Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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I'm so glad women don't actually look like Barbie Dolls, that's all I can say.

THANK GOODNESS!

i dont know, i think barbie was a wonderful role (along with many other brilliant woman) for me growing up in the 80's, she always had a good job, a good man, she was independent,,
i dont know of any of my friends, or their children now, i dont know anyone who looks or looked at barbie as a physical ideal or even something to look up to, maybe the clothes, but thats fashion.
i think kids arent given the benefit of doubt that we were, kids are treated with cotton wool. Barbie's a doll, a toy, a plaything not an agenda!!
 

My daughter plays with Barbie dolls, and I prefer them to  Bratz dolls.
Until there is a product out there that represents normal women, then
that's what I work with.  For what it's worth, I never had a Barbie doll
growing up, and I still wound up bulimic.  All I needed to look toward
was advertising, and my peers.  Blaming toys simplifies the problem.

I always thought, as an adult, that giving a child Barbies was probably a bad idea, since that portarays an unrealistic ideal as a normal aesthetic.  As a kid, I had over 50 Barbies.  I had 2 plastic tubs worth and lots of pink plastic homemaking equipment.  But when I'd play with the neighbor girl, we didn't talk about losing weight, boys, or how hard math was.  We'd take the dolls and play out things we didn't understand about adulthood.  Our dolls had "sex"--(naked smooching), fought violently--(even though we were told not to hit), and didn't eat their plastic food--(even though they were already perfect).   It was never something to live up to, but instead a way for us to vicariously live out scenarios vicariously through dolls from the perspective of an 8 year old.  But then again, maybe seeing Barbie naked was why I have hated my body since I was 11.

I don't worry that Barbies, Bratz, or the stuffed Barney dinosaur my daughter has dressed in drag will harm her self esteem. It's what she does and how we react to it that can cause more damage.

I guess I'm the odd woman out here. I played with Barbie till about the age of seven, and then I got bored. She was never more than a doll to me, and I never thought about her as something I wanted to be. She wasn't real. I was. I compared myself to her and saw all the differences, and where those differences existed, I considered her imperfect and unrealistic.
But I think that's just me. I've always had a strong sense of self and grew up very confused as to why everyone around me was so easy to fool.
I don't think Barbie is bad. I think it's important to teach my daughter to laugh at the impossibilities of Barbie and treat the doll more as a satire, though, because I recognize how damaging it can be to have such unattainable, and unhealthy, goals. I know that girls worry about being pretty enough, about being normal, and about being thought well of by their peers. I know how important those things are to most growing girls. But instead of trying to get rid of the poor role models these girls choose, why can't we instead find a way to teach them self respect, self love, and confidence, so as to be impervious to Barbie and others of her ilk?

how deeply disappointing that so many people underestimate the power of the subliminal effects of playing with an impossible role model... of course, the effect of a barbie doll pales into insignificance when compared to the power of media, which again fades proportionally next to the attitudes learned from watching our parents and other close adults during childhood. Which actually brings it full circle. A little girl given a Barbie doll by her parents subconsciously assumes that it is exactly the image her parents advocate.

First of all, that "real life" Barbie looks stupid as heck. Am I missing something? A real life barbie should look the same as a regular one, but blown up proportionately to adult human height. It looks like someone attempted this but did not make the proper measurements... and took a "My-Sized Barbie" head and put it on top even though it looks ridiculously too small. Maybe Barbies have changed since I played with them in the 90s, but this is all wrong.

Children don't view things the way we do. They don't see a (90s) Barbie's oddly distended chest and weird pointy feet and think, "Why am I not like that? I'm going to go anorexic." I remember what I thought. "These feet look dumb... I'm going to chew on them. OH! Bath time! I'm gonna take Barbie and Rubber Duck into the tub and Barbie will be a mermaid and Duck will be the submarine and my knees will be the islands ..." and so on.

You know what hurt far more as a child? My goddamn parents telling me I was chubby, dumpy, or ugly. That I needed to watch what I ate. That I shouldn't get dessert as often as my brothers because I had the chub. Honestly, I was pretty normal for my height, and that only improved as I had some growth spurts, but it's quite a lucky feat that my parents didn't give me a complex.

Another thing that gets me going-- separating interests or activities into girl and boy appropriate categories. Ugh! Somehow this just all bothers me. We women are so darn fragile that we need to have everything boxed up to us safely or we'll fall apart emotionally. We can't show our girls Barbies or they'll grow up broken. We need to have a freaking campaign against Barbies to protect our youth.

Barbie is skinny because that makes her cheaper to make, and when your making millions while bringing them all into a price range that's afordable, and where you can also make money, that's very important.  

Action man doesn't have that cost cutting advantage. so Barbie dolls are more profitable. If we didn't have this fixation with one type of beauty Barbie would be the very slim elegant doll and other dolls would be different shapes and sizes. I agree having one Barbie as a role model of normality is subliminal pressure on everyone who doesn;t grow up slim. These subliminal influences are very important.

Haha, "These feet look dumb... I'm going to chew on them!" I can relate, lol. Hilarious.

Honestly... Calling Barbie "toxic" is rather far for me, but I guess it's because I a: saw this skinny white woman and knew that I would never look like her, no matter what I did and b: knew that it was a doll... I've never had major body image issues. Sometimes I think that, no matter what a girl is told or what she's exposed to, she can still be completely damaged when it comes to body image because she still can form her own opinions about her own body. I've heard the "Ah, everyone told me I was beautiful and I was healthy, but I still ended up anorexic," story a million times. It's rarely just "I wanted to look like (insert skinny person's name here)."

I'm not downplaying the possible effects of having such a perfect doll, but Barbie? Really?! A doll that does nothing but what you want it to... We're going to attack that? I just think that if I ever have a daughter, communication is the best I can do. Banning Barbies from our house because it may make her anorexic (or distort her body image) is extreme. I would blame myself as a parent WAY before I would blame some piece of molded plastic that can't encourage, love, and guide her.

I think barbie is a really wonderful role model for young girls. She has a good job, somone she loves and makes her happy, friends, and a good relationship with her sister. I dont think it matters if shes correctly porportioned to an actual woman, shes a toy. It isn't the responsability of the makers of barbie to shape young women's minds, it is the responsability of their caretakers. You need to teach your children to love themselves and their bodies. 

why is Galia Slayen concerned about her own 'poor body image'  she's HOT.