Barbie

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Sara Pendergast

The Barbie doll had become was the doll of choice for little girls to use to imagine their own lives as adults. Just as critics worried about whether toy guns or the violence in popular television shows would make children violent, they began to wonder if (and how) the now ubiquitous Barbie doll influenced children's ideas about womanhood. The doll's characteristics mirrored many aspects of the debates about modern womanhood--it could have any career a child imagined, it could remain single or marry, and it was conventionally beautiful.

Regarding the Barbie doll as a toy to envision an adult life, young mothers, struggling to balance careers and parenthood, wondered if the independent Barbie doll oversimplified the choices available to young women. Without family ties, the doll seemed to deny girls practice at the difficult balancing act their mothers attempted daily. But supporters of the Barbie doll reasoned that just as children could decide whether the Barbie doll would "marry" they could also decide whether the Barbie doll would "have children." That Mattel did not define the doll as a mother or spouse was a gift of imaginative freedom for girls.

As women began to rethink the role of beauty in their lives some became conflicted about how a modern woman should shape or adorn herself to be attractive to the opposite sex and worried that if women obsessed over their looks they would neglect their minds. The Barbie doll, with its attractive face, silky hair, shapely body, and myriad beauty accessories, came under attack as promoting an obsession with "good" looks. Unlike the doll's family ties and career, children could not change the doll's physical attributes. Critics of the doll used the term "Barbie" to describe a beautiful but empty-headed woman. The former Baywatch actress Pamela Lee Anderson personified the struggle women had with regard to beauty and intellect. Anderson, who had dyed her hair blond and enhanced her breasts, resembled a living Barbie doll during her rise to fame. After achieving some success, she made news in 1999 when she removed her breast implants in order to be taken more seriously, according to some sources. Similarly, in the popular television show Ally McBeal, the character Georgia, with her shapely body and flowing blond hair, becomes so frustrated by people referring to her as "Barbie" that she cuts off her hair. Despite the negative connotation of the term "Barbie," some women find the type of beauty represented by the Barbie doll a source of female power and advocate the use of female beauty as an essential tool for success. Some have gone to extremes; a woman named Cindy Jackson, for instance, has had more than 20 operations and has spent approximately $55,000 to mold herself into the image of the Barbie doll. Regardless of the critics' arguments or the extreme cases, however, the number of articles in women and teen's magazines dedicated to beauty issues attest to the continuing cultural obsession with physical beauty.