Barbie and My Feminist Guilt

I love Barbies. I know this goes against all of my feminist ideals. But I do. I have all of my old Barbie dolls from when I was a kid, although most of them are sporting very odd haircuts nowadays. (I was a prodigious child hair stylist.) I still occasionally collect Barbies. When we were first married, Dan used to buy the collector dolls for me as Christmas and birthday presents until he realized he could buy me CDs and Wii video games (that he secretly wanted for himself) instead.

I don't think Barbie gave me unrealistic body image expectations. But, unlike many young girls, I also didn't have a mother or friends who badgered me about my weight. In fact, the one time I complained about my weight and started showing any sign of self-pity, my mother sent me to volunteer at the Salvation Army.

"You want to feel sorry for yourself?" my mom said as she dropped me off at the downtown headquarters. "I'll show you. There are many more people in this world worse off than you."

I always thought the Barbie doll was kind of funny-looking anyway. As a girl who went through puberty kind of early, the last thing I wanted were boobs as big as Barbie's. Besides, I just wanted to do her hair.

According to a recent report on what Barbie would really look like, Barbie's head would be very large, and her ankles and feet would be so small that they would be unable to support the rest of her body. She would have to walk on all fours.

This is probably not what most men would want, and I'm guessing most women would not want this either.

I am much more concerned about the images we see in the media, in fashion magazines, on TV, in movies, and especially in male-targeted publications like Playboy and Penthouse. Society is inundated daily with these illusions that negatively impact a woman's self-worth and give men false perception of how the female body is supposed to look.

Recently, a 3-D replica of Barbie was created via Photoshop to better resemble an average-size woman, specifically in this case, a nineteen-year-old woman.

I know I just spent this whole blog post insisting that I love Barbie dolls and that Barbie did not negatively impact my body image. But I'm also not so set in my Barbie-loving ways to embrace a change. If a Barbie with a more realistic body can have a positive impact on female self-image, especially in young girls, then why not?

I probably would have loved a more realistic-looking Barbie doll too, as long as she still had hair I could cut off.

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