After years of criticism that Barbie has unrealistic proportions and sets an impossible standard of beauty for girls to attain, Barbie dolls are getting a body makeover.
“It’s going to create a conversation,” Oklahoma Christian University Professor of Psychology and Family Studies Tina Winn said. “It provides an alternate image to choose other images that aren’t just the tall, thin, really tiny waist, very stereotypic image, and then it puts pressure on other companies to do similar things.”
Mattel announced its newest line of Barbie dolls on its website last Thursday, including curvy, petite and tall Barbie. The announcement was also featured in a TIME magazine article featuring the headline, “Now can we stop talking about my body?”
Oklahoma Christian junior Tori Treat said that although she did not recognize it when she was a child, playing with Barbie influenced her definition of beautiful.
“Even if I didn’t realize it when I was that young, it put into my mind this is what beauty is,” Treat said. “If I don’t look like this Barbie then I’m not beautiful.”
Treat, along with fellow junior Katelynn Maternowski, helped organize a true beauty campaign called “I Am Enough” last year to help girls combat the ideas of beauty that media reinforce.
Along with the modeling industry, social media images and actresses, Barbie dolls have also been revealed to influence young girls’ standards of beauty. A showed that young girls who play with the original Barbie doll possess a low body satisfaction and desire to be thinner.
Winn said that Barbie has the power to influence self-perception and beauty ideals.
“Certainly Barbie and other media images form early on a framework for what we judge ourselves against,” Winn said. “That is what is put before us as beauty, and then we compare ourselves to that, but so much of it is unattainable; it’s not even realistic.”
According to Treat, the perceptions of beauty that Barbie creates can remain with previous Barbie owners throughout their lives.
“I remember when I was little I would always play with Barbies, and they were typically always blonde and had straight hair and they were very tall and very thin,” Treat said. “For me, that was not what I looked like at all.”
In an effort to eliminate negativity towards Barbie and the doll’s influence on young girls, Mattel is now making Barbie dolls with four body types, seven different skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles.
Despite a large number of negativity towards Barbie, some people, like Oklahoma Christian freshman Julia Sandoval, say that Barbie’s influence is small compared to what critics make it out to be.
“I think there are more things on TV and magazines, such as real people like the Kardashians that make themselves look a certain way,” Sandoval said. “That’s what little girls are seeing more of than Barbie.”
According to Winn, Barbie cannot be the only image criticized for influencing an ideal body image among young girls, because there is a variety of media images that together impact the idea of what is considered beautiful.
“I think that you can’t just say Barbie,” Winn said. “I think the Barbie image adds to other images that get reinforced throughout life. Barbie, along with a lot of other media images together is what creates an impression.”
Although people disagree over whether or not Barbie dolls cause low self-esteem among their owners, Winn said that Mattel’s effort to reinforce new ideas of beauty is a good idea.
“Even if it doesn’t necessarily change everybody’s image, it might even on a smaller scale give females a greater sense of variety,” Winn said. “There are different bodies and different bodies are beautiful.”
Treat also said that although young Barbie owners may not recognize it, being exposed to a variety of Barbie body images can subconsciously affect their perceptions of beauty.
“I don’t think it will consciously affect them,” Treat said. “But I think it will cause them to realize that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, you don’t have to look a specific way to be beautiful and you can embrace your own body and your own characteristics, because that is beautiful.”
The new line of Barbie dolls is now available on Mattel’s website and will be available in stores March 1.
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