Barbies and Disney and Vogue! Oh my!

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 5^th 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.

Social Media, Performance and Self Identity

It is both hilarious and depressing how fervently facebook plugs dating sites to me

While perusing the interweb I came across this fascinating article on The Atlantic looking at personal identity asperformance. The article discusses the work of social psychologist Sam Gosling who looks at the ways in which people fill their spaces with personal possessions and tries to determine what insights these items can give into people’s personalities.

Gosling has determined that some items act as ‘conscious identity claims’ – things we actively choose based on how we want other people to perceive us (artwork or books we display, the clothes we wear). Some items are ‘feeling regulators’ – sentimental items or souvenirs that meet a personal emotional need (photos of loved ones, holiday souvenirs). Finally, some items are ‘unconscious behavioural residue’ – hints we leave behind inadvertently (an obsessively organised bookshelf might hint at compulsive behaviour). These conscious and unconscious cues, when observed as a whole, reveal something about the person who left them.

This reminds me of Goffman’s seminalsociology text, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which argues that all social interactions are essentially performances. These performances are made of two aspects: the expressions that we give (symbols, verbal or otherwise, that admittedly convey information), and the expressions that we give off (unconscious actions that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor).

 

Goffman’s book was published in 1959, which limits it predominantly to face-to-face interaction (how quaint!), but Gosling’s research also covers the online world. We use cues to infer things about a person on social media in exactly the same way as we do in person. For example, Gosling found in his research that those who scored highly on the extroversion scale via personality tests had more facebook friends. So if you encounter someone on facebook with thousands of friends, it’s probably safe to infer that they are socially competent and confident individuals. Looking at Gosling and Goffman’s work in tandem, we can conclude that our social media presence is also a performance. We carefully curate what photos we post and what amusing buzzfeed links we share to put across a certain persona to anyone who encounters our profile.

But for whom are we performing? Goffman argues that we perform for ourselves just as much as we perform for others. Individuals perform even when there is no audience because it affirms our sense of identity. For example, in some mental hospitals in America, unclaimed deceased patients may be given elaborate funerals. This performance is carried out for the benefit of those partaking in the ceremony, proving to themselves that they are the kinds of people who observe standards of civility. We do not think of this as a performance, we are not purposefully trying to manipulate others or ourselves. As Goffman explains, people “sincerely believe that the definition of the situation they habitually project is the real reality.”

Combining Goffman and Gosling therefore suggests that facebook is as much a performance for ourselves as it is for others. The friend counter on our profiles not only shows other people how cool and popular we are, it is affirmation for ourselves that we have friends. A studyfrom the journal, Media Psychology, has shown that people receive a significant self-esteem boost when looking at their own facebook profile compared to looking at the profile of a stranger. This study supports the idea that facebook is a performance and that we are its intended audience just as much as our friends and internet creepers.

The author of The Atlantic article, Jennifer Oullette, says that, “our profiles have become gigantic identity claims.” But Oullette’s observation doesn’t go far enough. Our facebook profiles may indeed be identity claims but it’s important to remember to whom these identity claims are directed.

Is Smog Egalitarian? Chinese State Media Seems to Think so

China as depicted by Disney World - it may be fake but at least my lungs are safe...

There’s been a lot of news coverage recently of the terrible pollution problem being endured in a number of Chinese cities. On 6 December, the highest possible health warning for Shanghai was issued, with pollution levels reaching 20 times what the UN deems safe for humans to breathe in. Flights were cancelled, children were forced indoors and visibility was reduced to mere metres.

To put a merry spin on this epic public health crisis, CCTV, the state television network, has published a column outlining five ‘unexpected gains’ brought by the smog. These include: smog has united the public against a common enemy, it’s given the nation time to reflect on the consequences of its economic boom and, my personal favourite, everyone’s sense of humour is coming out as people turn to jokes and sarcasm to deflect from the crisis. Western media outlets are finding the whole list a bit hilarious since it seems somewhat absurd to think that health-ravishing haze is improving Chinese people’s English-language skills (number five on the list).

