Time to Take Reponsibility, Mattel

Barbie is not just a toy.

Mattel knows Barbie is not just a toy. She is a cultural icon all over the world, and she is reality to those who play with her. She is teaching children what it means to be a girl.

Researchers have concluded that toys represent messages about gender, adult roles, and values that children internalize... children comprehend elements of their society through their toys (Kuther 2004).
Kuther, T.L. et al. 2004. "Early adolescents' experience with and views of Barbie. Adolescence from the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection: 39; 153.

So what are they learning about their society's values through Barbie? That beauty, material objects, and popularity are coveted. They're learning you have to buy objects and accessories to be trendy, and trendiness means happiness. At young ages they're learning ways to try to improve their appearance. They're learning thin is in. They're learning the hottest accesory a girl can have is a hot boy-toy by her side. They're not learning to be independent, to strive for intellectual achievement, or to accept their appearance the way they were created.

Mattel, the way you market Barbie and the values you promote to children takes away their right to individual discovery and the notion of creating their own identity. You exploit children's readiness to accept values from a toy they look up and aspire to be. And for what? To sell more products? You've contributed to children's image-problems, eating disorders, and a need for materialism that can last all the way into adulthood. What you're really selling to children through your products are a general sense of inadequacy and disapointment in themselves. You've created an unbridled force of influence through your Barbie empire, now it's time to take ownership of your responsibility in the development of youth and make Barbie a true role model. Make her one that doesn't promote unrealistic body types, has more aspirations than being the best dressed or most popular, and tries to improve her intellectual growth and not just her outward appearance.

Make Barbie worthy of being a little girl's best friend.

The Living Barbie

When I was younger, my favorite Barbie was (get ready for this shocker,) the Teresa Barbie. Because we shared a name, she had Caucasian features, the same tan skin complexion, and hazel-eyes, I assumed she must be exactly like me. I'm Italian, so I thought Teresa was obviously Italian too. I was so sure that we were similar that I assumed I would look just like her when I was older. She was the adult version of me. She had my name and my hair and my eyes. I was devasted when I played with her too much and her head accidently popped off her body. That was like MY head popping off my body.

It wasn't until literally a year or two ago that I realized the Teresa Barbie is actually supposed to be the Latina version of Barbie. Teresa Barbie wasn't like me at all. But when I was a kid I thought she was. Her life was what I thought my life would be. She was going to become my reality, I was sure of it. Well, turns out Barbie's perfect life isn't reality, it's not even close. Unfortunately, some people just can't make that disinction though.

This woman's story is admittedly extreme, but it does represent how the deluded reality of Barbie doesn't always end when you're young. Girls' fixation with becoming like her translates into adult life too.

CBS's 48 Hours reported on a woman named Cindy Jackson in 2006 in their segment called "Becoming Barbie: Living Dolls." Cindy had grown up in a small town and admitted as a young girl that she never thought she was good looking. Barbie was the pinacle of perfection, and she had always wanted to look like her. Cindy was recognized as highly intelligent, motivated, and ambitious, but her personality traits never fulfilled her desire to "improve" her outward appearance. At 33 she began to get plastic surgery to become Barbie. "Barbie was the blank canvas I filled in all those years ago. It was still my role model," she said in an interview.
Cindy received 31 operations over the course of 14 years to become Barbie. Her operations included laser surgery on her forehead, upper and lower eye modification, cheek implants, two nose jobs, and eyebrows, eyeliner, lipliner, and full lipstick tattooed to her face.

She spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to become Barbie.

But don't think that just girls are influenced enough to go under the knife to look like the plastic dolls. A man named Tim Whitfield (now named Miles Kendall,) saw Cindy's transformation and decided he wanted to be the male version of her and become Ken. So he dropped $50k on plastic surgery and became Cindy's male counterpart.

The before and after picture proves, at least to me, that the obsession to look like Barbie is insane. Cindy was not ugly to begin with, she looked like a normal human being. In fact, I think her original features made her quite pretty. But her obsession with the perfection of Barbie made her quest to imitate the doll unstoppable. Now being in her 50's, she still does look like Barbie, but she has countless procedures that she will need to have done every year to keep the form of her artificial face. She succeeded in her attempt to look plastic, that's for sure.


