How Barbie is affecting young girls She is perfectly skinny, has a perfect boyfriend and family, perfect hair, perfect house perfectly perfect. Yet how is this doll impacting the millions of young girls who are playing with her? Out of all the young girls in the world 95% of them own at least one Barbie if not more. When girls spend hours on end playing with their dolls their brain is retaining everything about that doll. How popular she is and perfect she is, and so naturally these girls are beginning to want to be just like Barbie, happy and perfect all of the time.
First debuting in 1959, Barbie has mislead girls since their youth of what society perceives the perfect woman to look like. The average girl from ages 3-11 owns at least ten Barbie dolls and each hour spent playing with them, the more influence it has on them (Bennett, Saren). Yet, this is not a positive influence. Barbie is not the perfect role model for all girls. It is bad that Barbie, a 6 foot tall, 100 pound, size 0, infertile doll is possibly believed to be realistic and perfect (Bennett, Saren).
Analysis of the Choice between Black and White Dolls Yuqing Feng wrote an article about young black girls choosing white dolls and how it is a demonstration of the girls having self-esteem problems. According to Feng’s article entitled “Why black Girls Still Prefer White Dolls”, many African Americans do not believe that black is beautiful. Saying this, it is believed that many African American’s self-esteems are suffering. In 1954, Clark performed a test that involving showing a select group of African American children a black doll and a white doll and asking the black children which doll they preferred. Majority of the children chose the blue eyed blonde locked doll unsurprising at the time.
Young girls tried with all of their might to be just like Barbie, to be perfect. In 1973 when Marge Piercy wrote this poem, she was conveying a message to her readers that no matter how hard we try, perfection is not something we achieve in our lifetimes, only in death. At the time this poem was written, Barbie had already been out for nearly twenty years. “Millions of children throughout the world, mostly girls, owned and played with one or more Barbie dolls, while some older people collected them (and some still do)” (Sherrow 1). Many of these women and young girls were trying to emulate her look at the time, which considering her measurements of 39-18-33, was virtually impossible.
Instead they show praise towards her and her whiteness by buying white baby dolls, even for black girls. “The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll….all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.” Not only do the girls of this novel learn that whiteness is superior through the white baby dolls and the idealization of Shirley temple but adult women too have learned to despise their own color and learn as they grow that whiteness is the desired color. Whiteness is considered the cleaner color. When Pecola spills berries all over the clean white ladies house this
Is Life as Plastic Really Fantastic? Wondering what is the most likely to be on every little girls Christmas list this year? Well, the answer is the 50 year old bombshell named Barbie. Barbie is the blonde haired beauty with 25 different cars, and multiple different careers. Despite her being one of the first toys to portray woman at a feminist angle, she's not a great role model in every aspect.
Gender schema theory argues that people are socialized (e.g., through parents, teachers, peers, toys, and the popular media) into believing that gender differences are significant and worth maintaining” (Knight & Giuliano 332). From the time Americans are born, they are brought up being taught that girls have long hair and bake delicious pies while boys have little to no hair and work with tools. Once again, think back to the most common toys that were played with during childhood. Most little girls where fixing their dollies hair or baking cookies with mom in their oh so famous Easy Bake Ovens, while their brother probably raced toy cars and helped daddy decipher the difference between a flat head and a Phillips.
Josh Burgoyne Soc 100 Gender Paper When children view advertisements, what are the images that they are exposed to? The majority of the time children see stereotypical representations. Girls are presented in traditional roles such as playing house and cooking. Girls are also shown playing with dolls and being concerned with being popular and beautiful. Girls are also portrayed as being cooperative and more passive and less aggressive and competitive than boys.
Artificially Perfect When invented in the late 1950s by Mattel, the Barbie doll was considered the model woman. For many generations little girls have played with this doll and some even thought that’s how they were supposed to look and act. The Barbie doll was everthing. She was the perfect housewive, she had a career for herself, and she was even the party girl all while mainting her perfect hair, makeup, and tiny wasitline. Within the past few years the idea of the Barbie doll has been questioned by society: is Barbie what every woman is to suppose to look and act like?
When is it too Young to Exploit Young Girls? Everywhere we look there are advertisements, television shows and radio commercials that go against or for body image that goes towards children. For example, on the show on TLC “Toddlers and Tiaras”, I saw a mother put a padded bra on her six year old daughter, and another forcing her eleven year old daughter to wear a corset as she said, "It doesn't matter if you can breathe or not! It only matters if you look beautiful!” A lot of how the media looks affects how everyone looks at them or how they will do it to their children. Eating disorders are on the rise for the children and teens.