BARBIE AND SOCIETY

What did Barbie ever do to offend so many people?  Was it her confession that she found math class tough? She obviously didn’t find it that tough, after all, she was a rocket scientist, an astronaut and a computer engineer.  Is it because she takes such pride in her appearance? I grew up with Barbie, I loved her when I was young and I still love her today, yet it seems all I ever hear, especially in school, is how evil she is. How harmful she can be and how she’s a bad influence and a bad role model. But what exactly makes her these things? 

According to University of Sussex psychologist Helga Dittmar, girls between the ages of five to eight who are exposed to Barbie feel worse about their bodies than girls exposed to dolls with more “realistic physiques”.  

Now, I was a little girl not long ago, and I had, and still do have, a lot of dolls. I have no idea what “realistic” dolls they could be talking about. “Groovy Girls” maybe? Well no, it can’t be. “Groovy Girls” are teenagers but are completely flat-chested, and the same goes for “Teeny Boppers”. Well, it can’t be “Bratz”, “Diva Stars” “Moxy Girls” “My Scene” “LIV” or “Monster High”, because they all have huge heads. Raggedy Anne and Andy certainly weren’t realistic, so I have no clue what dolls they could be talking about. All I know is out of all my friends I had growing up, all the kids I went to school with and all my cousins, I never once met a kid who wanted to look like Barbie or any other doll for that matter. 

But perhaps the best approach would be to go back to my own childhood. I grew up with Barbie, and other very girly things, did this affect the way I grew up? Probably. But in what way? Well, let’s find out. From about age four to age nine, I had the same group of friends. All girls around my age. We were all quite different but shared common interests. One girl was a little younger, and one was quite a bit older. All we did was play, rarely with toys at all, mostly we would create stories and characters straight out of our heads or completely stolen from TV. Although this was all in the summer, and summer really only lasted about three months. So during the rest of the year, we had to play inside. 

One tool that was perfect for the type of playing we did were Barbies. I think I had the most out of anyone, at least twenty by that time, everyone else only had about five. At the time, I found it very interesting the ways little girls were shown to play with dolls in the media. I remember seeing an episode of “Dexter’s Laboratory” that showed Dexter’s sister Deedee “playing” with her doll. All she did was brush its hair and change it’s clothes. At the time I found this puzzling, that’s not how you play with a Barbie. You decide on the clothes and hair before you start playing so that it can fit in accordance with the story you were doing. Another memory is of Sid’s sister, Hannah in “Toy Story”, the way she would talk to her dolls as if they were alive. I much more related to the way Andy was shown to play with his toys. Now that I’m older I think the reason for this is men, or perhaps all adults, don’t know how little girls play with toys, and that it’s really nearly identical to the way boys play with toys. He-Man is to My Little Pony as cowboy hat is to princess tiara. A gun is just the same as a crescent moon wand or a ring that can give you the power of a rag. (more on that later.) I recently saw a “Robot Chicken” sketch about Micheal Moore interviewing action figures from the 80’s such as “He-Man”, “Transformers” and “Thundercats”. 

There was later a follow-up sketch about girls toys from the same time period, such as “Jem”, “Rainbow Bright” “Cabbage Patch Kids”, the point of this sketch is that girls do not feel nostalgic about their toys the way boys do. The Nostalgia Chick once supported this theory with the evidence of the recent success of the “Transformers” movies. But to her, I say girls too, can be just as nostalgic. Why else would “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” be one of the most popular animated shows of the decade, with most of its fanbase made up of adults, whereas the “Transformers” movies do appeal to the original audience, have mostly introduced the franchise to a new generation. But what about my generation? What did girls in my age group grow up with? Well, it may be surprising but we were exposed to some even girlier things than multi-coloured ponies. 

The summers of my childhood were warm yet short. We lived in three places, the TV, the VCR and the radio; metaphorically at least. We mostly lived in the back yard, but this is where our minds usually seemed to be. To think of a television show I watched a lot of as a child, I could name you probably about fifty. But the ones I watched aren’t important, it’s the ones we played; the ones we took influence from. Again the list is long but I think the most often played would be “Sailor Moon” and “Scooby Doo”. 

Sailor Moon was easy to play because we all watched it and it starred all female characters, so fighting over who was who wasn’t too common. All you really had to do was call out your attack until the “monster” was defeated. So how did this influence our generation? Did we all turn out lazy clutzes like Serena? No. Did we all become dedicated studiers like Amy, or athletes like Lita? Of course not. We didn’t look up to the Scouts, we didn’t emulate them, we merely related to them. Each girl was so different that pretty much everyone could find at least something relatable about one of them. This is not to say it had no impact on my generation at all, that’s far from the case. After all, the same little girls who grew up with Sailor Moon are now teenagers and young adults who have made anime a cultural phenomenon. But why? Why did so many girls from my generation latch on to Japanese anime? I think it’s because anime, unlike many western TV shows, focuses so much more heavily on plot. You don’t have stand-alone episodes, it’s all part of one bigger story. And I think as we’ve seen, that’s what we are interested in, story. So the very idea that Barbie has so much influence over us is wrong. We are the ones who influence her. We are the ones who choose her job, her home, her family, her personality. 

