1. Breanna Wethey
Sawyer
COMM465
May 12, 2016
Final Project Essay: Barbie
Mass media portrays women in certain stereotypical ways and this effects our ideals as a
collective society of how they should be; most of it being unrealistic. Another aspect of popular
culture consumed by the masses besides news, television, and radio is children’s toys. The most
unsettling thing about toys is that children are playing with them when their brains are still
malleable and they don’t quite yet understand the effect of concepts like stereotypes, but at the
same time, these ideas are being subconsciously programmed into their minds and will stick with
them for the rest of their lives. In the case of Barbie dolls, and other beauty figure toys, little girls
are getting the idea ingrained in their subconscious that in order to be beautiful and successful in
life, you must be perfect, just like Barbie. Barbie is in fact disproportionate and she effortlessly
maintains unrealistic features and beauty. Barbie has also been portrayed as having many jobs,
but throughout the history of Barbie, they have been for the most part stereotypical “woman
jobs”. Thankfully, in very recent years, Barbie has taken on a new look, the industry has made an
attempt to diversify the race and size of the Barbie dolls in order to represent a broader spectrum
of beauty, as well as a more realistic female figure. This is a revolutionary step for mass
media/culture industry and its portrayal of women’s equality and is the start of our collective
mindset evolving.

2. Ruth Handler, the wife of the cofounder of the toy company Mattel, created the Barbie doll in
1959. “The inspiration for Barbie came as Ruth watched her daughter Barbara playing with
paper dolls. Barbara and her friends used them to play adult or teenage make-believe, imagining
roles as college students, cheerleaders and adults with careers. Ruth immediately recognized that
experimenting with the future from a safe distance through pretend play was an important part of
growing up. She also noticed a product void and was determined to fill that niche with a three-
dimensional fashion doll” (Barbie, 2016). Barbie has always been a reflection of the times
throughout her evolution through the years, reflecting beauty standards that are also portrayed in
popular mass media. “Barbie’s debut as the ‘teenage fashion model’ mirrored the sophisticated
glamour of 1950s stars like Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth and Elizabeth Taylor, donning high
arched brows, pursed red lips, a sassy pony tail with curly bangs and a coy, sideways glance.
Even her figure was high fashion and model-esque, with pale, ivory skin, long slim legs and a
narrow waist and hips” (Barbie, 2016). A lot of thought was put into Barbie’s image throughout
the year in order to stay relevant and representative and portray the styles we like to see. In the
early 70s, the iconic Barbie model that we know today had her debut. “In 1971, Malibu Barbie
debuted with a new face sculpt, including the addition of an open smile with pearly white teeth,
and, thanks to the groundswell of the feminist movement and female empowerment, her
sparkling blue eyes faced-forward for the first time. Malibu Barbie was the ultimate surfer girl–
suntanned with long, straight hair” (Barbie, 2016). Barbie dolls have stayed primarily white and
generally blonde for a very long time; she represents the appearance, happiness, and carefree
lifestyle that girls wish they had. In recent years, we have started seeing more racially diverse
Barbie dolls in order to promote equality, as well as Barbie dolls with a variety of careers that are
not stereotypical, but instead empower women to be intelligent and independent. Although, this

