Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The effect on weight loss advertisements
Factors that influence gender
Influence of barbie dolls
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The effect on weight loss advertisements
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 …show more content…
The GI Joe doll portrays the image of a man in the military. He dresses in camouflage and carries around guns. Wagner-Ott describes the GI Joe doll as a "...butch version of Barbie with the same realism and detail, but applied to the toy soldier concept" (249). Considering Barbie's beautiful looks and countless perfect accessories, the GI Joe doll can relate to her. He has defined muscles, a smooth tan, and all of his accessories fit him perfectly. These two dolls display sexist attitudes in many ways. Barbie only moves in five different places, her neck, shoulders, and top of her legs, whereas, GI Joe can move in twenty-one different places. The movements of the dolls show that the male can be more active and mobile, but the female is restricted to a perfect posture and cannot do much outside. Even though Barbie has many career options varying from a nurse to a firefighter most of them she is not even physically capable of. Wagner-Ott states in her journal, "Because dolls and action figures are emotionally close to children's lives, they can become the source for discovering and analyzing how popular everyday objects help construct "students" sense of identity, politics and culture" (252). Children are beginning to see these dolls like Barbie and GI Joe and want everything they have to feel like they can be
The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy has such a deep message that will instantly pull the heartstrings of many individuals within the world upon reading. Each and every person standing on the planet has had a moment in their life when they do not feel as if they can meet anyone 's standards. They also feel as if they are too fat and ugly to fit it to today’s society. We all have been told some very hurtful words in our lives, some that stick for longer than others, within the creases of our fragile brain. We continuously tell ourselves that it 's going to be okay at the end of the day but the real question is, will it real be okay? When initially looking at the title, one may come to the conclusion that the poem is
The role of Barbie in her many careers led me to think that they could do anything they put their mind to. Barbie has over 120 jobs some of them being a nurse, a veterinarian, a rockstar, plus she ran for president in 2008. “Barbie has always represented the fact that women have choices”- Ruth Handler. (45) Barbie showed me that even I could be dominant in male jobs including astronaut, surgeons, and baseball players. Barbie has taught me that I have a choice to make when it comes to my career and that we can’t be limited or held back to jobs that have been portrayed by men only. Ruth Handler believes that “Barbie was all about choices and being able to remain feminine while succeeding in a man's world.” (43) Role-playing with my dolls in different careers helped me to see what job my personality best fit
The Barbie is a plastic, man-made female toy, which has perfect facial symmetry, unnatural body dimensions, and perfectly unblemished white skin. In Chris Semansky’s Overview of “Barbie Doll,” he explains that the Barbie “is invented to show women have been socialized into thinking of their bodies and behavior in relation to a male-controlled idea” (Semansky). The title directly alludes to the Barbie toy, which represents a design of a man-made construction of the female image that shows an unnatural human form that could only exist inside the imagination of men. Throughout both “Barbie Doll” and “The Birthmark” you will find the female protagonists seeking an ultimately perfect form, free of the characteristics that those around them see as unworthy. It is as if they are chasing the blueprint of perfection that is present in the Barbie. The original Barbie came with three outfits a bathing suit, a tennis outfit, and a wedding dress (Semansky). Her outfits clearly symbolize restrictions forced on female privilege, identity, and autonomy, where “she embodies the ideals and values of her middle-class American community” who expect her to “spend her days at the country club and her afternoons cooking dinner for her husband” (Semansky). This is directly similar to the “outfits” those around the women in “Barbie Doll” where the girlchild is born
Martin, Melanie. “Negative Effects of Barbie on Girls.” eHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
(Steinberg: 271) Barbie is portrayed as this blonde perfect female and was made in the image of the perfect body type. Children idolize Barbie and the way she is advertised causes them to believe that your body is only supposed to look this way, everything is life is perfect and that they will not face any obstacles as life goes on. Steinberg mentions, “Thematically Mattel still hasn't invented the Homeless Barbie, the Abortion Barbie, the Alcoholic Barbie, or the S&M Bondage Barbie”. (Steinberg: 272) After reading this section I agreed with the statement “This Bitch Has Everything”. Mattel has painted a picture in the mind of young children that the perfect life can be created through their imagination and not that there are different paths that we all go through in life. Children lose their agency due to the fact that society has constructed and idea of what life is all about and children look to the media and the items around them for guidance and understanding of what is to be expected. Barbie creates the idea of what is the best and appropriate way to live your life as a
Because girls are impressionable at all ages, Barbie targets young girls to fantasize about being perfect. Girls look at Barbie and believe they can obtain all of her attributes, while in reality that would be impossible. Having a goal to be an astronaut or pediatrician seems probable at young ages, but the image of Barbie and all of her successes are never a result of schooling, hardships, or any stresses that would face them today. A fantasy world is built up and is deemed probable because of the one-sided point of view of Barbie. Slumber Party Barbie was introduced in 1965 and came with a bathroom scale permanently set at 110 lbs with a book entitled: ‘How to Lose Weight” with directions inside simply stating ‘Don’t eat.’
