Essay About Barbie

When I grow up I want to look Just Like Barbie

Throughout many generations of media publicity, women and girls have publicized and influenced to look like supermodels and in return this leads to them not genuinely loving themselves for who they truly are. There is many causes and effects to these insecurities and one of them had been from childhood girls comparing themselves to Barbie made by Mattel. Barbie herself comes from a long line of controversy of love and hate as well as changes with her appearance. Barbie was inspired based off of the original call-girl character named Lilli, which was a German doll. In 1956, Barbie’s creator Ruth Handler seen the doll while she traveled to Europe and got the inspiration to make a similar doll

Barbie became a huge success despite the negative feedback they received. In 1963, Barbie released an additional doll which included a book in her packaging title “How to lose weight and recommended “Don’t eat”!”. “From the beginning, the 11.5-inch toy has also been a proxy for battles over the role of women in society.” (Dockterman). As the doll carries much controversy of how a women’s body is supposed to look like, the National Organization for Women begin a strike in New York in 1970. “Some marchers carry signs reading “I Am Not a Barbie Doll.”

(Dockterman). Despite Barbie’s dolls that launched trying to make her look intelligent by promoting a Surgeon doll, she was still seen as a dumb blonde. Barbie makes several changes over the years and in 1980 decided to make dolls that fit more into the multi-cultural America

Florez 2 and more critics said that the doll was still too Caucasian. Years later in 1987, Barbie is used as a symbol to play the part of Karen Carpenter who was a girl who suffered from anorexia. After her leading roll, Barbie comes out with a new doll who has a speaker inside of her and states

The media only advertises models in bikini’s with flowing beautiful hair, tanned skin and perfect teeth, with flawless lightly toned skin. It is rare to see an overweight woman on a poster ad for a beer brand or even for a clothing line that is majorly made for tweens or teenage girls. What teenage girl would want to shop for a floral shirt and stretchy waist band grandma clothes at Wal-Mart to get what fits her? I’m in my thirties and I hate those clothes, even looking at them on the racks make me wonder who picks out the clothes as a designer and thinks that they are even desirable. “Only a very small percentage of women in Western countries meet the criteria the media uses to define

"beautiful"; yet so many women are repeatedly exposed to media images that send the message that a woman is not acceptable and attractive if she does not match society 's "ultra-thin" standard of beauty.” (Serdar). Again these standard models bring us to image one thing and one thing only and that is Barbie. Over the past fifty-seven years, Barbie’s creators felt it was time to focus on all