Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Come on Barbie Lets Go Party!
When reading about Barbie and how she has furthered the idea that being white is right it struck me that I used to play with Barbies all the time as a kid, and never thought anything of it. Even though I am half white and half Mexican, I was never given a Mexican Barbie to play with. Not because I didn't want one or could not have one, but because I was not so concerned with the race of my dolls. Certainly, I was drawn to the perfect Western features most of my Barbies had, but I didn't dislike the features of the Black or Mexican Barbies. When looking at the Jean Kilbourne video about women in advertisements it became clear to me that from a young age we as women are bred to see women portrayed a certain way in the media. We have Barbies as kids and grow up thinking that women are these perfect physical specimens who can do it all while looking sexy. We are inundated daily with ads that reinforce women as objects or as beings not as intelligent as men. I was surprised to learn that things have only gotten worse since the first version of Killing Us Softly. Now more than ever women are used as sexual objects in ads, and the focus is really never put on her mind. Even ads in which women wear more conservative clothes or glasses, she still has a sexy librarian look about her. Barbies are like ads for kids about what a woman should look like, the reason it is funny is because if a real woman had Barbies proportions she would fall over! What isn't funny is that this leads to unhealthy body image for girls, as well as setting a precedent for women as objects.
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The first part of your block is really interesting to me! I remember playing with Barbies as a child too, and I can't remember having anything but the white Barbies. However, there used to be this doll called Baby Tumbles Surprise and when my mom took me to buy one, I chose the black one instead of the white one because most of my dolls were white. As a child, race was never a thought due to naivety I suppose. But my adopted brother was black as well as my neighbor and I believe that was the driving factor to my choice. It's quite interesting how environment has such a huge impact on people's mentality about race!
ReplyDeleteBlog, not block. I apologize.
ReplyDeleteI agree when you said you were surprised that things have gotten worse; you would think that since more and more people are noticing these trends they would try and fix the images the media is portraying. I think your point about Barbie dolls is important, there should be more emphasis on different ethnicities of the dolls so children can see that everyone is different and not supposed to just look like the blonde Barbie doll.
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