Deconstructing Barbie
(Continued)

Just before Christmas 2005, however, a team of British researchers announced that many young girls mutilate and torture their Barbie dolls. According to University of Bath researcher Agnes Nairn, “the girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity….The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking, and even microwaving.” The reason, Nairn said, was that girls saw Barbie as childish, an inanimate object instead of a treasured toy.

What’s this? Aggression against the beloved Barbie, the beaming plastic icon of (allegedy) idealized beauty? Could it be that society has misinterpreted how young girls view Barbie? For decades, journalists and social critics have assumed that young girls idolize Barbie dolls, but little actual research has been done on the topic. In the absence of evidence, assumption and speculation ran rampant.

Time magazine columnist Amy Dickinson has no patience with the doll: “Women my age know whom to blame for our own self-loathing, eating disorders and distorted body image: Barbie.” Ophira Edut, in her introduction to Adios Barbie: Young Women Write about Body Image and Identity, tells Barbie (who she describes as having “thighs like number-two pencils”) that the evidence is clear, and the issue is closed: “You’re busted, Babs. You’ve been found guilty of inspiring fourth-grade girls to diet, of modeling an impossible beauty standard, of clinging to homogeneity in a diverse new world.” Another writer suggests that to combat eating disorders and body image issues, we need to “[s]tart by really listening when little girls express their admiration for the grotesque body standard epitomized by the Barbie doll.” Sharlene Hesse-Biber, in her 1996 book Am I Thin Enough Yet? writes that Barbie’s dimensions “include exaggerated breasts, impossibly long legs, nonexistent hips, and a waist tinier than a Victorian lady’s. This is the perfect figure presented to little girls as ‘ideal.’”

Barbie, a cultural icon, is certainly ripe for satire and social criticism. But children have plenty of dolls and toys that don’t rouse the ire and venom of critics the way Barbie does. In 1997 the Women’s Resources and Research Center at the University of California at Davis sponsored a contest and exhibit called “Barbies We Would Like to See,” inviting people to remodel Barbie and “look at the discrepancies between the images of women that Barbie portrays versus the actual lives and appearances of real women.” Socially aware entries included “Anorexia Barbie” and “This Is Not an Invitation to Rape Me Barbie.” Artist Thomas Forsythe also took some creative liberties with Mattel’s bread-and-butter, photographing the nude dolls in blenders and in cocktail glasses. His art, he said, was meant to critique the “objectification of woman” and the “beauty myth” associated with the doll. Mattel, ever protective of their multi-billion dollar property and trademarks, promptly sued Forsythe for infringement; the artist won on appeal in 2003.

Barbie even starred in her own film by Todd Haynes. Haynes is a Hollywood director who also helmed films such as Safe, Poison, and Far From Heaven. But Barbie wasn’t tooling around Malibu in a Corvette with Ken or pouting about how hard math is; she was living the low life as anorexic singer Karen Carpenter. In Haynes’s 1987 film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Barbie dolls were used as the principal actors. Haynes claims that his film was used in schools and clinics as a teaching tool before it was banned for his unauthorized use of The Carpenters songs. (The film is illegal to distribute or sell.) Yet all these artistic snubs and satires are clever only if they are revealing some truth; if they are instead revealing a myth or a misunderstanding, the egg is not on Barbie’s face but those of her critics.

An article by clinical psychologist Liz Dittrich on the Web site About-Face is typical of the information on the Web: “Repeated exposure to the thin ideal via the various media can lead to the internalization of this ideal. It also renders these images achievable and real. Until women are confronted with their own mirror images they will continue to measure themselves against an inhuman ideal. Ninety percent of all girls ages 3 to 11 have a Barbie doll, an early role model with a figure that is unattainable in real life.” The claim is echoed in hundreds of books, Web sites, magazine articles, and television programs.

Yet recent evidence, including the University of Bath study, suggests that the “Barbie ideal” may be a myth. Just because a girl plays with a Barbie doll does not mean she idolizes it or views it as a physical role model. Critics cite statistics such as that if Barbie were real, she couldn’t walk upright, or bear children.

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