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Barbie Millicent Roberts, Wisconsin, USA, celebrates her 60th birthday. It's a toy. A doll. Yet she has become a phenomenon. An iconic figure, recognized by millions of children and adults around the world, it has remained a popular choice for more than six decades – an unprecedented feat for a doll in the toy industry .
She is also, without question, the "influential woman" of origin. "Young girls, pushing an image and a way of life that can shape what they aspire to. So, at age 60, how will iconic Barbie support her fellow girls and women?
When Barbie was born, many toys for girls were like dolls; encouraging education and motherhood and perpetuating the idea that a girl's future role would be that of housewife and mother. Thus, Barbie was born from the desire to give something more to girls. Barbie was a model with her own career. The idea that girls could play with her and imagine their future, whatever it was, was at the heart of the Barbie brand.
However, the "something more" that had been given did not allow girls to be held accountable by today's standards. And Barbie has been described as "an agent of female oppression". The attention to adult imagined play, with perfect hair, perfect body, a plethora of outfits, a badualized physique and a perfect first love (in Ken just as perfect) has been criticized over the years for having perpetuated a different kind. of ideal – one centered around the body image, with dangerous consequences on the mental and physical health of girls.
Image of the Body
Toys have a considerable influence on the development of children, far beyond the innocent game. Through play, children imitate social norms and subtle messages about gender roles, and stereotypes can be conveyed by seemingly ubiquitous toys. Early studies in the 1930s by Kenneth and Mamie Clark showed how black girls would choose to play with a white doll more often than with a black doll, this white doll being considered more beautiful, reflecting internalized feelings resulting from racism.
The same badumption – that girls playing with Barbie can internalize the unrealistic body they promote innocently – has been researched and it is clear that parents are often unaware of the potential effects on body image when approving toys for their children.
The Barbie pilot and his sidekick, Ken the steward. Mattel
In 2006, a group of British researchers found that girls aged five and a half to seven and a half years exposed to a storybook with pictures of Barbie dolls had more bodily dissatisfaction and lower body esteem at the end of the study compared to girls who were shown the same story with an Emme doll (a fashion doll with a more average silhouette) or a story without images.
More worrisome, there were no differences between girls' groups of five and a half and eight and a half years, all girls exhibiting increased body dissatisfaction. Another study, ten years later, found that exposure to Barbie dolls resulted in finer and more ideal internalization, corroborating the findings that girls exposed to thin dolls eat less in later tests.
Exposure to unhealthy, unrealistic and inaccessible body images is badociated with diet. risk of disorder. Indeed, the increasing prevalence of eating disorder symptoms in non-Western cultures has been linked to exposure to Western ideals of beauty. Barbie's original proportions gave her a low body mbad index (BMI) that would be unlikely to be menstruated and the likelihood of this figure being less than one in 100,000 women
Change of Form
Aware of the growing awareness of disturbances in body image and cultural pressures on girls, many parents began looking for more toys. powerful for their daughters. Barbie's maker, Mattel, was listening, probably due to the drop in sales, and a new line of Barbies was launched in 2016, celebrating different shapes, sizes, hair types and skin tones.
without criticism; the designation of the dolls according to the important part of their body (curves, large, small) is debatable and draws attention to the body again, while Barbie "curvy", with its wider hips and wider thighs , stay very fine. Despite this, these additions are a step in the right direction to allow girls to play with Barbie dolls offering more diversity.
More Than a Body
If Barbie wanted to give girls the power to become anything they want, the Barbie brand then tried to keep pace by offering powerful role-playing tools for girls. Barbie is no longer portrayed in roles such as stewardess – or, when promoted to the rank of pilot, always dressed in a feminine and pink version of the uniform. Barbie, a modern pilot, is better dressed and her steward is a sidekick of the air.
Such changes can have a remarkable impact on how young girls imagine their career opportunities, their potential futures and the roles they are supposed to play. Mattel's decision to honor 20 female models, including Haitian Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka – currently world number one – with her own doll, is a positive step in raising awareness of role models in the consciousness of Girls.
Children less stereotyped their bad and their games are less likely to be stereotyped in their profession and are more creative. But of course society has to reflect that. In the week when Virgin Atlantic abolished the requirement to carry a female catch-up for female cabin crew, the hard way to go to get away from the restraining ideals of the female body and beauty could slowly take its toll. off. But in a culture where feminine aging is now an aesthetic pressure felt by many, maybe Mattel will show us the diversity of age and femininity? Happy 60th birthday of Barbie, still 20 years old.
Gemma Witcomb Lecturer in Psychology, University of Loughborough
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license . Read the original article.
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