Think back. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, who was the biggest young pop star? Britney Spears. Britney had a very distinct look to her. Her pigtails, belly tops and low-rider pants influenced the teenage fashion of the time. In 1997 Barbie’s body was remodelled to fit this fashion.

The idea that a Barbie or a Disney Princess or a Spice Girl could make a seven-year-old child feel bad about their body seems insane to me. When I was about six or seven one of my friends shoved two blue balloons down her shirt and claimed they were her boobs, and we all thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Because when you’re a kid boobs are hilarious. 

Here’s an interesting quote I found on a blog: “By not giving my daughter the Barbies, I was giving her a gift far greater in value. I was giving her the ability to be appreciated for her inner being, and not for her outer trappings. I was giving her a sense of self-esteem and independence. I was giving her dignity and self-control.” Yes. By not buying your daughter that Barbie doll you are limiting her creativity, but most of all you are teaching her that a piece of plastic has more control over her life and her thoughts than she does. You are telling her that she is stupid, and can’t think for herself, and would let a doll have power over her own self-worth. 

Now, remember when I was talking about the ring that gives you the power of a rag? Well, now it’s time to talk about that. Here’s the story. One of my friends had a little sister the same age as my brother, and she was pretty much his only friend for a long time. One day she had all these little coloured plastic rings, with these sort of little sculpted shapes on top. One was a smiley face, one was a cat etc. etc. She and my brother were playing a game where you have to put on one of the rings and then yell the power. For example, if you have the cat ring you would yell “Cat Power!” She had a red ring with a rose on it and yelled out “Rag Power!” So what does this little girl mistaking a rose for a rag represent? Could the rose symbolize classic femininity, as beauty and nature, while the rag could represent a housewife trapped in her cleaning frenzy? And that the modern child cannot even distinguish between the two? Or perhaps it shows that children are innocent, and can see the same amount of beauty in a delicate rose as in a dirty old dishcloth. Or maybe even still, it could show that this modern child had such a low opinion of herself that she couldn’t see the rose as worthy enough to be in her possession, and all that was suited for her was a rag. Or maybe it was just badly sculpted. In fact, doesn’t that seem like the most logical conclusion? Perhaps everyone is just reading far too into this whole Barbie thing, just as I just did with the ring. Maybe we should all take a step back and find out the most logical and simple explanation. 

People across western culture seem to be convinced that Barbie is a bad influence on children and goes around ruining lives. This popular belief runs rampant through schools, universities and uninformed blogs across the world. I grew up with Barbie and as far as I can remember Barbie never made me or anyone I knew “feel bad about ourselves.” When discussing this issue everyone seems to forget their own experiences with Barbie. 

Barbie is a career girl, taking on a wide variety of jobs, and since her debut in 1959, women have been taking on more and a wider variety of careers. Is this because of Barbie? I don’t know, but I find it much more believable than Barbie being responsible for poor body image issues. 

I think perhaps the way little girls play, and just how much emphasis they put on Barbie’s looks is a common misconception. Little girls have always been stereotyped in this regard and nobody really seems to pay attention to the relationship little girls have to their toys, and their dolls in particular. People really seem to think that children are incredibly dictated to by the media, which is just simply not true. I would even argue that they aren’t even that influenced by it at all. If anything, it’s people that influence the media, not the other way around. I just don’t think girls that young are all that worried about what their bodies look like, and if they are, then the problem is probably much deeper than a doll or celebrity. I find it insulting to children and teenage girls to suggest that our lives and the way we feel about ourselves are entirely dictated by these incidental things. This implies that we are not smart enough to tell the difference between fiction and reality and that girls need role models. 

People really are just putting blame where it doesn’t belong because parents don’t want to take responsibility themselves. Maybe that’s the real issue here. Maybe Barbie is just another easy target for parents and psychologists to blame when they don’t know, or don’t want to admit, the real cause. Well, we need to stop all this pointless blaming of the media so we can focus on the real issues and find out the true causes. The fact is, body image issues have been around since ancient times, and will only go away if we are able to find the true cause and stop ourselves from getting distracted and laying pointless blame. The simple fact is, Barbie is not the issue. Barbie is not harmful to anything or anyone. The only effect I’ve ever seen Barbie have on a child was joy and happiness. So I’m asking parents everywhere to please let their children play with Barbie or we could end up like Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

I grew up with Barbies and all kinds of other girly things, and look at me. I’m seventeen, I’ve never had a boyfriend, I don’t go out, I only ever wear jeans and a T-shirt, I want to be a filmmaker, and I willingly spend my time watching a guy with a beard bitch about the inaccurate portrayal of the Ninja Turtles on the internet.