Barbie

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

For many, beauty and fashion are indelibly linked. With regard to fashion, the Barbie doll has been consistently in style. From the first Barbie dolls, Mattel took care to dress them in detailed, fashionable attire. In the early years, Barbie doll fashions reflected French designs, but as fashion trends shifted to other areas, the attire for the Barbie doll mimicked the changes. In the early 1970s, for example, the Barbie doll wore Mod clothes akin to those popularized by fashion model Twiggy. And throughout the years, gowns and glamorous accessories for gala events have always been available to the Barbie doll. Some observers note that the fashions of the Barbie doll trace fashion trends perfectly since 1959. While critics complain about the use of waifish runway models who do not represent "average" female bodies, they also complain about the Barbie doll's size. Some have criticized the dimensions of the Barbie doll as portraying an unattainable ideal of the female shape. Various magazines have reported the dimensions the Barbie doll would have if she were life-sized (39-18-33) and have noted that a real woman with Barbie doll dimensions would be unable to menstruate. Charlotte Johnson, the Barbie doll's first dress designer, explained to M.G. Lord in Forever Barbie that the doll was not intended to reflect a female figure realistically, but rather to portray a flattering shape underneath fashionable clothes. According to Lord, Johnson "understood scale: When you put human-scale fabric on an object that is one-sixth human size, a multi-layered cloth waistband is going to protrude like a truck tire around a human tummy. ... Because fabric of a proportionally diminished gauge could not be woven on existing looms, something else had to be pared down--and that something was Barbie's figure."

Despite the practical reasons for the dimensions of the Barbie doll, the unrealistic dimensions of the doll have brought the strongest criticism regarding the doll's encouragement of an obsession with weight and looks. In one instance, the Barbie doll's accessories supported the criticism. The 1965 "Slumber Party" outfit for the Barbie doll came complete with a bathroom scale set to 110 pounds and a book titled How to Lose Weight containing the advice: "Don't Eat." The Ken doll accessories, on the other hand, included a pastry and a glass of milk. Convinced of the ill effects of playthings with negative images on children, Cathy Meredig of High Self Esteem Toys developed a more realistically proportioned doll in 1991. She believed that "if we have enough children playing with a responsibly proportioned doll that we can raise a generation of girls that feels comfortable with the way they look," according to the Washington Post. Her "Happy To Be Me" doll, which looked frumpy and had uneven hair plugs, did not sell well, however. The Barbie doll was introduced with a modified figure in 1999.

Throughout the years, the Barbie doll has had several competitors, but none have been able to compete with the glamour or the comprehensiveness offered by the Barbie doll and its accessories. The Barbie doll offers children an imaginary world of individual success and, as witnessed by the pink aisle in most toy stores, an amazing array of props to fulfill children's fantasies. By the early 1980s, the Barbie doll also offered these "opportunities" to many diverse ethnicities, becoming available in a variety of ethnic and racial varieties. Although sometimes criticized for promoting excessive consumerism, the Barbie doll and its plethora of accessories offer more choices for children to play out their own fantasies than any other toy on the market.