Poor, Poor Barbie

I always thought I would never let my daughter own a Barbie doll. Barbies send off all sorts of wrong messages to children about ideal body image (beautiful woman= 5'7" tall, shiny long blond hair and long thin legs, teeny waist - clearly Barbie was never pregnant, and on and on).

But when our lovely elderly neighbor from down the hall, who my daughter so adored, bought her a Barbie doll, I just couldn't take it away. I'm not too worried about my daughter. When she was invited to her 6th "princess party" last year her response was "not ANOTHER princess party!" Also, she still loves to play with boys, and they even (at age 5 and 6) still love to play with her. I have relaxed a bit about my original Barbie ban, but if they were her favorite toy I would probably worry a bit more.

Well, Barbie is back in the news raising new concerns for parents. Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, writes in today's NY Times (sorry you do need Times Select subscription) about a newly discovered phenomenon of "Barbie Abuse":

...Girls, aged 7 to 11, were expressing “violence and hatred” towards their Barbie dolls and acting on their emotions in the most barbarous ways — decapitating the dolls, pulling off their limbs and melting them in microwave ovens....

...American researchers have postulated that girls may be jealous of Barbie for being skinny or for seemingly “having it all.” Some believe that she connotes a frightening kind of adulthood at a time when girls are clinging still to childhood. But the British researchers, from the University of Bath’s department of psychology and school of management, found nothing of the sort.

What they discovered was, simply put, that a Barbie doll is just a doll. She’s a doll that girls are outgrowing at an earlier and earlier age. (Four, believe it or not, is now the optimal age of Barbie.) Barbie dolls also are cheap. Girls have a lot of them — and as a result, don’t consider them special toys.

Based on this research, Warner laments the fact that kids are growing up faster than ever before and asks, "what’s left of the years that can properly be called childhood?"

I fully agree with her concerns. But what also bothered me was the excessive materialism revealed in these studies. The wasteful image of girls destroying the toys they no longer play with is a sad one. What about encouraging girls to hand them down to a sister or cousin, or giving them to a child whose family can't afford Barbies?

 

Comments

[Helene Rock]

Karen, We've always been a Barbie-free house. My daughter begged and begged for one when she about 3 or 4. She LOVED the clothes and the glitzy accessories. I find the whole Barbie culture thing to be totally odious and objectionable. My kid got the clothes and dressed up her stuffed animals. OK by me. I told her that a nursing child may NOT own an adult-looking doll without nipples. She "got" that part. Parents, it's OK to say NO to your children and that some things violate your conscience as consumers. It's also OK to RSVP NO to Barbie/Princess b'day parties which we Feminists find so reprehensible. Your children WILL survive the "deprivation." It's OK to tell those who wish to give your children these dicey things as gifts that's it's NOT OK with you. We've given untold numbers of Barbies to Tzedakah. Thankfully the stores are full of other more appropriate playthings for our kids. B'vracha,
Helene

[aaa]

Double standards are so interesting. If little boys were caught mutilating toys of theirs, we would probably see articles bemoaning the negative effects of allowing them to play with violent figures like a G.I. Joe. If they were mauling their teddy bears, we would probably still attribute it to the G.I. Joe type figures they encounter on TV and video games. Girls destroy their barbies and it is an expression of feminist angst, and journalists are willing to condone the actions because since they see it as an affirmation of what adults dislike about the doll. The bigger question is how we view the violent manner in which these children are behaving. We should explore all possible reasons for the behavior, and not assume that it is a junior rebellion against media images of women and adulthood.