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Good role models for young people
Impact of toys on child development
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Recommended: Good role models for young people
Children need to have good role models to look up to. A good role model includes being ambitious and doing good deeds. Most little girls look up to the doll named Barbie. The doll has played a very important roll in many childhoods. She was introduced in the 50’s and manufactured by Mattel. Barbie is an up beat character and is always up to date on the latest trends. She has long blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes that go with her perfect makeup, and is tied all together by her medium tanned curvacious body. Barbie is portrayed as being the girl that everyone wants to be or at least be around. Barbie has a boyfriend named Ken and a little sister named Skipper. Over the years many dolls have been introduced as Barbie’s friends as well as several different ethnicities, cultures, religions, disabilities, and even mythical dolls such as mermaids. She first started out as a fashion designer and as time has gone by the doll is now marketed as having all types of careers from being a barista all the way to being a doctor. The doll typically comes with an extra outfit and accessories. Mattel even sells dream houses and many different cars for Barbie. She has a book club that sends books out monthly and here recently started coming out with straight to DVD movies. I get a Barbie magazine every month that sells designer Barbies that are based of celebrities and movie characters. The last magazine I got I was surprised to see a Barbie with tattoos and her own motorcycle. Her job is to promote happiness, success, and inspire little girls all over the world. All of these things sound like a perfectly reasonable children’s toy so why are some countries banning the doll?
Barbie has been banned in a few countries for her revealin...
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...elves. I will gladly let them have Barbie dolls but only if I see that they are mentally fit to have them. In the future, maybe the media will see the impact it is having on our youth and change for the better. I don’t see that happening anytime soon but I will do all I can to keep my children from being confused about who they are.
Works Cited
"The Negative Effects of Barbie on Young Girls and the Long Term Results." Divine Caroline. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2014. .
"The Barbie Effect." Teen Ink. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2014. .
"Bleeding Blue & White." Bleeding Blue White. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2014. .
“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
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.
Bratz Dolls came about in 2001 by MGA Entertainment. The 4 dolls are Yasmin, Cloe, Jade, and Sasha. These dolls are known to be unrealistic, unproportional, and inappropriate depictions of young girls. The American Psychological Association feels that the Bratz doll could even be considered worse that the Barbie doll because of the clothes that Bratz dolls wear. The average consumer of a Bratz doll is a girl around the age of eight. Bratz dolls give young girls an impossible, extremely unrealistic idea of how they and all women should look to be successful.
Seeing a barbie makes me think about all the fun times I had playing with those little toy dolls and the memories of creating my own dream life through Barbie. Playing with Barbies is great and imaginative because the sky's the limit when you play. You can make your own family, a life of your own, and choose a dream career. Unfortunately not all people feel that way. Some people see barbies and think those tiny waisted dolls with large breasts are what influenced my insecurities about my body. The creator of barbie once said “I wanted little girls who were not
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.
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
Martin, Melanie. “Negative Effects of Barbie on Girls.” eHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
It was very common to have a Barbie doll growing up, and it wasn’t just a toy, it was a representation of a “perfect life”. From dream houses, to boats, cars, a perfect boyfriend to exiting careers, Barbie had the perfect life. Barbie had the perfect lifestyle AND the perfect body, long legs, small waist and a curvy chest. This taught children from a very young age that having a boyfriend, a career, a house and a petite body is very important. (Worldpress 2011). Barbie’s “attention has been generated by the secondary role she plays in popular culture the artifact of female representation” (Wright 2003). Barbie isn’t just a toy, she mimics
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King Jr. knew it was better to speak up than to stay quiet. This is a lesson that needs to be taught throughout both middle schools and high schools. All around the world, suicide rates are going up, and most of these cases relate back to bullying. The children often do not say anything because they are afraid the bullying will only get worse. When nothing changes, they are driven to suicide to relieve the pain that they are feeling. As Marge Piercy examines in “Barbie Doll,” students are picked on for being or looking different than others. No matter what type of bullying it may be, it hurts people more than they are willing to let on. All forms of bullying, whether it be in schools, physical, verbal, or online, have an impact on teen suicide ideation.
In the beginning of “Barbie Doll”, pleasurable and unpleasurable imagery is given so that the reader can see the extremes girls go through to be considered perfect.
Hoskins, S. (n.d.). The negative effects of barbie on young girls and the long term results. Retrieved from http://www.divinecaroline.com/life-etc/momhood/negative-effects-barbie-young-girls-long-term-results
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.
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.
The majority of toys that little girls played with a hundred years ago were toys that dealt with the home. Miniature tea sets and rag dolls protrayed a girl’s future life and mimicked her mother’s behavior. Barbie was not created quite yet, the sexy image and revealing clothing would be offensive, even immoral, when girls were supposed to stay home and take care of the children.
Hoskins,Stephanie. “The Negative Effect of Barbies on Young Girls on the Long Term Results” www.divinecaroline.com No Pubished Date Web 8,January 2014