I remember when I was young there was this big hoo-ha about what aspirations to emulate Barbie would do to my generation.
It was suddenly pointed out that if Barbie were a real woman she would be something like six foot tall with a 48" bust and 18" waist.
Obviously the world is now peppered with women sporting silicon breasts, inflated lips (like someone just peeled them off a window somewhere), slightly overtight face lifts for that permanent plastic-injection-surprise look and the essential bottle blonde hair extensions. The harbingers of doom were bang on the money with their predictions this time.
Still, I doubt the Pamela Anderson types want me to feel sorry for them or indeed to have any opinion at all on what is a public display of 'private' emotions.
Fine.
What really worries me is the current incarnation of Barbie - not the doll, but the computer graphics version in the many videos and DVDs seemingly swamping the market and also taking over the satellite movie channels.
Have you seen even an advert for Fairytopia or Swan Lake or the like? Here's the latest one, 'The 12 Dancing Princesses'. Look at Barbie's arms, compared to those of other female figures in the same picture.
In order to escape the image of a huge breasted bimbo, yet keep as much of the proportion as possible, Barbie's mammaries have slimmed down but so, it seems, has the rest of her. Callista Flockhart and Terri Hatcher have nothing on this pixellated princess, who seems like the pro-ana goddess for the under fives.
Its all horribly, terribly wrong; just watch and wait.
Oh and if you're of a mind you could also complain and/or pray. Hard.
8 comments:
That is just shameful. They have replaced an unreal image with a deadly one.
I clicked on the link but it the whole thing squicked me out so badly that I couldn't watch it through ... . I agree wholeheartedly with your point, though :/.
How lovely. Coke fiends, all of them, for sure.
Pickles carries all her dolls around by the hair. That's what they get for being so light.
I suspect the new figure comes from the fact that these are usually ballet related videos, and ballerinas are not supposed to have boobs. In fact, there was a recent case where a ballerina was fired, and she claimed it was because of a change in her chest measurements!
My 7 year old will probably want to see this video, but I doubt if it will effect her thinking much. This is the same kid who recently informed her papa that she was one day going to have "big breasts like mommy". Where she came up with that, I do not know, but obviously it wasn't from the Barbie videos!
All the Barbies must be bulimic or on the crack diet. Step away from the pipe Barbie.
Sometimes I think I was very lucky to grow up without these kinds of images around me. I didn't have (or even know) Barbie, we had no TV, no magazines, and really, come to think of it, no body image. My body was just there. I didn't know it was supposed to be a certain shape or size.
I still find it pretty hard to get excited about it. Maybe that lack of conditioning helped.
What are they thinking? Really?
My son told me last year that he was alright just the way he was because his school councilor said so.
I reminded him that I always told him the same thing, and he reminded me that I'm his mom, and that doesn't count so much, because mom's have to be encouraging.
I hug his councilor every time I see her.
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