Although most little girls would never grow up and go to these extreme measures to change their appearance, the point of Cindy's story is that Barbie's image is extremely powerful and influential. Cindy spent an exorbitant amount of money to make herself look like the doll she aspired to be, but she is a rare case. Most girls just wish they could look like Barbie, with no hopes of actually attaining that image. Barbie is just a reminder, and perpetuator of the dissappointment females have with their body-images.

Online Barbie

Mattel has reeeally taken advantage of the internet as an interactive marketing tool for Barbie. Trying to navigate her various websites (she has several,) is actually very overwhelming. There are so many glittery, flashing links and images everywhere, and so much to do that you could literally spend an entire day exploring everything the sites have to offer. The issue I have with the interactive sites though is they are purely materialistic. You can shop for Barbie, visit her closet to pick out her outfits, and give her makeovers. Can you enact various careers for Barbie? No. What fun would that be right? If kids are role-playing careers, how are they going to see all the online clothes they can dress their Barbies in online, which conveniently can also be purchased for their Barbies at home.

What I really found off-putting was the everythinggirl.com link to a "Barbie Grown-ups" section. This portion of the site is supposed to give parents ideas about how to interact with their preschoolers. One of the suggestions was a spa day. With facial masks and manis and pedis and all. I'm 20 years old and have never had a facial in my life. Do 4 or 5 year olds really need to be taught that to be feminine you have to have spa days to make yourself beautiful? That's the underlying connotation I get from that part of the website. Isn't it enough that girls are giving their virtual Barbies makeovers? I don't think they need encouragement to feel makeovers for themselves are necessary too.

The best part of the Barbie websites is that you have to be a member to visit any of the interactive portions of the sites. So what does that mean? It means little girls have to register an email address to be able to play with online Barbie. A lot of kids don't actually have email addresses, and why should they when they're 4 or 5 years old? So they have to register with mom or dad's address. Conveniently for Mattel, that means they can unabashedly send promotional emails with all the latest must-have accessories that parents have to buy for their kids. If kids have their own email addresses, that's even better for Mattel because they can send their merciless promotional emails directly to their target audience.

Making kids want to have all the newest products for Barbie fuels Mattel's bank account, but fuels kids' inclination toward materialism too. Child marketers such as Mattel have done a good job at programming kids to be consumers. Mattel has taken advantage of online tools to market the insane amount of products for Barbie, and from a marketing perspective they are doing a damn good job of it. My problem with these marketing strategies is the lack of substance they are selling to kids. Being an "everything girl," like Barbie boasts to be, includes being an excellent shopper and socialite, and nothing more. But that's really all that any girl should want to be anyway, right? According to Mattel, it is.

The Breakup

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think that it is possible for couples to happily stay together for 50+ years. With the increasingly high divorce rates in this country, it's nice to think that there are still people that can support and love one another for the rest of their lives.

Most people don't like to see their favorite couples fail. We hate to see our friends that have been dating for years and years since high school finally hit a wall in their relationship and breakup. When those perfect couples can't make it together anymore, it makes us feel hopeless about the success of our own relationships, because those people were the epitome of the devoted and loving relationship we all desired.

This may be my traditional family-attitudes talking, but I think families should stay together. Kids have better childhoods and home lives when they have a strong parental support system and both parents are living under the same roof. For that reason I think that children should not only receive that kind of support during their years of development, but they should be encouraged to build those kinds of solid relationships when they get older. Children should be taught to value the people they are intimately involved with, they shouldn't be taught promiscuity or the unwillingness to create bonds with others.

There's enough instances of divorce and failed relationships in our society for children to witness, some of which may be occuring with their own parents. Not to mention every single drama on TV has characters with serious relationship and infidelity issues. Shouldn't there be at least one iconic relationship that shows children that successful long-term relationships are possible? That's what I always loved about Barbie. She had Ken, they were in love for years. Forty-three years in fact...

...Until Mattel decided that an iconic, universally recognized relationship isn't trendy anymore. And that's when Barbie dumped Ken, her beau of 43 years, on February 12, 2004, just 48 hours before Valentine's Day.

