The racial bias is simply out in the ether.īoogie is African American/Caucasian with very light skin and bright red hair. What? Black children, especially girls, need to be told that they are important. This time, however, she shrugged nonchalantly and said, “She’s just the Black one.” Keeping my voice calm (while internally freaking out) I asked her if that made the Barbie less important. Normally this would lead to a meltdown of epic proportions.
Several weeks ago my daughter Boogie (who just turned 5) had a Barbie doll eaten by one of our dogs. Unlike Bratz dolls, which competed with Barbie so successfully in part because of the dolls’ racial diversity, kids know that there is only one “real” Barbie-and that Barbie is blonde and white.Įven very young children notice this inequality, with heartbreaking results. For example, one mom writes: Mattel’s advertisements and the dolls’ arrangement in toy stores (which Mattel cannot control, but does influence) both have a problem with this. Mattel struggles to present Barbies of color in ways that surpass tokenism-in ways that are equal to the brand’s presentation of the iconic, Caucasian, blonde Barbie. ‘I’ll need Steven’s and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game.’ ”
“‘I’m only creating the design ideas,’ Barbie says, laughing. Given our current widespread cultural attention to the importance of preparing girls for STEM careers, the topic sounds like a great choice-but I Can Be a Computer Engineer! portrayed Barbie as incompetent and constantly in need her male classmates’ help. Just this year, Mattel had to recall its disastrous I Can Be a Computer Engineer! book featuring Barbie as a computer science student. You’d think Mattel would have learned its lesson from this gaffe, but apparently not. In 1992, Mattel’s “Teen Talk Barbie” infamously chirped, “Math class is tough!” Mattel recalled this sexist toy reluctantly, after the American Association of University Women brought widespread awareness to the issue. Barbie products portray girls as unintelligent. If there are better choices out there- and there are-why not choose them?”Ģ. “In contrast,” Day notes, “Lottie Dolls, Lammily, and others present girls with a much healthier and diverse image of the female face and form. “So many fashion dolls, products, and media constitute a tidal wave of unrealistic body types and needlessly sexualized imagery, which collectively do send a harmful message to girls. The scholarly research documents Barbie’s negative consequences on girls’ psyches. For example, a Developmental Psychology study reported that “girls aged five to six were more dissatisfied with their shape and wanted more extreme thinness after seeing Barbie doll images than after seeing other pictures”-and that among girls ages 6 and 7, “the negative effects were even stronger.” Another well-designed experimental study found that girls who played with Barbies were more likely to restrict their eating afterwards than girls who played with the fuller-figured (now discontinued) Emme dolls.īarbie vs a Lammily prototype, using dimensions from an average 19-year-old girlĮducational psychologist Lori Day, author of Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More, urges parents to choose healthy fashion dolls. “There are so many better choices for girls than Barbie,” Day argues. As body image expert Marci Warhaft-Nadler, author of The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents, explains: “Barbie sends our girls one message, and it’s this: ‘You can do anything and you can be anything-as long as you look like this: very tall, very thin, very Caucasian, and very beautiful.'” The best-known reason to avoid Barbie is crucial: The doll has an unrealistic body type and a rigid beauty ideal that studies show can be harmful to girls. Let’s begin with the reason everyone’s heard about. Barbie’s beauty ideal is unhealthy and damaging. Here are five good reasons to avoid Barbie altogether:ġ. Thanks to these new offerings, there’s no longer a good reason to buy Barbies for little girls.
Fashion dolls can be really fun, but the most common fashion doll-Barbie-has become so riddled with problems that it’s a poor choice for little girls, even when balanced out by other toys. And I don’t just mean the body image issues everyone has heard about: many other problems pervade the brand, too.įortunately, many fun, healthy new fashion dolls have debuted in recent years. All kids should have a true diversity of toys to play with-dolls, construction toys, play food, craft supplies, vehicles, and so on-to encourage a richly imaginative play life.įashion dolls, however, have long been the sticking point in this plan. When selecting children’s toys, balance is critically important.
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