Photo credit: Robert Sabitzer
Last week, Vice President of design for Barbie, Kim Culmone, was interviewed by Fast Company about why Mattel retains
Barbie’s impossible hourglass figure despite decades of criticism. It has been
frequently argued that Barbie’s dimensions set an extreme body standard which
little girls can never achieve, thus undermining their self-esteem and making
them susceptible to eating disorders. Culmone responds to criticism by arguing
that Barbie’s body was never intended to be realistic and was designed in such
a way primarily to be easily dressed and undressed. Her design is apparently purely
functional.
The interview isn’t particularly
sensational: Culmone’s answers seem reasonable enough and Fast Company is
hardly the first website to voice criticisms of Barbie’s figure. And yet the
interview, and the articles it has spawned, has nevertheless left me
contemplating whether or not my most beloved childhood toy has had a lasting
psychological impact.
I loved Barbies as a child. Being a
thoroughly spoiled youngest child, I had nearly a hundred dolls and a
bewildering array of accessories. I had the Dream House, several modes of
transportation and, of course, an incredible collection of clothing. I would
spend hours and hours acting out outrageous stories with my plastic, compliant minions.
So am I crippled with self-esteem issues?
Well I’m a 20-something woman living in a society which places an excessive
amount of importance on the physical characteristics of woman, so of course.
But I don’t blame Barbie for this unfortunate turn of events. As a child I
never once looked at Barbie and wanted to look like her because, you know, she’s
a hunk of plastic. Barbie may be an unrealistic and impossibly proportioned
representation of the female form but that never bothered me as a child because
she’s a doll. I never expected
realism from my toys; a child’s toy chest would be a miserable place if all toys
had to conform to reality.
In fact Barbie’s figure may have been one
of the reasons I loved her so much. More than anything else, what every little
girl wants to be is a grown-up. I always preferred Barbies over all other dolls
because, to me, she seemed the most womanly. Her ample breasts and hips were
clear indicators that she was an adult and not a child. She was a grown, adult
woman, with complicated relationships, a demanding profession (maybe a spy, maybe the president, maybe a ballet dancer, maybe all at once) and an enviable
wardrobe. The stories I wanted to play out required adult characters and Barbie
fit that role perfectly.
The criticisms made against Barbie’s figure
are the same as those made frequently against the Disney heroines and their impossible waistlines. Ariel from The Little Mermaid seems to get picked on the
most in this regard, perhaps because she was the first of the Disney
renaissance princesses or because she spends a considerable amount of the film
showing off her impossible figure in only a bikini top. But, again, I never
once as a child thought that Ariel was a realistic portrayal of a woman because
of course she’s not; she’s a mermaid. The figures of the Disney heroines are
impossible – the same is true of talking crockery, flying horses, pumpkin
carriages, and hyenas capable of learning meticulously choreographed dance
routines.
Womanhood as depicted by Barbie and Disney
has not left my self-esteem in tatters because what they’re depicting is
self-consciously a fantasy – everyone is aware that toys and animated musicals
are not real. But the women on the cover of Vogue, they are flesh and blood; they
are ‘real’. Of course I know on an intellectual level that they have been
airbrushed to the point of impossibility but my immediate emotional reaction to
those glossy images is that the cover model looks fantastic and I probably
didn’t need that 5th Krispy Kreme. The same is true of the models
gliding down the runway in their impeccably tailored couture. Or even the street-style blogs and their constantly updated stream of super skinny (and
overwhelmingly white, but that’s a point for another blog) women seemingly
plucked from the streets in their day-to-day attire. If these living, breathing
women can look so effortlessly fantastic just walking down the street, maybe I
should put in a bit more effort before popping to the corner shop. Street-style
blogs, the runway and Vogue are of course just as much a fantasy as Disney and
Barbie but they masquerade as real and attainable in a way that I just don’t
think Disney and Barbie does.
Of course it’s possible that Disney and
Barbie have had an impact on my self-esteem and I’m just in denial. Research
has been done which shows that Barbie does indeed have an impact on body satisfaction among 5-8 year olds (though I’m not entirely convinced by the
rigorousness of the methodology). If Mattel decided to completely revamp Barbie
to make her more realistically proportioned, then fair play to them. But it
would be naïve to think that such a move would signal a revolution in portrayals
of the female form, ushering in a new age of body acceptance. There are far too
many other sources of negative body images, ones far more powerful than
Mattel’s iconic doll.