I couldn't believe it. Barbie and Ken were like peanut butter and jelly. That relationship was one of the only good values that Barbie demonstrated. Unlike her predecessor Bild Lilli, she had a decades-long relationship with her "soul-mate." Do you know how many times Barbie has married Ken over the years in little girls' bridal fantasies? Too many to count. Well, now they're added to the divorce list too.

Mattel took the shallow Barbie image to a new level when they offed Ken in 2004. They didn't just dump Ken and make Barbie an independent, single lady, they made her out to be a cheating, man-eating bitch. Poor Ken, after sticking by Barbies side for 43 years, he got dumped for Blaine, the "hot Australian surfer" doll. Barbie dumped her lifelong partner for the younger, cuter, more exotic Aussie doll. But I guess that's the thing to do now right? Always trade-up for the newer, more exciting version of everything. Way to be super trendy, Barbie.

Blaine, Barbie, and Ken

I like the statements Patricial O'Connell made in her 2006 BusinessWeek article about the breakup: "Barbie having a significant other never inhibited her before. In fact, having a constant steady seemed to suit Barbie just fine... [a theory is] all this is just a marketing ploy -- a publicist's dream -- to boost interest in the Cali Girl and Blaine dolls. After all, Demi Moore -- a woman of just about the same age as Barbie -- has taken up with a boy toy, Ashton Kutcher, and it has done wonders to keep her front and center in the gossip columns."

With the Barbie-Ken incident, Mattel has added another instance of betrayal to the long list of questionable relationships kids are exposed to in this society. That's all kids see in the media and TV and movies, right? Which is exactly my point. That's all kids ever see!! Why couldn't Mattel leave the one lasting relationship alone and let little kids see the possibility of strong, successful relationships in a barrage of ones that always fail?? The Barbie-Ken breakup was a ploy for media attention by Mattel, but what they either didn't realize or didn't care they were doing was promoting values, (dare I say suggestively promiscuous values,) through Barbie's actions.

I don't care how "trendy" or starved for publicity you are, STOP promoting values to kids, Mattel!

Leather, Fishnets, Tattoos, and Barbie

Luckily Barbie has come a long way since the Bild Lilli days mentioned in the previous post. She's no longer scantily clad and suggestive like her predecesser doll was. Barbie has definitely left the sexual promiscuity thing behind...



Well, wait, except for maybe the new collector's Barbie, fondly referred to as the "S&M Barbie."

This is the 1950's-60's Bild Lilli doll

And below is the 2008 Black Canary "S&M Barbie"





There's an odd resemblence between the 1950's-60's sex doll Bild Lilli and the Barbie doll released in 2008. In fact, these dolls are almost identical.

 Not only are both dolls dressed like prostitutes, but they both began as over-sexualized comic strip/book characters. The S&M Barbie is justified by Mattel because it is a recreation of DC Comic super heroine Black Canary. Mattel aptly describes her outfit on their website as a signature black leather body suit and patterened tights. Come on Mattel, cut the euphemisms. Those tights are fishnets like you see hookers wearing on the street corner, and that leather underwear does not have enough material to qualify as a "bodysuit."




To Black Canary Barbie's defense, she is not intended as a children's toy. She is marketed as an adult toy or collector's item. But that does not guarantee that she won't make it into the hands of children.





So if S&M Barbie isn't meant to be a children's toy, let's talk about a Barbie that is supposed to be appropriate for children.


In April 2009, Mattel released "Totally Stylin Tattoos" Barbie, and "Totally Stylin Tattoos Nikki", the brunette version.


Not surprisingly, parents slammed Tattoo Barbie with complaints. In fact, this is actually Mattel's second time trying to market tattoos to kids. In 1999 Mattel released "Butterfly Art Barbie" which was also a tattoo-able Barbie but was pulled from shelves four months later due to compaints from parents.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against tattoos. However, I do think there is a problem when children's good pal Barbie is advocating tramp stamps with men's names in the middle of hearts.



Does that say independence and girl power to you? It says "I'm Ken's bitch" to me. Children don't need to get the idea that they should be so devoted to men that they should get his name tattooed on their body. Mattel has openly defended the tattoos as "a way for children to express themselves and be creative." Somehow I don't find "I love Ken tatoos" to foster anything other than the idea of female submission to her male counterpart.