3. is also a marketing strategy to get a wider range of parents to buy this for their children, and to
keep the image fresh and attention-grabbing; but we hope that it is because our society is
becoming more versatile, aware, and tolerant.
Barbie has been a large part of and has contributed to the portrayal of popular media, music,
art, and fashion and she always stays with the times, reflecting who or what is popular during
that time period. She has always been a big hit and she is a revolutionary and extremely well-
known concept of the toy world and of popular culture in general. She provides fun
entertainment and has kept young girls happy for many years. Fantasy and imaginative play time
is important for children. They are able to have fun, while at the same time able to bond with
others or become comfortable with alone time, as well as develop and exercise their minds.
“Fantasy and play in early and middle childhood are integral domains of socialization—the
process of internalizing the values, ideals, schemas, and behavior of a culture” (Sherman, 2014).
Being able to play with Barbie dolls and have imagination time also allows young girls (and even
some young boys) to temporarily fulfill their fantasies with the doll. Drawing on Lacanian
psychoanalysis, “we are born into a condition of lack, and subsequently spend the rest of our
lives trying to overcome this condition…Lacan figures this as a search for…that which is desired
but forever out of reach; a lost object, signifying an imaginary moment in time. Unable to ever
take hold of this object, we console ourselves with displacement strategies and substitute
objects” (Storey, 101). Children, and specifically little girls, are able to use Barbie dolls as a
substitute object because they are not actually able to achieve the perfect adult life they wish they
could have. They dream of growing up and being as successful and smiley as Barbie and
everything about her subconsciously sets the standard of success in their minds and of what a
grown woman is supposed to do and look like. The negative thing about this is that young girls

4. grow up with this unattainable image in their mind of what beauty looks like and therefore, what
they must achieve in order to be desirable and to fit in. This contributes to negative
psychological effects and is a part of our society’s notion of beauty which causes girls to
experience emotional turmoil through their teens and onto adult years. They try to fit in and are
constantly striving to get the perfect look to become desirable to men and society, and when they
don’t feel good enough about themselves, they are driven to resort to life-threatening eating
disorders and experience other psychological disorders. The negativity and threat already posed
to the mindset of young girls is a very serious problem, and it is all thanks to the pressures we
impose on them to appear a certain way.
The Barbie doll does make it possible for children to enact their fantasies in the form of a
doll; this aligns with Slavoj Zizek’s theory of fantasy. “…fantasy organizes how we see and
understand reality. It works as a frame through which we see and make sense of the world. Our
fantasies are what make us unique; they provide us with our point of view; organizing how we
see and experience the world around us” (Storey, 107). This can be a healthy thing in that
children can enact their fantasies and play using their imagination which is a crucial part to a
child’s early life and their brain development. The criticism of being able to use these dolls for
fantasizing that embody society’s current unrealistic and disproportionate ideal of beauty shapes
how young girls view themselves and the rest of the world and builds on their idea of reality. The
effect that Barbie imposes on young girls, and even our society as a whole is arguably a negative
one.
When creating Barbie, Ruth’s intentions were to empower women and give little girls the
idea that they have choice. She said, “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll,
the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a

5. woman has choices” (Barbie, 2016). Critics and feminists say that Barbie is stereotypical and
actually limits the ideas of what little girls think they can do in the future. In all aspects of
popular culture, women are continuously sexualized and objectified and stereotypes are
reinforced time and time again; this includes the image of Barbie dolls and other beauty fashion
dolls. “For children, a major representation of the body are dolls, which are socially acceptable,
intensively advertised, almost universal, and have the immediacy of a tactile presence” (Norton,
1996). “…The repeated exposure to sexualized material leads to internalization of sexualizing
and objectifying messages over time, such that girls learn to think of themselves mostly in terms
of how they appear to other people…a girl begins to focus primarily on her physical appearance
rather than on her abilities or feelings. This phenomenon is called self-objectification” (Sherman,
2014). Playing with Barbie dolls encourages self-image distortion, as well as narcissism and
being vain and cautious about personal appearance. Many women of all ages are already like
this, and are very worried about what others think which greatly affects their confidence and idea
of self-worth. Images like the Barbie doll and other portrayals of women via the media only add
to this problem. Unfortunately, our demands as a whole permit the vicious capitalist cycle to
chronically continue. There have even been drastic cases recently where women (and even men)
have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgery in order to look more perfect,
directly basing their goal for physical appearance on the Barbie doll. These women want the fake
looking face and high cheeks with heavy eye makeup, long straight blonde hair extensions,
largely disproportionate breasts that are too much weight for their back, and some have even
gone through extensive and painful surgery to elongate their legs in order to emulate Barbie’s.
These are extreme cases, but they are startling; we don’t want our younger generation to believe

