Barbie is NOT a Role Model for Young Girls

Barbie is an haute couture doll introduced in March 1959 by the American toy firm Mattel, Inc. Mattel reportedly manufactured over a billion Barbie dolls, marking it the corporation's most successful and biggest product. Barbie is the face of a Mattel doll and accessory line. Barbie and her beau Ken have been hailed as the biggest and most popular dolls.

According to my research, the concept of Barbie started when a woman named Ruth Handler noticed her daughter, Barbara Handler, playing with paper dolls. In the 1950s, newborns dominated the figure or image of children's toy dolls, and Handler's daughter loved giving her dolls adult roles. History went on and I appreciate the fact that a woman came up with a new idea during that time that will help a younger audience deal with a much bigger picture.

My childhood, as a girl, was not filled with barbies and ponies. I was not that kind of kid who deals with stuff like that. I was more into computers and I was, kind of, proud with myself that I was introduced to that kind of area because it helped me deal with a lot of things up until adulthood. I had dolls before if I'm right with my thinking, but it wasn't Barbie dolls. My mother really informed me that I was more interested in the things that other guys liked, such as toy vehicles and firearms, which I honestly don't understand how I ever acquired. And because I don't particularly like weapons, they are indeed not a part of my life. When I watch action movies or television shows, they don't have a lot of appeal to me. Additionally, I detest automobiles and would never consider driving one if I ever had one. Most likely, I would just pay someone to drive one for me.

Nevertheless, I frequently observe my younger cousin—the second girl in our generation from my mother's side—playing with dolls. That's OK with me, but as you get older and see things like this and how kids play them, you start to realize a lot of things. Though most are negative, some could be favorable.

Barbie has a certain "standard". It's like an image-like standard. I mean, if you are going to build a doll that is Barbie-like, it has to follow an image. It can't be fat, it has to be slim. It can't be ugly, it has to be beautiful, whatever type of beauty you are picturing. It has to be a little bit tall, compared to being short. It is well-groomed and always wears "formal" outfits, not clothes that look like rugs. As always, it must be perfect from all angles.

The only problem with Barbie is that it creates a standard to the point that we think that if a real-life girl is not like Barbie, she is automatically downgraded.

It has historically been known that the Barbie doll has a significant impact on girls' self-awareness and problems with body image. And it probably created more problems than solving ones. As time pass by, people's knowledge when it comes to beauty is also widened to both positive and negative. Media platforms and beauty ideals are connected in some way. Since there are a lot of social media sites and a lot of people using them, there are instances that people create a majority standard. For example, Instagram is known for a wide variety of "beautifully conceptualized" photos. And whenever people on that platform post a photo, it has to be sexy or just meet the standard of a "good" photo. A good photo means a Barbie Doll photo. I also often see men in trunks who are Ken-like. But don't get me wrong, I don't have problems with these people. I have problems with people seeing those types of bodies as the "good" ones, making other people insecure and making other people judge other types of bodies.

We have all been brought up with various ideas and viewpoints on what constitutes beautiful. The perception of beauty is simply a shifting benchmark of what really signifies being beautiful and is dependent on the cultural ideas of feminine beauty that seem to be dominant. When nothing is absolutely perfect, girls are expected to embody this "image of perfection." When some boys can't be due to flaws in their physical or psychological structure, boys are expected to be tough.

We don't know what other people are going through, so stop judging them just because you created a world where everybody has to meet a standard so they can be considered as beautiful.