Barbie: Your Implicit Worst Nightmare

The 5 year old girls stared at the moving screen with wonder. Mouths open and eyes glued as Ashley Tisdale strutted up and down the stage singing ‘Bop to the top’ from High School Musical. “She’s so pretty,” one of the girls managed to say, her heart beating fast, as the excitement grew within her. “When I grow up, I want to be just like her!” another one exclaimed. The girls were packed tightly together sitting on a black futon in the living room. They had closed the curtains to make it seem more like a movie theatre and were fidgeting in their seats, like any other 5 years olds would. “Don’t forget, shes so popular too,” said the third little girl. And just like that, Sharpay Evans became these girl’s role model, not because of her acting skills or the fact that she could sing well, but purely for the fact that she was popular and pretty.

It turns out this was not an isolated incident. These days media tends to corrupt young girls minds and snatch away their childhood by shaping them to believe that the only way to be happy, is to be perfect. Sadly they are not just being told this by TV shows and movies but also by their best friends, their dolls. To girls, dolls are everything. Girls have to take care them, yet the doll is still their role model. Girls spend countless hours playing with their dolls and it is known that the more time you spend with something the more influence it has on you. But what happens when that influence the dolls give are negative?

Bratz dolls come with high fashion clothes and accessories, that include, high heels, purses, makeup and even fashion magazines. The slogans that come with the dolls are definitely worse. They say things like “passion for fashion”, “above all else be beautiful” and even their sportz bratz says “It’s not about how you play the game, its about how good you look when you win”. There is even a Bratz boyz line of dolls which are supposedly the Bratz boyfriends. And even the Baby Bratz comes with studded earrings, manicured nails and designer diapers. Do we really want young girls wearing thick makeup, high heels and having boyfriends? I don’t think so.

Now lets not forget the worlds favourite doll, barbie. You're probably remembering all those times that barbie helped you get through those rough primary school years, but did you know all the harmful effects barbie was leaving on you? The average girls, aged 3-11 owns around 10 barbies and as mentioned before the more time you spend with something the more impact it leaves on you. Barbie has had a countless number of jobs in the past years including, teachers, doctors and even a army officer but yet what is her most famous and advertised look? A skinny teenage fashion designer. In 1965 Mattel came out with a ‘slumber party barbie’. This barbie came with a weighing scale set to 110 lbs as well as a book on how to lose weight, which said things like ‘Don’t eat’.

In the US there are approximately 5 million females under the age of 20 who have eating disorders. Out of that most people said they became conscious about their weight between the ages 4 and 6 and that their dolls had some impact on them. Little girls spend hours putting on makeup, ruining their hair with dyes and curling irons and even pleading their parents to buy them the trendiest clothes. In a survey of 9 - 10 year olds, 40% said that they had tried to lose weight. Of course this doesn’t just end there.

It is known that kids minds are more open and can be easily molded into acting or thinking a certain way. It is also known that the things you learn when you are younger stick to you forever, especially when you see them throughout your life. This is exactly what is happening to young girls now. It just moves from the perfect barbie dolls to the to the perfect models on posters and magazines.

Blayke Roberts a model for the ‘healthy is the new skinny’ campaign said, “People kept saying, ‘oh you won’t fit into that, i’ll just find someone else’ and hearing that everyday and seeing all these other perfect models every day really gets to you. I used to think maybe I am too ugly and fat for this. I went to extreme measures, like eating 700 calories a day, running over three miles a day and I eventually became so sick.” This is just one out of many examples of girls who have been harshly affected by the media around her. And all of this implicitly began with those perfect little dolls and perfect girls on TV.

Another woman in the UK, named Sarah Burge spent over 1 million dollars to achieve the barbie look and currently spends over 10,000 thousands dollars a year to maintain that look. As you can tell this all started by her playing with her little barbie dolls.

Adding to that, another negative impact caused by the media is the expectations. According to Akanksha Shukla, a grade 8 student, “In a lot of shows, the actors choose to play younger roles than they actually are. So even now when I’m older, when I look at TV shows and someone’s playing a 14 year old, they are not going to look 14, they look 16. And then I look at myself and say, I’m 14 but compared to them I look about 4. I don’t dress the way they do but I feel, should I be dressing they way they are? The idea that they paint is that you have to pretty, popular and somehow manage to stay smart and when I was younger I felt like I had to have that one best friend and I had to have a boyfriend and I had to have all these things and if I didn’t I wasn't a real teenager. It’s not always true, just the media makes it seem like that.”

Akanksha’s comments reminds us on how many mind games the media can play on a young girl's mind. It can make you doubt yourself, want to change yourself and creates expectations that are beyond reachable for the average person. Do we really want this to be what is going on in little girls heads?

Do you remember at the start of this article there were three little girls watching high school musical and wishing they were Sharpay. Well one of those girls was this reporter. Young girls don’t realize what is happening to them while it is happening to them. That is why we need to make everyone aware of the negative impacts media is leaving on little girls. I was lucky enough to have heard a talk from Dannielle Miller who inspired me to take a stand. Dannielle Miller is feminist, counselor and presenter of self esteem workshops for girls. According to her, here are some solutions to this horrifying problem.

The first thing you should do is deconstruct the media. This means that you should look at it from a critical angle and start a conversation with your friends or family about what it really means. Another thing you can do is reassure young girls. Go out and let them know what the media is actually doing and make them aware. If we can stop this problem right at the source, it could actually save many girls from disaster. The third thing you could do is connect with other like- minded girls. I’m pretty sure you would be able to find a couple girls that care about this issue and then don’t forget to speak up. Your voice is a powerful tool and if everyone was aware about what was going on, I could assure you that there would be change, and there needs to be.

Written by Aditi