Barbie Doll Essay

Barbie dolls are a bad influence on girls:
Imagine being the most perfect women, even if you aren’t a women! She has perfect, long, luscious hair, perfect bright eyes with a sparkle and a ‘skinny’ body weighing only 35 kilograms. Well, I am talking about the most beloved, child favourite, beautiful and ‘perfect’ doll… the Barbie doll.
The Barbie doll was first introduced in 1959 by a women called Ruth Handler with the Mattel Company. She had watched her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls and wanted to give her a 3D doll, so she could have a ‘teen fashion icon’. The first ever Barbie released had both brown or blonde hair and blue eyes. She had the perfect hips, perfect figure, perfect boyfriend and perfect house, basically perfect everything. But how was this doll affecting the millions of girls around the world playing with her?
Probably every girl in this class has owned at least one Barbie doll. You have probably dressed her up, brushed out her hair and imagined her fabulous life. The average girl plays with the Barbie doll when she is about 5-11 and has at least 10. The Barbie doll has not had the best impact on girls. Sure the Barbie Doll has been a good role model but her first job was to show young girls how pretty and popular she is.
Nowadays there’s heaps of pressure on young girls to dress, look and act proper. The Barbie doll was the one to start these trends. When young girls see this perfect doll they are getting influenced and want to naturally be like Barbie which can lead to eating disorders and getting anorexic.
A research conducted by ‘rehabs.com’ in late 2013 says that 4 out of 5 10 year old girls say that they are afraid of being fat and 42% of girls from year 1 to year 3 think they are fat and wish to become thinner. These girls believe that to have a good and happy life they have to get the skinny look like Barbie.
In 1965 Mattel came out with ‘slumber party Barbie’ which came with a book titled ‘How to lose weight’. The advice inside this book was ‘don’t eat’. The slumber set also came with a measuring scale set to 110 pounds permanently which is about 50 kilograms, but of course after this came out Barbie sales dropped drastically so they had to come out and say that they would try to give Barbie a more realistic look.
Weight is not the only reason why I believe that the Barbie is a bad influence for girls. If Barbie was a real women she wouldn’t be able to do anything like a normal human being. She has so many unrealistic features. If Barbie was a real women she would be forced to walk on all fours like a dog. Imagine being a women with that body and trying to get around. It would be basically impossible. She would physically not be able to lift her own head of the ground. She would be 6 feet tall, have a 99cm bust and the hips of a pre-pubescent boy. Instead of trying to have a healthy, average weighted body girls are trying to emulate a thin and under-weight body.
Barbie always displays a perfect appearance. Hair, makeup, clothes, flawless skin… everything. This encourages young girls to spend

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