6. they have to change their bodies so drastically in order to be desired or to even just feel
comfortable with their bodies.
The mass use and popularity of Barbie adds to the vicious cycle of our society collectively
developing scopophilia, or the pleasure and obsession of looking at beautiful images or bodies,
and corporations and marketers are able to feed off of this in order to make money. “The fashion-
beauty-diet industrial complex intrudes deeper into the lives of ever-younger girls, as companies
seek to exploit new market niches for their products” (Collins, 2012). According to Marxist
theory, “we must analyze culture through a society's ‘modes of production of material life’, or
‘the way in which a society is organized to produce the necessities of life’” (Storey, 59). We live
in the midst of a vicious cycle of selling and consuming and our society is based around making
profit. Sadly, companies and their marketers will do whatever it takes in order to sell their
product and grab attention by any means. Companies strategize every bit of information and base
their advertisement content on people’s emotions and drives and what is popular within culture at
the time. What many marketers do to grab attention is to sexualize women and dress them
scantily because sex grabs attention of both men and women and sex sells; this includes the
creation of the image of the Barbie doll; she seemed to progressively get sexier and more
revealing every year. Barbie dolls are made with large breast and skinny and sexy features and
heavy makeup. She only sells because she fits our standard of beauty, so in a way, we are
causing these dolls to be so popular because of the ideals that are already in place. The Barbie
dolls are all the same and there is no diversity in size, shape, or color; they are all manufactured
clones that embody “perfection”.
The ideal of “perfection” is in all of our subconscious and we see movies and other forms of
media and don’t even think twice when we see degrading sexualization of women every time we

7. turn on the television or go online or take a trip to the store, and it still grabs us. As long as sex
sells, and as long as we love money so much, companies will not stop the sexualization of
women in media, although we may be able to lessen it in creating awareness and a greater idea of
respect of women in general. The trend and popularity of Barbie also reflects hegemony in
fashion and woman appearance and purchasing Barbie dolls for a young girl only contributes to
reaffirming this idea that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas (Storey, 10). Hegemony
is present in all aspects of our lives and especially in the media and products and Barbie reflects
these styles and trends. Barbie dolls also perpetuate the idea of the “male gaze”, and how the
world and women are still to this day viewed through the eyes of the male. Our society continues
to be male-dominated in a lot of ways and this is especially evident in media and popular culture.
Women are portrayed as the object of what the male eye is looking at and desires, and this puts
an immense amount of attention on the self-image of the women in our society. The overbearing
“male gaze” is also a large part of the hegemony we experience.
The negative stigma of the Barbie doll has carried since her creation has been a downfall in
regards to our culture’s view of women, but thankfully, there has been recent modifications to
the Barbie dolls appearance in attempts to abandon this stigma and promote equality, while
making the statement that woman of every shape, size, and color are beautiful. “The new toys
allow ‘the product line to be a better reflection of what girls see in the world around them,’ says
spokeswoman Michelle Chidoni. Mattel has long been criticized for the doll’s unrealistic body
proportions — a woman who appears impossibly tall, thin and busty — a reputation it’s been
trying to fight as it brings the brand in line with modern expectations. ‘We believe we have a
responsibility to girls and parents to reflect a broader view of beauty,’ said Evelyn Mazzocco,
senior vice president and global general manager of Barbie, in a company statement”

