Barbie and Mattel recently released their 2016 line of Fashionista Barbie's, with the tagline, “The Evolution of Barbie.” The dolls now come in all shapes and sizes: some short, some tall, some with blonde hair, some with blue. The dolls are being released with the end goal of making little girls feel represented when they go to buy a Barbie doll. While the dolls do an amazing job of that, the problem is bigger than Barbie.
In recent years, Mattel has received endless criticism surrounding Barbie and her body. They’ve been shamed for creating “unrealistic body images” and making young girls feel inadequate.
All that being said, Barbie never made me feel bad about myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those girls who popped out of the womb confident and never let anything faze her. When I was younger a positive body image was always a big problem for me, and it is still something every girl (and boy) struggles with, but none of that struggle came from my Barbie.
Barbie created an alternate world. She allowed young girls to believe they could become anyone or anything. After a long day at school, you could come home and act out this incredible fantasy life through Barbie. You could become a doctor or an astronaut, you could have a huge house and cars and dogs and a million friends. It was good, pure, childhood fun.
The point of Barbie was completely misunderstood; it was not about her body. It was about what she could do. The Barbie slogan I grew up with was “Be who you want to be”, and if you ask me that’s a pretty positive slogan for a little girl to see.
But, somewhere along the way, the media stopped paying attention to the positive aspects of Barbie. No one cared about anything but the body of the doll. She became a source of outrage, and for really no reason.The fact that she was working jobs in a male dominant field was completely overlooked, as was the fact that there have been President, NASCAR, Army and surgeon Barbie's.
Despite giving girls the inspiration to be anything they wanted, Barbie became a punching bag. She became a way for adults around the world to blame their child’s insecurities on a piece of plastic rather than having to look at the bigger issue. Maybe your daughter didn’t like her thighs because someone told her she shouldn’t not because Barbie barely had any.
It was easier to get mad at the doll rather than talk to your daughter and find out what was really going on.
In third grade when I started to question my body, it had nothing to do with the dolls I played with and everything to do with the girls calling me fat on the playground.
No one ever accused Hot Wheels of giving little boys unrealistic expectations about which car they should want to drive, so why does everyone blame Barbie for negative body images?
While the new evolution of Barbie is a huge step towards equal representation by including so many hair types, eye colors and skin types that make every girl feel like she could be Barbie, it is going to take far more than a doll with purple hair to make a little girl like her body.
As a society, we should be more focused on raising kids to not tell other kids their fat. Raising boys not to objectify girls’ bodies. People not to criticize people for being “too skinny” or “too fat.”
You were born into your body. It’s going to be different from the next person’s body, and it make take some time to become OK with that, but no Barbie is going to change that.
At the end of the day, Barbie taught me that I could live any life I want, work any job I want and wear a kick ass pair of heels while doing it.
