The History of the World's Most Famous Doll, Barbie

677 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The Good the Bad and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us

History
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).

PROS

According to Ruth Handler, Barbie stands for women freedom.
Mattel has an "I can be.." line that sells Barbie dolls in 125 different occupations. In this case, Barbie is not promoting something impossible. She has had a large variety of jobs, everything from waitress to astronaut.

Freedom for women
Toy to play with (kids can creative)

CONS

Body image
One of the most controversial aspects of Barbie is her appearance. Her body is widely criticized for being too thin and out of proportion. To see how a real woman would look if she attained Barbie's proportions, Winterman (2009) took the measurements of a woman who was 27 years old, 5 foot 2 inches tall and a size 10. She later applaied Barbie's measurements to the woman. In order to match the doll's proportions, the woman would have to grow 24 inches in height, which would make her extremely tall (7 feet 6 inches). A similar analysis on Barbie's measurements was made by Galia Slayen (2011). As a part of the first National Ea...

... middle of paper ...

...-billion-barbie-dolls-fashion-doll

Milligan, Lauren. Barbie Works. 2010. Vogue News. http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2010/05/19/barbies-careers-and-jobs Munger, Dave. What Barbie does for a little girl's body image. 2006. Cognitive Daily. http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/04/19/post-1/ National Eating Disorders Association. 2005. Statistics: Eating disorders and their precursors.

Slayen, Galia. 2011. The Scary Reality of a Real-Life Barbie Doll. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/galia-slayen/the-scary-reality-of-a-re_b_845239.html University of Bath. 2005. ‘Babyish’ Barbie under attack from little girls, study shows. [press release] 19 December 2005. http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/releases/barbie161205.html

Winterman, Denise. 2009. What would a real life Barbie look like? BBC News Magazine. http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920962.stm

Show More
Related

  • Barbie Annotated Bibliography

    1214 Words  | 3 Pages

    This website article provides the history of Barbie and her newly inspiring images for young women. Barbie was the new popular doll during World War 2 because she provided something inspiring for young girls and something that mothers felt strong about, independence. Barbie helped with what was being told to women, that they didn’t have to settle for being just a housewife or a stay at home mother. Women around the country could have a variety, a choice to work and have a career. “Barbie’s early professions were limited

    Read More

  • 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

  • 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

  • History Of Talking Barbie

    135 Words  | 1 Pages

    Talking Barbie said things like “I love being a fashion model!” The model that came out in 1968 looked different than the others. Barbie’s hair was blond, red or brunette. Her hair was also pulled into a bun with a curl on each side of her face. She had blue eyes with eyelashes, light brown eyebrows with peach colored lips and checks.

    Read More

  • The Negative Impact Of Plastic Dolls: The Making Of Barbie

    1586 Words  | 4 Pages

    Barbie's image through the shape of her body and all of her accessories is beginning to lead to many issues in our world. Barbie is portraying a negative impact on society through her influential being as a plastic doll. In 1965 the slumber party package was on the market showing buyers how straight forward she is with her products and accessories. The package had all of the normal slumber party things like a robe, comb, and hair rollers but it also had a weight scale set at a permanent weight of "110" and a disturbing book on weight loss that read in all caps, "DON'T EAT." This package is an example of how misleading Barbie and her products really are because it is implying to children that they should not eat and that if they grow up

    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

  • Busting Barbie

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine being a 5 year old girl playing with baby dolls and brushing your Barbie doll’s hair and feeling fat. A 5 year old feeling fat sounds crazy, right? Well with the influence Barbie has had for years is causing girls younger and younger to feel that their body is not “perfect”. Eating disorders, unrealistic expectations, and self-confidence are all at jeopardy once a young girl is rewarded with her first Barbie doll.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay: Should Barbie Get A Makeover?

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    Barbie’s human body size characteristic may be unrealistic, but the doll isn’t a human shrunk down to play size. For instance, in the movie “Life-Sized” a girl’s doll comes to life. While it may be that in this movie the doll had a hard time adapting to life as a human, she eventually got the gist of having a career and living life the way everyone wanted

    Read More

  • Is Barbie A Good Idol for Young Girls?

    524 Words  | 2 Pages

    Barbie in the recent years has been criticised for her unrealistic 'perfect' figure, her vast collection of clothes and accessories, and her ' dream home’. Young girls are surrounded by Barbie dolls at a very young age. Barbie media states that the average 3-6 year old girl owns 12 Barbie dolls. This is a great deal of Barbie’s for a 3-6 year old, at that age children's brains are still developing, if young girls minds are focused on these stick thin dolls, it could influence them to starve themselves in later life to look like Barbie.

    Read More

  • Barbie Sociology

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    The probability for a woman to have the same body shape as barbie is less than 1 in 100,000, (Norton 287), making it an inappropriate representation of the female gender and detrimental to the mental health of young girls consuming this type of media, given that many take inspiration from her character as she seemingly portrays a perfect life, leading children to develop eating disorders in the future. “These dolls are just a fragment of a much wider culture in which young women are encouraged to see their sexual allure as their primary passport to success” (Walter 5). Many critics say that Barbie represents impossible ideals of physical perfection that her anatomically incorrect body shape, decreases young girls’ self-esteem leading them to succumb to the pressure placed upon them by theses ideals and develop mental health issues such eating disorders, anxiety, and depression (Dittmar 290). Through the medias portrayal of the female body women are taught to be unhappy in their bodies from birth till death and that being thinner is better and is something that females should aspire to. It teaches young girls that to be perfect, you must have a thin and tall body shape.

    Read More

  • Essay About Barbie

    1976 Words  | 4 Pages

    promoting a Surgeon doll, she was still seen as a dumb blonde. Barbie makes several changes

    Read More

  • How Old Is Barbie So Popular?

    454 Words  | 1 Pages

    Later on, it started to grow older and has a job. Barbie has had nearly every career on the planet with a car and house to go along with it, not to mention pets, friends, movies and video games.

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Barbie

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    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

More about The History of the World's Most Famous Doll, Barbie

Open Document