Barbie in the feministic discussion - Talk about unrealistic expectations!

Ever since Barbie was first produced, she has raised eyebrows with her looks and her attitude. To put it shortly, she is way too skinny, too long legged, too big breasted and utterly too happy. Her being blonde and blue eyed hasn’t been a very popular thing either. (Although the first Barbie was produced as a blonde and brunette with almost black eyes, is not common knowledge.) Her being heterosexual has raised questions lately, not to mention her swapping boyfriends after braking up with Ken.

Instead of repeating every accusation made against Barbie, I would like to point out a few things that are generally over-looked when criticising her.

Barbie’s figure

There is a very practical reason for Barbie’s world famous figure. By definition, Barbie is a fashion doll, created for little girls who were immensely interested in their mother’s wardrobe and messing with it day in and day out trying on outfits that wouldn’t suit them. Barbie’s creator Ruth Handler watched her little girl playing with paper dolls, swapping fashions on them, and thought about a three dimensional doll for the game. This was where Barbie came in. She is a 3D paper doll!

There are some issues with making clothes on a doll of 12 inches however. First of all, the fabrics are mostly a lot thicker than what they feel like on the human – after all, the fabrics are mostly the same as ours! Therefore Barbie had to be moulded to adapt to the thickness of the fabrics, not to mention the seams bulking up especially on the waist. When you look at a clothed Barbie doll, she doesn’t seem that disproportional, does she? She looks feminine; like a model, yes, there’s no question about that. However, after only a couple of layers of clothing, she starts looking a bit to the chubby side. Let’s be brutally honest though, would you buy a fat doll? I sure wouldn’t. Why would I even, Barbie is a play thing, an object of dreams, she’s not supposed to be realistic picture of the world, but something that can make the dreams come true – even if only in the play world.

On contrary to the common belief though, Barbie does come in various shapes and sizes. There’s a version that is even skinnier than the normal Barbie, but isn’t as busty or wide hipped. Barbie’s best friend Midge has also appeared in quite a large body, as she just had a baby.

Why is Mattel required to produce dolls nobody wants?

I must wonder what logic requires a company to produce an item that will stay standing on the store shelves waiting for buyers who will never arrive while being praised by moralists. To my honest opinion, Mattel has made the mistake of listening to the moralists too much for their own good. Of course you have to please the parents somewhat, but let me ask this: Is a parent who is disgusted enough to require Barbie’s mouth to be closed because she sees that being pervert likely to buy Barbie after she smiles sophisticatedly? My guess would be no. A parent like that will take that as a victory and move on to the next subject: Her eyes are too big, her hair is too thick, she’s too blonde or she’s too shallow.

Now imagine the moralists dream Barbie doll. She’s only 10 inches tall while Barbie usually stands 12 inches. Her waist would be equal to the measurement of her breasts and hips, but it would be softer so you could create a waistline by squeezing the belt a bit tighter on her. She would have a very expressive face, a genuinely happy smile with sparkling eyes. She would have a mixed colour hair, that hasn’t been cut to any shape. Okay, now maybe you would buy the doll. Possibly I would too (it would make a great addition to the collection of mine) but would your 8-year old want it? If I remember anything from my attitudes as a child, I wouldn’t look at that one twice. I only get one Barbie a year, and I WILL NOT waste that one change on a doll that looks like my mom!

But I can’t measure up to her!

Did your brother get an identity crisis because he couldn’t perform in the same manner as his Action Man or his Transformer? That he never got the amount of cars as his Matchbox car collection? He never even got one BMW, and now drives a stupid Honda Civic. Now does your brother blame it on his toys if he fails to be what he pretended to be when he was playing with his fire truck? I would guess not. He says he doesn’t exercise enough to be as fit as his firemen were and he doesn’t work enough to get a BMW. And for crying out loud, Transformers were toys! Who ever in his right mind would compare oneself to a toy anyway?

Now here’s a question for you. At which point did women mistake Barbie for being a real woman competing over the same men? I remember from my childhood wanting to be like Barbie. To me “like Barbie” meant the following: I wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be attractive – I didn’t want as big boobs or wide hips, as I compared her to the real adults in my world, and they didn’t look exactly like Barbie, and if they did, they’d be freaks. I didn’t want to grow up as a freak, just an attractive adult female. I also wished Barbie was brown haired, but I never thought Mattel didn’t like brunettes, Barbie just happened to be blonde, that’s all! (Around those times dying your hair wasn’t all that common, and being a brunette Scandinavian, everyone around me was blonde anyway, so I didn’t think much of it.) Nowadays Barbie comes in so many colours and variations, that finding a really blonde Barbie is actually quite difficult.

Barbie today

She’s criticized for braking up with Ken. The divorce rate in around the Barbie buying countries is around 50%. Now if Barbie and Ken would stay together forever, doesn’t it make mom and dad seem BAD because they broke up? In my honest opinion, kids don’t give a damn. Barbie, Ken, Barbie, Blaine, what ever. Does your kid really even care what the name on the box is, Theresa is as much a Barbie as Kayla is, and even Christie, the African American friend of Barbie is in kids mind still a Barbie. My Barbie was called Paula, and the Ken was called Nick, I didn’t give rat’s ass what was printed on the box. In my opinion both of the names were bad, but I loved the dolls. The name was easy to change!

Also today Barbie’s figure is changed dramatically compared to the 80’s figure us adults seem to connect with “Barbie body image”. Anyone criticising her based on the memories should go to the Barbie aisle and take a good look. Her waist is completely proportioned to her breasts, her nose is no longer bent to the form that makes it impossible to breath, and the hair is no longer blonde on all the dolls. (You don’t want blondes to disappear all together, do you? What message would that send to the naturally blond girls?) The biggest issue today on Barbie is her unrealistic head size, and the company to blame for that little issue is elsewhere. The Bratz dolls took the doll market by surprise creating dolls that give a new meaning to the word “disproportional”.

Does your kid really need Mattel to write a script for her plays?

Barbie is often regarded as being shallow and stupid. I wonder what people expect. How deep thoughts do you think a vinyl head with nothing but a bit of hair stuck inside of it can produce? When kids play games, do they really follow the narrations the toy company laid out? Seriously, if they do, there’s something wrong with them, and it’s not the company. It’s not Barbie’s (or Mattel’s) duty to come up with deep thoughts; it’s the player’s responsibility to create personality for the doll. This is where imagination comes in. If you didn’t have it