And wait, aren't girls supposed to love themselves as they are, instead of covering up their own skin? This seems like another way Mattel is telling girls they're not ok the way they look right now.





Once again, Mattel, stop marketing values to kids. There's a reason why the first tattoo Barbie got booed off the shelves. Kids might not fully understand you're marketing ideas that are sexualized or suggestive through Barbie dolls, but parents do and they don't like them. You should try listening to your consumers and stop pushing Barbies into the hands of kids when most parents don't even find them appropriate.

Barbie's "Mom" was a Total MlLF?!

Let's rewind for a moment and discuss a little Barbie history. Barbie had an interesting beginning. Her predecessor, the "mother" of Barbie was a 1950's controversial working girl.

The creation of Barbie was inspired by a doll in Germany named Bild Lilli. The german doll was derived from a comic strip and then later adapted into a doll.


Bild Lilli was sold as an "adult" doll, and selling her to children was unheard of. Her doll persona was sassy, fashionable, talked openly about her sexual endeavors, had a lot of friends, and dated (and slept with) old rich men.
She was first and foremost a socialite fashionista. (Sound familiar?)

Feminists considered Lilli to be a "sex doll," and she was originally marketed as an adult novelty, for joke or gag gifts. She wasn't supposed to be a toy for children, but Ruth Handler, a founder of Mattel, bought three of the dolls and was determined to market them in America. Handler didn't realize that Bild Lilli was sold in bars and tobacco shops, meant as a titilating joke between men who found the sexuality of the doll amusing.



These are some of my favorite Bild Lilli images:





Well, Handler thought these dolls would be worth selling to children in America and brought Lilli back anyway, and then made her into the modern day Barbie doll.


Barbie might have questionnable values now, but at least she was founded on good morals, right!!?....




You can read more about Bild Lilli in an article from Associatedcontent.com here.
An even more awesome blog with a great analysis of Barbie history, including Bild Lilli facts can be read here.

Barbie Can Be ANYTHING She Wants to Be?

Barbie marketing strategies don't just sell dolls and clothes, they sell ideas. Barbie commercials tell girls to "be who you wanna be, be a Barbie girl." But if girls can be who they want to be, then why are all Barbie girls portayed as overtly feminine, for lack of a better word, girlie-girls?

This commercial for a 2009 Barbie camper exemplifies what a Barbie girl is really like:



Apparently Barbie girls can't spend time in nature without all the modern immenities at hand. For a Barbie girl, things like plasma TV's are necessities on those family vacations, when roughing it in the wilderness...

Barbie's always have been, and still are, marketed in predominantly female careers. Barbies have jobs that are often related to domestic female gender roles. Popular Barbie careers from the 50s-present day include secretary, teacher, nurse, cheerleader, chef, ballerina, and flight attendant.

Barbies can be doctors too though, which is a traditionally male profession...



...But when Barbie is a doctor, she is still in a predominantly female role of holding, rocking, and caring for babies. The other kind of doctor Barbie can be is the Pet Doctor Barbie. Naturally a Barbie Girl would only want to care for adorable things like newborn babies and fuzzy puppies and kittens. It would be completely out of character for Barbie to be some kind of surgeon, where that career (and outfit) involves icky things like wearing ugly scrubs and a surgeon's cap that covers her pretty blonde hair.


When searching "Barbie's careers" on Mattel's Barbie website, the only results that are found are a Barbie pet vet, gymnastics coach, preschool teacher, newborn baby doctor, a SeaWorld trainer, a salon stylist, and a TV chef. Even when Barbie is marketed with visible jobs, which is usually only once a year, she is kept in careers implying traditional gender roles. If Ken had a more thorough identity and Mattel actually marketed him with a job, I highly doubt he would be marketed as having a career in any of Barbie's professions. They all have a feminine connotation that is consistent with Barbie's ultra-girlie persona. If Barbie is going to represent "what girls can be" then she should be marketed with a deeper scope of careers. If there is going to be Barbies like a preschool teacher and a baby doctor Barbie, then there should also be Barbies like an attorney, CEO, and scientist.
Women are excelling in all professional fields, and if Barbie is going to be representative of adult women then she should accurately portray them, in more than just stereotypically female-oriented fields.