Whereas one could survey the literature on feminists’ reactions to the physical appearance of Barbie (Barbara Millicent Roberts), the following example makes unnecessary searching for other responses.
Feminists Jacqueline Urla and Alan C. Swedlund complained about Barbie’s unrealistic proportions.(1) They could have compared her to real women in her genre, namely glamour or fashion models, but they decided to compare her to the average proportions of women in the U.S. military. Hallelujah! The Army recruits’ measurements averaged 35.7 – 31 – 38.1 at 5-foot-4. This made me think...as an 8-inch taller male, my waist circumference is 30 inches...the feminist reaction becomes clearer...have the Gods forsaken feminists?
Whereas Barbie’s hourglass proportions have been toned down since 1998, it would be unnecessary to describe how much feminists still appreciate Barbie’s looks. Some feminists have appreciated Barbie being a career woman that remains single and has no children, but it is likely easier to ski in Hell than to find a feminist who likes Barbie’s unadulterated looks.
Barbie was derived from another very similar and popular doll, the Bild Lilli doll, which was meant for adults. Some have tried to come up with more anatomically correct dolls for educating children, but they have nowhere been as successful as Barbie and dolls similar to her. Some examples are shown below, including dolls that are abominable in my opinion.
“Anatomically correct” Amamanta dolls: a teenage girl, a pregnant woman and a woman giving birth.
The depraved minds behind the Amamanta dolls have no problems with exposing children to imagery of childbirth or recommending that children as young as 3-years-old be told that a woman gets pregnant when...
“dad's penis gets into mom's vagina. Then a liquid that dad makes that is called the sperm goes from dad’s penis into mom’s vagina. The sperm reaches the egg and it becomes fertilized, or ready to become a baby.”
Children shouldn’t be dealt with in such a straightforward manner. I recall babysitting a friend’s kid (4- or 5-years-old) who was asking pesky questions. So I showed him a gorilla and pointed out the gorilla's flat nose. Then I pointed out my pointy nose and the boy’s flattened nose. So where did he get his flattened nose from? I told him he was picked up from the jungle and was born to gorillas; a disease had turned his skin white. He didn’t want to believe this, but he did ask his mother whether he had a skin disease. The important point is that he stopped asking me pesky questions.
Anyway, what explains the popularity of Barbie? Albert Magro had drawings of parts of the human body in two formats, one slightly closer to the apes’ form and the other showing the more derived form, judged for attractiveness by 495 individuals.(2, pdf) Most judges preferred the drawing depicting the more derived form.
Contrast an ape female with Barbie. Barbie has many features that exaggerate the derived features of humans, and this is the reason behind her appeal.
The ape female, even though posing in a seductive manner, looks very unattractive from a human perspective.
O feminist, may thee see the light. Amen.
References
- Jacqueline Urla, Alan C. Swedlund. The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling the Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture. In: Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture (Jennifer Terry, Jacqueline Urla, Eds.). Indiana University Press, 1995.
- Magro, A. M., Why Barbie is perceived as beautiful, Percept Mot Skills, 85, 363 (1997).
Yeah Barbie makes me seeth, cause my boyfriend looks just like GI Joe. Get real. I played with all sorts of dolls and none of them gave me any complexes. My mother was my role model in life and she always ensured I healthy body image. How? By never even mentioning the words body image.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! I would have done something similar if that little boy had been asking me questions. By the way, are you married with kids by any chance?
The Slutz - sorry - Bratz dolls seem to be preferred over Barbie, the bridge of the nose looks like the opposite of derived to to me.
The abominable dolls will be pushed onto kids ostensibly for health education- social engineering is what they are really about. The justification for exposing toddlers to sex education dolls is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-411266/Over-sexed-The tarty-Bratz-Doll.html another doll
GI Joe looks like a juiced-up bouncer. That could be having an effect on body image irrespective of being mentioned.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-411266/Over-sexed-The-tarty-Br...
On the other hand sometimes feminists are not alone in their concerns.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042998/Girls-taught-feminism-...
Gorillas are interesting they are polygamous, the biggest and strongest is the Mountain Gorilla - it also has the blackest face...
When I was about 4 or 5 I asked my Mother where I come from she told me the truth...
I think that I'm happy she told me the truth and none of that stork (or for you Gorilla) rubbish. Lying is not the answer, this little boy who you told that too went on thinking things that are not true.
Personally I would have just said, as I have to my younger sister, "ask mum"... it wasn't your right as a babysitter to decided what that little boy thought.
People complain about what children are being taught, maybe children need to be taught the correct thing and not lies. Parents wonder why children don't ask them about the world, well, if you lied to them when they were little then when they get older and find out the truth they are not going to want to come and ask you because they will think you will most likely lie to them like you have in the past.
You teach your children not to lie by telling them that "lying is wrong" and "the truth is always better" or "You'll get into less trouble for telling me the truth then lying and I find out". You say this, but you lie. You can't complain about Dolls being bad role models when really your just as bad. Children learn mostly from thier parents... teach them properally.
Dolls are just dolls, they don't cause bad behaviour... they are TOYS!!! FAKE!!! UNREALISTIC!!! just like a teddy bear, I don't see people complaining about them!
Roy: The popularity of the Bratz girls is not merely a function of their looks, and they have many of the same physical features as Barbie. So Magro’s argument still applies. The nose bridge doesn’t look very derived, but Barbie’s a doll and there is bound to be some cartoonish elements in her. Look at the overall appearance.
----------------Lying to children----------------
I don’t believe truth is always better and neither would I teach this to children. I believe that truth is preferable to falsehood and that lying is wrong. However, what if there is a scenario where the outcome of telling the truth leads to a wrong that is worse than the wrong of lying? In this case, my attitude is that the lesser of the two wrongs is preferable and hence I don’t believe that the truth is always better.
I also believe that the truth is bound to win in the long run and that the truth shall make us free. And if the truth is bound to win in the long run, then this goal cannot be thwarted by traversing the path of falsehood; nothing prevents one from ultimately making the truth obvious by using falsehood.
In my interactions with children, I have often caught them lying about silly matters, but my response has been “A-ha, caught you lying!” in an amused manner, which has prompted a response along the lines of “bummer!” on the part of children. It is normal for children to lie, just to experiment with what they can get away with, and my kind of attitude will prompt them to come up with more sophisticated lies, i.e., lies that they are more likely to get away with, which will come in handy in the real world when they face a scenario where the wrong of lying is preferable to the wrong resulting from telling the truth. One may argue that my parenting or child mentoring attitude may result in children developing into pathological liars, but I believe that whereas my attitude can help those toward social pathology inclined to get away with lies, it cannot orient one toward social pathology.
Children often live in a fantasy world of super heroes, fairies, gnomes and supernatural forces. They are interested in the language of fantasy, not the far duller reality of adults’ lives. My bringing in gorillas is speaking to them in a language they enjoy even though the context they find very distasteful. Why use a clinical description of how babies come about? When the time comes, they shall learn. They shall know that I lied to them and learn to not trust me blindly. This is important. Children tend to be naïve. They need to learn not to blindly believe everything they are told. They also shouldn’t be skeptical of every claim and hence end up believing hardly anything. They need to develop the ability to make a reasonable guess as to which claim is probably correct, which claim is probably false and which issues are worth spending time on doing an independent investigation because there are too many claims, too much information, but very little time. This ability takes time to develop and they had best start young. What better way to set children on this path than by using non-malicious lies like the gorilla example?
I made no claims about dolls being bad role models. I made a point about inappropriate language and a stupid tool for educating children.
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