Deseret News | Girls know Barbie isn't a role model for real life

Reader comments
Marjorie Cortez: Girls know Barbie isn't a role model for real life

history of dolls | 3:25 a.m. March 10, 2009

Dolls used to be little imitation babies that recognised in little girls a budding maternal instinct and desire to nurture.

An 'R' was added to babies and they became barbies.

Barbies came along in 1959 apparently and socialized little girls to want to be big girls who would grow up to be eternal teenagers with lots of different clothes and then boyfriends but not babies. It co-incided with the trend towards married women going to work also, and seems to me now to have represented the change in emphasis from maternalism to materialism.

Again a difference of one letter in a word, but a world of difference in a people.

drenusha | 4:16 a.m. March 10, 2009

I like barbie.She is so beautiful.Bye,bye.KISS.And thanks.hihi.

Lalalaleesa | 6:12 a.m. March 10, 2009

For me, it is the subtler body image effect that Barbie dolls have on girls that is a concern, much more than a lifestyle pursuit of high fashion and high heels. Between Barbie's bodacious curves, and the mostly unrealistic measurements of the Disney princesses, aren't little girls being told - without words - that having pin-up proportions is a requisite for happiness?

Comments continue below

Barbie supporter | 7:56 a.m. March 10, 2009

Thank you, Marjori, for giving a common sense approach to a doll that is simply a toy. Barbie and her friends have brought me hours of enjoyment as they have my daughter. Our self esteem is fine, no matter what our clothing, cars or figures look like. (I don't drive a pink limo) My mother always said that if all of my toys had been played with as much as Barbie was, she would have felt that her money was well spent. If is not Barbie's place to give my daughter a sense of self - it is mine.

Real life | 8:42 a.m. March 10, 2009

I recall that, as a boy, my sisters played with baby dolls that said "MaMa". They were often taken around in toy baby carriages, and treated like the infants in arms that they looked like. Other dolls just looked like little girls.

By the mid to late Sixties teenage girls started to look like big dolls. In Britain they (typical teenage girls) were even called "Dolly" birds.

Today girls, and even older women, often seem to emulate big human painted dolls, at least when they set out to "impress". I think it's all a bit unreal and a bit of a pity.

On the other hand there IS a rival, less contrived, 'look' that is very popular, and as ugly as the other look is unreal. As with the 'look' of many of todays men also, that look is merely the sloppy, I don't care, look.

The dolls under discussion, as has been pointed out, look freakish. I don't know how anyone can regard them as being attractive or sexy. That they are not.

barbara | 9:32 a.m. March 10, 2009

Women used to want a waistline, not because there was a Barbie doll, but because a waistline made them look good. Today, a lot of girls and women apparently want fatty foods and sugar more than a figure eight figure. Also, they don't mind showing the result of their dietary proclivities to the rest of the world. Ugh! Blubbery tires of fat bulge from stretch fabrics and bobble as they walk. Summer is a nightmare of visual assault! We can only imagine what their future health issues will be. Not everyone needs to look like Barbie, but we shouldn't look like Blubby either. And I kind of take exception to the phrase "freak of nature", concerning anyone.

Barbie not roll model? | 2:55 p.m. March 10, 2009

I disagree, barbie is a roll model for one facet of a girls life, that is to fix yourself up and look actractive.

Looks are not insignificant. This is how girls attract mates and in part how they keep them. If families are important, then so is looking good.

@Barbie not role model | 3:32 p.m. March 10, 2009

Well you have a point.

Yet I am sure you are not seven foot tall with a weight of 100 pounds, not both at the same time however.

That is, apparently, what Barbie might be with her dimensions magnified to life size and a liveable weight. Either that or five foot tall with a weight of 60 or 70 pounds.

Objectification | 6:25 p.m. March 10, 2009

For Barbie to be accrete in real life she would actually have to be over 8 feet tall to be proportional. I would say that would warrants a term like a "freak of nature." In terms of needing to look good to attract a man first of all as stated above Barbie would be a poor role modle as she is completely inaccurate secondly why should women be forced to be seen as objects instead of a person to be accepted by a man?

What? | 8:06 p.m. March 10, 2009

You mean not all women have perfect figures and always have money? That's it, I'm moving to Canada where people are funny.

True | 8:32 p.m. March 10, 2009

Barbie is a doll. Superman is real.

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