8. (Bowerman, 2016). This recent change has been a window of opportunity for changing the
stereotypes our society has about women. We could even go further to design even more diverse
Barbie and Ken dolls to represent a wider range of body types, careers, religions, genders,
disabilities, and much more. Mass media such as television, cinema, and videogames still have a
long way to go in creating gender equality that will change our cultural ideals for the better, but
doll makers have become much more aware of these negative effects and seem to be well on
their way to making a positive change and global awareness. Our world seems to be working
toward a more open mind and becoming more conscious of the effects our media and children’s
toys have on our youth and society.
Our capitalist society has been stuck in the cycle of sexualizing women in order to produce
profit and to fit with society’s demands; this new generation of Barbie dolls could be a sign that
our society as a whole are beginning to become more aware and the demand for more
representative and diverse toys for our children is therefore going up. This could be the key to
breaking the vicious cycle and change the advertising motives for companies; they have always
careered to our “needs”, but if our collective need is equality and respect toward women,
products and media will have to change in order to fit what is popular. Based on the theory of
Karl Marx, a society’s modes of production and economic success is based on and intertwined
with what is popular among the collective mind of our society. When we are able to change our
minds, we are able to change the world. It is and will be very beneficial to teach young girls and
boys about culture and empower them in whatever way possible; using toys and commercials
and video games and the examples of their parents and teachers are a good place to start. An
article says, “there is an urgent need to teach critical thinking skills in viewing and consuming
media, focusing specifically on the sexualization of women and girls” (Collins, 2012). To

9. become a more decent society, we need to stop perpetuating the sexualization of women and
break the vicious cycle our stereotypes and our idea of how women need to look. In order to do
this, we must start with our new generation of young people and expose them to media that is
healthy for their minds and gives them the right idea of a conscious society and respect to
everyone. Every decision we make today effects and sets an example for the world of tomorrow.
We must all think critically and become media literate in order to become aware and
knowledgeable about what the world is feeding us and what it is doing to our health, sanity, and
ideals.

10. Annotated Bibliography
Barbie. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2016, from http://www.barbiemedia.com/about-
barbie/history.html
This is the official Barbie website and it explains the timeline history of Barbie and the
inspirations and ideas behind creating her.
Bowerman, M., & Malcolm H. (2016). Barbie's new shapes: Tall, petite and curvy. ABC Today,
Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/money/
This is a very recent online news article that discusses the release of the new,
revolutionary line of Barbie dolls that provides three new body types, as well as various races
and skin types, in attempts to represent a broader spectrum of beauty.
Collins, L., Lidinsky, A., Rusnock, A., & Torstrick, R. (2012). We're not Barbie girls: Tweens
transform a feminine icon. Feminist Formations, 24(1), 102-126.
This article discusses a workshop done with middle school girls to see how they would
reinvent the Barbie doll based on their own reflections. The purpose of the workshop was also to
get the girls to think about the way popular culture portrays female bodies and feminine
identities and what it means to be female in American society.
Norton, K. I., Olds, T. S., Olive, S., & Dank, S. (1996). Ken and Barbie at life size. Sex Roles,
34(3-4), 287-294.
In this journal, researchers scale Barbie and Ken dolls to adult heights and compare them
to realistic proportions of real human adults. This journal is interested in revealing the

11. disproportionate bodies of these dolls and analyzing them in reference to cultural ideals of
physical appearance. They find that Barbie is more unrealistic than Ken by a lot.
Sherman, A. M., & Zurbriggen, E. L. (2014). “Boys Can Be Anything”: Effect of Barbie Play on
Girls’ Career Cognitions. Sex Roles, 70(5-6), 195-208.
“Play with Barbie dolls is an understudied source of gendered socialization that may
convey a sexualized adult world to young girls. Early exposure to sexualized images may have
unintended consequences in the form of perceived limitations on future selves” (Sherman, 2014).
In this study, children are surveyed about what kind of job they think they should do or could be
able to do in the future. Researchers find that little girls that play with Barbie dolls have a shorter
range of jobs they think that they can do, and they believe that males can do a wider range of
jobs.
Storey, J. (2009). An introductory guide to cultural theory and popular culture (5th ed.). Pearson
Education Limited.
Class textbook explains in depth explanation of applicable popular culture theory.