Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Ideal Barbie
As a child, I loved Barbie and I had a huge collection of them. I liked how she looked and how I can change her clothing and I had just about everything else associated with Barbie -- her cars, her house, her kids, and of course, Ken.
Chinese Barbie
Black Barbie
In our lecture about ethnicity (Mar. 10th), Professor Kalmar talked about how being white is the default and is universal. He mentionned how the white Barbie is always just called Barbie, but Barbies of all other ethnicities are called the "Chinese Barbie", or "Persian Barbie" or "Black Barbie". I think this is an excellent example of the notion of white being the default.
Barbie, in and of itself, is a feminine ideal that is unachievable. It is horrifying to me now to think how this little doll can cause us to unconsciously embrace such an unrealistic feminine ideal. I remember seeing a program once about Barbie and its influence on society and girls in particular, and it talked about how Barbie, if it were translated into real life size, would be very unproportional. Courtesy to this website "http://people.bu.edu/kwysocki/versus.html", it says that if Barbie were life size:
"Barbie's height would be 7'2"
Her weight would be 101 lbs.
She would wear a size 4 dress
Her bust would be 39" (FF cup)
Her waist would be 19" (same as her head)
Her hips would be 33"
Her shoe size would be a 5"
Her weight would be 101 lbs.
She would wear a size 4 dress
Her bust would be 39" (FF cup)
Her waist would be 19" (same as her head)
Her hips would be 33"
Her shoe size would be a 5"
Despite these unrealistic and undesirable proportions, many girls still idolize Barbie and want to be just like her. And in addition to that, she is young, white, upper-middle class and has a white, handsome boyfriend (Ken). This is a very bourgeoisie ideal in which it is impossible for anyone, even the bourgeoisie themselves, to achieve. Now that I look back at my collection of Barbies (I have almost 120 different Barbies), I realize that all the ones I bought when I was a child were white Barbies. I remember there being Barbies of other skin colours, but I think I was naturally inclined to get the white one because she was "prettier" and "better" -- and I thought this without even knowing it! My collection of Barbies were all white, rich and pretty. It is very fortunate for me to realize this now. I think when I grow up and my daughter wants Barbies, I will have to encourage her to buy them from a variety of backgrounds. After all....we do live in Canada! :) haha
Here are some pictures of the very non-typical Barbies:
Chinese Barbie
Black Barbie
Indian Barbie
old Barbie
# posted by Mavis Fung @ 9:19 PM 