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.
In the early 1960s, Barbie released a “Slumber Party Barbie”. In the set, it included a hairbrush, a weight scale that goes up to 110 pounds, and a diet book that says, “How to Lose Weight? Don’t Eat!” (“Brainwashed”). As for this, Barbie involuntarily unmasked their true message to girls which is if you want to be a Barbie you have to be 110 pounds, and not eat .An expert named Marci Warhaft- Nedler, the author of Body Image Survival Guide for parents, said “Barbie sends our girls one message, and it’s this, You can do anything and you can be anything-as long as you look like this: very tall, very thin, very Caucasian, and very beautiful” (Hains). Nedler exposed the harsh reality of the famous Barbie doll, that it portrays the stereotypical message to young girls that being thin, tall, white, and having a beautiful face will get you anywhere you want to be. Because of the claims made by experts, interrogations were made in order to inform people what Barbie would look like. In real life, Barbie would be approximately 5”6 in height, weight about 120 lbs., and her measurements would be 38 for chest, 18 for waist, and 34 for her waist. This notifies females that Barbie’s measurements are impossible to achieve since her measurements are remarkably off that would be unrealistic to achieve this body. Also, since her body fat percentage is extremely low, she wouldn’t be able to menstruate or live a healthy lifestyle (“Brainwashed”). Additionally, due to her out of place proportions , she would have to walk on her hands and knees (“Brainwashed”). Considering this. Since Barbie’s body is desired by many females, some have spent thousands of dollars to achieve the ideal Barbie look. Specifically, a woman named Cindy Jackson spent $55,000, and underwent 20 plastic surgeries to achieve her goal of becoming a real life Barbie doll (Body Body Image). blah. In the early
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.
Barbie has been a child’s toy since 1959. Over millions of girls have played with them, looking up to Barbie as their “perfect role model.” Who would want their role model to be someone, if she were to be compared to a real person, couldn’t even live on her own? Barbie has many good “jobs” and can influence kids to do very good acts, but in appearance, Barbie is unattainable.
America has always been a country that strives for equality. With a recent question of equality rising in the wage system, feminism has taken on a life of its own. With women becoming the primary source of income in homes and with a woman now running for President, attention is drawn to the things in society that might be considered unequal. One of those things, targeted since their creation, is Barbie Dolls. In “The Controversy behind Barbie” author Prisna Virasin attempts to qualify the existence of Barbie Dolls to her readers. While she succeeds with a personal story to tie her readers into her argument, she fails to provide an initial thesis statement to guide the reader, she fails to thoroughly address the positive perspectives of Barbie, and doesn’t provide sufficient evidence to back her claims on the positive and neutral perspectives. Virasin uses a pathos style and
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.
Should you buy your child a Barbie doll? In 1994, the New York Times published “Barbie: At 35, still a doll-like 40-18-32” in which Anna Quindlen argues that Barbie sends a terrible message to young girls that being thin and having a lot of clothes is important. Barbie would not be able to menstruate regularly if she was a normal woman because she is a 40-18-32 size. According to the University of Arizona study, “ninety percent expressed dissatisfaction with their own bodies and many said they saw dieting as a kind of all-purpose panacea” (par. 10).
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
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.