Out of all the points though, for me, the most interesting was number two: the suggestion that air pollution is a great equalizer, poisoning the lungs of both the rich and the poor. The idea that massive environmental catastrophes are egalitarian is one that I’ve encountered numerous times, most notably in the work of esteemed sociologist, Ulrich Beck. However despite this argument being quite widespread, it’s also incorrect.

In Beck’s renowned book, Risk Society, he defines the current late modern age as one in which human and technological productivity has led to the reduction of material need. However the growing productive forces of modernisation have also unleashed new hazards and potential threats. The threats that characterise late modernity are things such as radioactivity, toxins and pollutants that evade human perception. They cause systematic, geographically dispersed harm but are mainly invisible. So, for example, while a volcanic eruption is a highly visible and localised event, radiation is invisible and its effects far-reaching.

In agreement with the Chinese television network, Beck also argues that late modern risks are egalitarian. As he pithily surmises: “poverty is hierarchic, smog is democratic.” Smog clouds don’t distinguish between rich lungs and poor lungs, they poison each equally. Beck concedes that wealth and class do play a part in the distribution of risks. For example, risks from radiation and toxic chemicals are connected to working in industrial plants, work associated with the lower classes. However, ultimately, the risks of late modernity are unavoidable irrespective of class due to their invisibility and their wide reach.

Beck makes a good point that working in certain industries will increase your exposure to risks and that these occupations tend to be dominated by the lower social classes. However I think Beck understates the ability of wealth to mitigate risk. Beck argues that, “in the water supply all the social strata are connected to the same pipe.” But what about all the rich people who can buy and import bottled water? Or all the rich people who can move away from areas with toxins in the water or pollutants in the air or encroaching sea levels, living instead in plush chalets on idyllic mountain-sides? And while it’s true that smog poisons the rich and poor equally, the rich can afford significantly better healthcare and thus the consequences of the smog are reduced. Not only are risks not evenly distributed but their consequences are not universally endured either.

I realise that the CCTV column is just a light-hearted attempt to bring some optimism to a grave situation but by describing environmental disasters as egalitarian, it absolves the originators of risks of their responsibility. The late modern, Western world creates most of the world’s pollution and yet it’s the poorer countries that are paying for it. While America and Europe unthinkingly pumps CO2 into the air, Bangladesh and Thailand are struggling to cope with ever-rising sea levels and increasingly catastrophic natural disasters. Describing environmental catastrophes as equalisers suggests that we all bear equal burden for resolving the disaster but it’s the wealthy, polluting nations that are creating the risks and therefore they should be the ones striving to nullify them.

Role Models

I recently read a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which stated that young women in the US were now significantly outperforming young men in education. For example, by 25-years-old, 30% of women have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 22% for men. 

Bloomberg Businessweek have an interesting (and short) article in which DiPrete, a sociology professor at Columbia University, suggests a few reasons to explain this performance gap. One of his points suggests that, “unlike young women, many young men try to emulate their fathers or grandfathers, who succeeded in blue-collar jobs without college educations.” Since these jobs don’t exist anymore, this ‘echo of an older generation’ could potentially prove to be a hindrance to men’s eventual success (since college graduates still have better employment, health, and marriage prospects).

In the ‘90s, numerous sociologists started writing about modernity and the ‘modern’ society, characterised largely by the breakdown of traditional structures such as religion, class, the nuclear family and gender roles. In Beck’s Risk Society, he talks about a “social transformation within modernity” which has resulted in people being “set free from the social forms of industrial society.” This detraditionalisation brought about a surge of individualism. Rather than following the path expected of them based on their membership of a particular class, religious group or gender, individuals were now expected to forge their own, unique path.

While this freedom from traditional life-paths was in many ways liberating, it was also disorienting. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, in their book Individualisation, explain how routines and traditional institutions “have an unburdening function which renders individuality and decision-making possible.” By removing the structures of tradition and routine, individuals are left with a bewildering number of options; choice becomes stressful and encumbering rather than freeing.

