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ebonypearl) wrote2009-03-06 07:21 am
Barbie
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920962.stm
Yanno, very few children aspire to look like their dolls. Dolls are toys and most children understand that. They also understand that doll dimensions are not human ones. They realize that they aren’t made of plastic, wood, fiber, metal, porcelain, clay, or grasses, but are flesh and blood. The doll is meant to resemble them in some way – which is why many children like seeing dolls with their skin and hair and eye color. Busts, waists, hips, legs, arms, even mouths, ears, noses, fingers and toes aren’t so important. Hair, skin, eyes – those are the important features.
Dolls are caricatures of people. Some are more obviously caricatures than others, but most children realize that dolls are not people. It’s fun to dress your doll to look like you, to style the doll’s hair like yours, to put the doll in games and situations you like or want to do, to confide in the doll, and make up stories about the doll, but in the end, it’s a toy that mimics a person.
Barbie and the many Barbie clone dolls aren’t role models, they’re toys. Most children know this. They like playing with Barbies because Barbie dolls have the coolest accessories and come in many colors (I have a blue-skinned Barbie). The best thing about Barbies for children is the ability to share accessories and play. The Barbie doll is so common that most girls have at least one, and they can get together with their friends and have their Barbies play dress-up and trade clothes and play with one another’s accessories. The American Girl Dolls are popular for this reason, too, and the Bratz dolls.
It’s not the dolls, it the accessories. Most girls don’t want to grow up to look like Barbie; they want to grow up to have Barbie’s opportunities, accessories, and lifestyles: to be Barbie while looking like themselves. Who hasn’t wanted Barbie’s wardrobe cars, mini-van, camping gear, castle, a little sister like Skipper and friends like Midge and Ken? Who hasn’t dreamed of the beach nights and exotic vacations that Barbie’s many, many accessories evoke?
It’s not the looks, folks, it’s the stuff. Harly Quinn Barbie, and Poison Ivy Barbie, and Hitchcock’s The Birds Barbie and the motor home and the castle and the doctor’s office and equipment and the kitchen and the convertible and the costumes from around the world and the vet’s office and equipment. Barbie has all the cool stuff and gets to do all the cool things. What child wouldn’t want to be Barbie?
Oh – and for this article’s information, before I had children, my waist was naturally 18”, with a 36” bust and a 36” hip (the ideal measurements back then were 36-24-36, so I had an extraordinarily small waist – still do, proportionately). Barbie’s proportions are actually kind of small-busted with large hips (translated to an average height woman, those measurements would be a very small busted 27-20-29). She’d probably age into a pear-shaped older woman with small saggy breasts, an "apron" of belly fat and a broad flat butt. That’s pretty realistic.
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