According to Kathleen Lawrence, coordinator of the women's studies program at the State University of New York College at Cortland, “Barbie embodies the idea that there is a purpose for women that is, for the most part, wrapped up in being doll-like, being plastic, looking a certain way, being limited to performing certain tasks.” (Navarro).  Most people accept this ideal of beauty and that fantasy can have harmful effects on the emotion and even physical well-being of little girls and eventually adults. She is an unhealthy beauty ideal that no one is able to live up to. Yet society continues to give girls these loaded symbols of beauty, patriarch, and femininity to use as toys. The average American girl between ages 3 and 11 own an average of 10 Barbies. So these girls play with a doll designed in the male idea of feminine beauty; a doll with waist, hip, and bust sizes that are impossible to attain; a doll who has many careers, yet no schooling; a doll who has more clothes, houses, and cars than any typical human being of any class can own. This is the image these girls want to grow up to be like--an image they can not attain yet many try so hard to. Barbie is not a harmless toy. She is a roll model for children and she is evidence that society is still male-dominated.

 Barbie is more than a doll. Barbie embodies the male ideal of the “perfect” woman. She is designed to show little girls how to be women. She's a powerful symbol used to teach girls how to be women. Carol Smith, an assistant professor of Business Administration who serves on the Fort Lewis College Women's Studies Committee and was chair for the Barbie Conference held there in 1996, has noted“...that image of the modern woman, with pinched waist, large breasts, small hips, impossibly long, tapered legs and feet forever arched to fit in high-heeled shoes, has engendered a generation of bulimic and anorexics, women unhappy with their body images who seek tummy tucks and breast augmentation to match the doll they so loved as children.” She also ads, “Barbie's life, with her boyfriend, her friends, their husbands and boyfriends, also taught girls that they had to be ‘compulsory heterosexuals’...” (Fort Lewis Barbie Conference) Mattel’s original marketing strategy for the doll was to market her as a “teaching tool”, a toy that would help nourish the skills each little girl would eventually need to attract a husband.(ABC News.com)

 Even those women who scoff at the idea of Barbie being anything more than a toy see her not as a doll, but as an actual human being. How do they refer to Barbie? Barbie is always “she”, not it. The doll is not human, yet on some level, these women believe “she” is. “Barbie is quite the loaded symbol... This little pink lady is just too well known, and way too voluptuous to be perceived as just an object. She leaps into our psyches and roams freely in our subconscious....” (Napier). Cy Schneider, Barbie marketer admits, “The positioning from the very first commercial was that she was a person…We never mentioned the fact that she was a doll.” (Russ). As adults, we look at this piece of plastic and think that she can’t cause any real harm. She’s just a doll! However, this isn’t so for children. In a child’s eyes, these are their best friends, little sisters, babies, etc. Though they may be stuffed or made of plastic with painted on smiles, they are very real to the child who plays with them. While adults can insist Barbie is simply a doll and nothing more, that isn’t the case at all for the child who sees the doll as an actual person within his/her imagination. (ABCNews.com)

 Barbie dolls also affect a young woman’s gender identity. In a study of my own, women who played with Barbies as children were more likely to define femininity as "passive, quiet, soft-spoken, emotional, weaker, smarter when it comes to human nature, caring, pushy, compassionate, and understanding" while women who didn't play with Barbies defined femininity as "strong, passion, sensitive, social, insightful, and caring." Barbie dolls embody stereotypical role of the woman as nurturer. Countless commercials show her in situations where she is taking care of her little sisters. She has had many different kitchen sets over the years. The latest one, the All Around Home Kitchen has packaging which states, “Barbie® doll loves to cook, and this kitchen is beautifully equipped, with a rolling serving cart, refrigerator with opening doors, oven and more. It comes with cookware, dinnerware, pretend food, even a pretend bottle of dishwashing liquid for cleaning up.” (Barbie.com) Not only does Barbie do the cooking, but she does the cleaning as well. She currently has her own shoe store. She takes care of her baby sister in Baby Krissy’s Nursery. She has her own supermarket where girls can “ Help Barbie® doll do all the week's shopping..” All these playsets fit into and further the conventional role of women. There have been superficial attempts to make Barbie seem independent (she’s had a variety of her own cars, her own airplane, various jobs, etc.), yet she’s still advocate for traditional gender roles. “While Barbie seems to be a contemporary female, she is in fact promoting the same housewife ideals as she did in the 1950s.” (O’Kane) Various slogans for Barbie over the past decade have included phrases like “We girls can do anything” and “Girls rule”, but Barbie dolls are continually released that counteract this image. Barbie does currently have a variety of careers, but those dolls still highlight the traditionally feminine aspects of those jobs. Dream Wedding Barbies including the newest version, a life-sized My Barbie that come with a wedding dress made to fit girls “size 4 to 10”, are still the most popular incarnations of the doll, yet Barbie also has careers. She has been a doctor. However, Doctor Barbie wears blue high-heels and cradles a baby in her arm. The packaging insists “Dr. Barbie loves children!” Astronaut Barbie’s space suit has pink stripes on the arm. (Lloyd). Pilot Barbie’s packaging is so concerned with her “dapper print scarf”, pearl earrings and “nifty... roller suitcase”, that it tells you nothing of her actually job. It does, however, insist that Barbie “looks like a pilot from head to toe!”( Walmart.com) Girls need not know what the job entails, only that Barbie looks the part. There is a Swimming Champion Barbie, but little girls are instructed “When she's done with her winning laps, you can award her the gold medal and hand her a towel and a hairbrush” (Amazon.com)  Girls are told that looking good is just as important as any accomplishments. Barbie holds all these careers, yet she doesn’t have an education. There’s no Pre-Med Barbie or Space Camp Barbie. Mattel did release a University Barbie recently, however, those Barbies are cheerleaders who come with pompoms and megaphones, but no books. Under “dolls” at Barbie.com there are several categories: Activity, Beauty, Celebrity, Fantasy, Generation Girl, Sporty, Boyfriend, and Trendy. The only career doll among the major categories is a fashion designer. The Sporty section doesn’t even feature the Barbie dolls designed for the WNBA, but rather Surf City Barbie. The description tells you to “check out the belly button on Barbie” who comes with a paper surf board. A search for “Career Collection” (of which Doctor and Astronaut Barbie are a part of) and even “Career” brings no matching results. The Generation Girls section includes a  young woman aspiring to be an artist (albeit an artist who makes ballerina sculptures) and one who loves extreme sports (yet we aren’t told which sports and in her latest packaging, while she comes with accessories, none of them are remotely indicative of any sport), but it also includes such stereotypical female careers as a model. While Ana is a “water buff”, she is not an aspiring marine biologist. Even Mari the “technology buff” still conforms to stereotypical female roles. “When she's not on her computer she's hanging out on her cool chairs playing with her robo rabbit or talking to her friends on her videophone.”

