When I was a kid I played with Barbie dolls, just like most of my friends in elementary school. I loved them because they were my ideal of what I wanted to look like and be. Beautiful, tall, educated (in my imagination), had the best wardrobe in the world, but most of all she was perfect. My Barbie was almost always a doctor or an important businesswoman while at the same time being a princess. Barbie was everything that I wanted to be as a kid, not just because she was a pretty doll, but because I was one of the only Asian people in a school full of blonds and brunettes. I was immensely proud of being Korean, I liked being one of the only people in my class that looked like I did until I started getting teased. I think that it was then I knew I would never be like my Barbie and for some reason that really bothered me. I remember praying to God to change me, to make me look more like my dolls or at least like the other girls at school. At six I was already experiencing an identify crisis, not just because of my Barbie, but because of the people around me.
Fast forward to January 28 of 2016 when Mattel released its newest line of Barbie dolls. There are three different body types; tall, petite, and curvy. Each of these dolls has a different hairstyle and wardrobe than the next. After reading a few articles about the newest members of the Mattel crew I found myself wondering exactly how I felt about the new dolls. Don’t get me wrong they are a wonderful addition to the Barbie franchise, but is this enough? An article from Time magazine covered everything about the new Barbies including their focus group tests. The article stated that while their mothers were in the room, most of the children played with the curvier dolls with no issues, but when the adults left, they would undress the dolls and giggle. After years and years of a perfectly-figured Barbie, is it sufficient to put out a curvier doll and say that it’s enough?
It is definitely a start. However, I feel it is the mothers who are more excited about the change than the children. Since humans have had organized society, women have been told an ideal body type and with each passing era it differs. Instead of saying that Barbie is the one teaching girls to try being more pretty than smart, perhaps parents and teachers should teach children to love themselves.
Barbie is a doll and will always be just that. She didn’t teach me that I was different, society did. Maybe that’s always been the issue with Barbie. This doll has been marketed as a feminist, but it's her body, not anything else that has caused so much controversy. Its almost like we fear this doll for its body. Could it be that we are simply projecting our own anxieties about our bodies onto this doll?
While I think that its amazing that Mattel has released the new dolls and hopefully girls will accept them because they are a more realistic portrayal of different body type. We need to look in the mirror and not want to see Barbie, but ourselves, because no one else is you.