This burden is, according to these sociologists, exacerbated for women. Young men can look to their fathers and grandfathers as role models for how to forge a life-path through education and career. However for young women, whose mothers and grandmothers were restricted to the house or low-level professions, they are faced with a bewildering world of choice with few individuals to offer a road map. Young women have to make their own projects and work out their own ideas about the future, with little support from any role model.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim were writing in the ‘90s so it’s interesting to read this Bloomberg article and consider that perhaps the lack of role models has in fact been more beneficial for women than sociologists assumed 20 years ago. Lacking in professional role models, young women have turned to education in an attempt to improve their chances in a baffling world of choice. It will be interesting to see whether women’s increasing success in education translates to increasing success in the workplace.

Bibliography

Beck U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage

Beck U and Beck-Gernsheim E (2002) Individualization, London: Sage

Going Dutch

During my three years as an undergraduate student I was not once asked out on a date, leading me to come to the conclusion that I was to live my life as some crazy hermit. I had even started picking out names for the hundreds of cats I was inevitably going to acquire. I was thus taken a bit by surprise when I moved to London just over a year ago and suddenly found myself the regular recipient of dinner invitations (probably facilitated by the fact that I was now taking a Masters course that was over 80% male). However while one would expect this turn of events to be warmly welcomed, I instead find myself getting frustrated on a regular basis due to altercations when it comes to paying the bill. When eating out with friends, paying the bill is a relatively simple affair with the total amount being split equally between the diners. This seems a perfectly sensible and efficient way of divvying up a bill and I am left perplexed as to why the men I have dated this last year have been so belligerently averse to such a system.

At the end of almost every date I go on, I am left fighting over the bill. I am frequently surprised with just how irate my date gets during these disputes. On one particular occasion, when I insisted that I pay for my own food, my date replied that he gets offended when a girl wants to pay for her bill. This sentiment particularly irked me; he’s allowed to be offended when a woman offers to pay, but when a man offers to pay I’m supposed to feel grateful? Why am I not allowed to be offended?

I always insist on paying for my half of the bill. Often the man responds by saying that he’s ‘old-fashioned’ (which I have come to realise is code for chauvinist and backwards) and that he considers it gentlemanly to pay the bill. But a man paying the bill for a woman is not gentlemanly. Frankly, it is somewhat insidious. Reading any anthropology or sociology text on reciprocity makes it pretty clear that nothing comes for free. When someone pays for you, you are then bound to that person. You don’t have to repay that person immediately but there is an obligation of reciprocity inherent in any seeming ‘gift’. In Mauss’ eponymous study on exchange, he argues that while gifts appear voluntary, “in fact they are given and repaid under obligation.” Gift-giving forms relationships that join people to each other. As an example, he discusses the Maori concept of hau, the ‘spirit’ of a gift which creates a link between the giver and the receiver. If the gift is not reciprocated, the spirit will make the receiver ill.

Like Mauss, Malinowski emphasises the importance of reciprocity in his analysis of the Kula of the Trobriand Islands. Kula (literally meaning ‘ring’) is a form of exchange linking islands and communities in an unbreakable circuit. Soulava, long necklaces made from red shells, and mwali, bracelets made from white shells, are constantly exchanged in opposite directions around the circuit. The Kula serves many purposes: it fosters inter-tribal cooperation; facilitates trade; cements social hierarchies; and denotes personal honour. The exchange of soulava and mwali forms a “lifelong relationship,” which ”implies various mutual duties.”

Some may argue that I am overreacting with my opposition to having my meals paid for by a man. But these studies, and others like them, demonstrate that reciprocity, and the links it creates between individuals, is a powerful social force that may lead women into future actions that they are not comfortable with. A university friend of mine was once given a highly sought-after ticket to a ball by a male friend and her first comment was, “oh great… now I’m going to have to have sex with him.”

I don’t mind being treated every once in a while and I don’t think that the men I have dated over the last year were necessarily trying to entrap me into some future promise of sex. But constantly being paid for is degrading and humiliating. Healthy relationships require an equal distribution of power and this is impossible when one individual is indebted to another.

Bibliography

Malinowski B (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, George Routledge & Sons, Ltd

 Mauss M (1950) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge