barbie: The Queen of Feminism

    1169 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I was very young, I owned very many Barbie dolls. To me, they were just so beautiful, and flawless, and I loved them very much. But the Barbie that said the most to me was the President Barbie. This spoke to me. It said that anyone, anywhere, of any gender, socioeconomic status, background, sexuality, ethnicity, race, or belief system could be anything they ever wanted to be, as long as they worked hard enough to achieve it. And this is a very important message, and it is a message that Barbie sends to people every day, all over the world.

    Read More

  • Cultural Criticism: Barbie

    1593 Words  | 4 Pages

    Barbie, a doll manufactured by Mattel, Inc., encourages an unrealistic body image, racial insensitivity, and contradictive goals, and it is having a negative influence on young girls everywhere. Launched in March 1959 by Ruth Handler, an American business woman and president of Mattel, Inc., Barbie quickly became popular and has gone on to sell three dolls every second, in over one hundred and fifty countries. However, Barbie’s rise to success has not been wholly positive – there have been numerous controversies, parodies, and lawsuits, all addressing a number of issues. One such issue is how Barbie promotes an unrealistic and unobtainable body image. For example, to scale, Barbie is five feet, nine inches tall, has a thirty six inch chest, eighteen inch waist, and thirty three inch hips. Had Barbie been a real person, she would not be able to walk, much less hold her head up. Secondly, Barbie is racially insensitive and perpetuates stereotypes. “Mexico Barbie,” from Barbie’s “ethnic” line, comes with a passport and a Chihuahua, as well as stereotypical red lace ribbons in her hair. Lastly, Barbie portrays goals that are both unobtainable and contradictive. Barbie has had a variety of careers, such as being a doctor, astronaut, and President of the United States, but also engages in stereotypical domestic activities, such as cleaning and baking. These characteristics are affecting young girls in a time when they are most developmentally susceptible, and teaching them a number of negative lessons.

    Read More

  • Berger And Luckmann's The Social Construction Of Reality?

    1154 Words  | 3 Pages

    It may seem trivial and go unnoticed to most, but by assigning Barbie a real career, people are able to identify with and recognize her. The marketers also provide Barbie with a life other than modeling, such as friends and a home. The Ken doll, which is commonly known as Barbie’s boyfriend, makes her appear more real to the audience. Girls are able to identify with the idea of a boyfriend, which makes the notion of Barbie seem more realistic and desirable. The same idea is applied to the many friends Barbie has been accompanied by over the years. Lastly, and perhaps most famously, Barbie, like almost all of the girls who play with her, have a home. The Barbie Dream House is just another clever way her marketing team has presented her to society as a real person. Humanizing Barbie, and portraying her in such a manner makes her more attractive to potential buyers. The girls who engage in play with dolls do not want merely a doll; they desire something they can relate to and envision in the real world. Imaginative play is a large portion of childhood, and the ability for children to posses a doll like Barbie , who represents a real person in society, is extremely valuable. The use of social constructionism in the marketing of products such as Barbie is both brilliant and effective.

    Read More

More about Barbie: Good Or Perfect: The Perfect Role Model

Open Document