  These dolls are teaching children to value looks and fitting into the standard woman’s role. While Barbie may have careers, the way she looks is valued as much, if not more than her actual career. Little girls could look forward to having a job (although without any concept of the time and effort it may take them to get those jobs), but they must not let that overshadow their appearance.

Dress and Popular Culture author Susan J. Dickey writes that Barbie

 Another fault in the value of looks is that Barbie is white. She defines beauty as white. Mattel has made attempts to create more ethnically diverse dolls, but these dolls look like little more than a typical Barbie doll with a different color top coat. “Barbie tends to blur racial distinctions. The black and Hispanic versions of Presidential Barbie look much like the Caucasian version, except with different shades of tan, different hair color, and barely detectable, facial feature changes.” (OCA: News) There was a bit of an uproar when Puerto Rican Barbie was released in 1998. Many found her objectionable on several counts, from her very light skin to her “colonial-style tiered dress”(Navarro). The Organization of Chinese Americans is outraged by the fact that there are only two Asian Barbies: “Fantasy Goddess of Asia” which “succumbs to the Asian girl as a foreign, exotic fantasy” and Kira, Barbie’s “Oriental” friend (although we don’t know which Asian ethnicity she is because it’s never specified) who is the “least used” Barbie friend. “Mattel’s Barbie doll is NOT representative of the all American girl,” insists the OCA. (OCA: News). Since the release of the letter from the OCA, another Asian Barbie has been added to the Generation Girl line. She was not, however, an original doll from that collection. She is Mari from Japan and she conforms to stereotypes as well. Mari is the “technology buff” which is consistent with stereotypes of Japan and the Japanese. People of Native American heritage were unhappy with the release of the Native American Barbie. Mattel attempted to mix a variety of different Native American cultures into one doll which is simply not possible. And so the doll wasn’t a faithful representation of any tribe.

 What affects does this under-representation have? Some research suggests that Asian and African-American children gravitate towards white dolls, but this is difficult to measure since there are so few doll representations of minorities. If that is the trend, it could very well be caused by the constant blast of images in the media (including Barbie) that suggest white is beautiful. This lack of representation can have a profound effect on young girls. It enforces the idea among Caucasian girls that white is the epitome of beauty therefore promoting racism. Any child who isn’t quite as pale as Barbie is left without a reflection of herself. "When there's an omission, it reinforces the image that you don't exist," said psychologist Jean Lau Chin. "Or, if you do exist, it's only exotic." (OCA: News). There are very few examples of Barbie dolls that are not white, therefore, minority children are left without a depiction of themselves. Those that embrace the white Barbie and accept her as the ideal of beauty may have a difficult time accepting themselves as beautiful since their body, hair, facial features, etc. will never match those of the white plastic ideal. “Our society often says African-American women are not beautiful: dolls demonstrate it. Barbie has long been the image of beauty and style for little girls...In response, they try to alter their appearances. African-American women do this by using: bleaching creams, hair straighteners, weaves...” (The African-American Woman). Mattel has made small attempts at depicting racial diversity, but ask nearly any little girl and they will tell you they want Barbie. A majority of children from a variety of races define “Barbie” as the standard white Barbie doll. Not many children are interested in her friends. Only Barbie is the ideal. Mattel markets Barbie as the model of perfection.

  To completely fill her hegemonic feminine mold, Barbie is heterosexual. She and her female friends (and even little sister Skipper) have always had boyfriends. While they were never married, many Dream Wedding Ken and Barbies have been sold. Again there’s the problem with children believing Barbie is the ideal. Therefore, being heterosexual is seen as ideal. Those children and young adults who are homosexual are left feeling alienated. Some evidence exists, however, to show that homosexual girls are not nearly so severely affected by this aspect. Whereas it can be more difficult to change Barbie’s facial features or skin color, it’s not at all difficult to create scenarios where Barbie dolls are in lesbian relationships. “This very design enables dominated subjects (children) to produce and reproduce their own desires, wants, needs, and realities, regardless of the hegemonic intentions of either Mattel or parents.” (Thompson). Shelly Mains, Health/Sexuality educator notes an example where a child played out a whole scene with her two female Barbie dolls and in the end, they get married.(Mains). Barbie dolls can provide the only appropriate setting for children to experiment with the concept of sexuality including homosexuality. Ken is sold merely as an accessory for Barbie. While little girls may have many Barbie dolls, they typically only have one or two if any Ken dolls. Barbie is the focus, not her male counterpart. Therefore, while Mattel markets Barbie as heterosexual, any imaginative child, heterosexual or homosexual, can act out scenes which explore different aspects of sexuality.

 The latest line of Barbie toys is most disturbing. There is no longer any emphasis on anything that resembles a “real world” career. The Barbie Career dolls are no longer being produced. Dolls like Princess Barbie and Butterfly Barbie are among the newest Barbies marketed to young girls. Barbie’s accessories all emphasize her role as the little woman at home. Girls no longer have any example of Barbie even as a superficial model of careers. The plastic depiction’s of the doctor’s office, the veterinarian’s office, or the cockpit were far from ideal, but they did provide an alternative to the shoe store, the supermarket, baby Krissy’s nursery, and the kitchen. This latest move by Mattel is a huge step backwards. Barbie is once again emphasizing solely looks. Girls are being taught that their contributions to society don’t matter as much as their looks do. If girls are encouraged to do “anything” using Barbie as a model, does that mean that today’s girls should aspire to be a princess or a butterfly? “We girls can do anything?” As long as we’re properly accessorized and don’t mess our hair up in the process, we can.

  Playing with such an exaggerated ideal as though she were an actual person does have consequences.

 At the very least, Barbie’s body can be seen as only one part of a wider media which promote the desired patriarchal impossible female form. However, some claims assert the media images are only visual whereas the doll allow the child to actually touch and experience the body and therefore creates a stronger impression. This female figure distorts the perceptions of young women about what woman’s bodies should look like. This perception may be so confused that it may lead to eating disorders. (Portanier). According to the National Eating Disorders Organization, 20-30% of girls in fourth and fifth grade report being concerned about their weight and trying to become thinner, and 30-50% of girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen say they either are and/or feel fat. 80% of girls report having dieted before they turn thirteen. The National Adolescent Health Survey in 1989 reported that 57% of eighth grade girls had dieted at least once in the previous year, and 40-60% of girls in high school perceive themselves as overweight and are trying to lose weight. 90-95% of those who suffer from eating disorders are adolescent and young adult women. (Important Facts). One study found that 60% of average weight girls, and 18% of underweight girls, between the ages of nine and eighteen were dieting. Another found that 90% of seventeen-year-old girls were dieting (Robinson).“As cosmetic surgery gets better and cheaper, we have seen more and more women (and men) mutilating themselves in the name of beauty, at least Mattel's idea of beauty...”(O'Kane).  According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, there was a 66% increase of plastic surgery in 1999. 89% of those procedures were done on women. This is the first depiction many girls have of an adult woman’s body. They can undress Barbie as often as they’d like. They can examine her thighs, her breasts, her waist, her hips, etc. in detail. They typically don’t have the ability to do this with any real person. Nearly all little girls agree that Barbie is pretty and/or beautiful. They too want to be pretty, so they want to be like Barbie, their ideal woman.

 Cindy Jackson is known as the “real-life Barbie doll”. In an attempt to obtain the looks and “fantasy life” of the doll, Cindy has undergone twenty-five cosmetic surgeries at a total cost of over $100,000--and she plans on more procedures. While Ms. Jackson may be an extreme case, she still provides proof that Barbie dolls do affect the way girls and eventually women think about their bodies. “...This is happening all over our nation. People are getting their noses trimmed, their thighs reduced, their lips enhanced, and their breasts enlarged. Whether it is coincidence or not, all of these alterations reflect a nearing to a particular image...and yes it is that of the Barbie doll.” (Barbie: Is America’s Favorite Doll Becoming Too Real?).

 “We girls can do anything?” "Anything" may include becoming ballerinas or astronauts, but when your earliest concept of the ideal female form is such a distorted one, "anything "also includes bingeing, purging, and having breast implants in an attempt to mimic an impossible plastic icon.

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