She has long blonde hair and blue eyes. She is impossibly thin, yet oddly curvy. She would be about 5’9” and 110 lbs. in real life. She has been the definition of perfection to many, yet it is nearly physically impossible to look like her. But that doesn’t stop many people from trying. Ninety-two percent of girls have owned one in their lifetime, yet in the 56 years of her existence, her biggest changes occurred in 2016.

Without even saying her name, she is recognizable. The Barbie doll has become a role model to many young adolescents since 1959 when she was created by the American toy company Mattel Company.

It’s oddly peculiar that girls would let an inanimate object be their role model. Anastasia Reskoss, 20, and Quentin Dehar, 23, have spent over $322,728 on almost every plastic surgery known to man so they can look like their idols, Barbie and Ken.

There have been many cases in which women have spent millions of dollars on their goal to look identical to the Barbie doll. Blondie Bennett, a woman who has dedicated her life to transforming herself into Barbie is taking her obsession with becoming a doll to extreme measures, by having hypnotherapy to make her ‘brainless’.

Everyone should be happy with the way their bodies look, considering that individuals have almost no control of body-type. If you really are not happy with the way you look, maybe try other ways of enhancing your beauty in a healthy manner, such as by working out, eating right, drinking lots of water are all good ways to keep your body healthy and happy. I think getting plastic surgery to look like a doll is foolish and unhealthy.

I sometimes wonder why it took the company behind the Barbie doll more than five decades to realize that the child play toy they have created has become nothing more than an impossible role model to some children.

The new “Real Beauty” campaign by Dove and the “Like A Girl” commercials, were a few of the causes behind the new and improved barbie dolls. In the commercial they state that the statement “Like A Girl” shouldn’t be an insult, although it is majority of the time treated like one.

People sometimes say “You throw like a girl”, basically saying that you throw pathetically and act like a stereotypical girl, worrying about your hair and makeup. Which is definitely not the case.

A young girl was asked what it meant to “Run like a girl,” and she said “To run as fast as you can.” Girls should not live up to the phrase “Run like a girl” they should make the phrase live up to them.

In the “Real Beauty” campaign by Dove, there is a picture of many different skin toned, and different sized women standing together. Beauty does not have a certain size or a certain skin tone, beauty is from within your heart, it is the way you present yourself and the way you treat others around you.

By adding new body types, the Fashionistas doll line now includes seven skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles. Curvy, petite, and tall barbies are giving a bigger opportunity for more people to fall into the categories.

“I think it’s great that Barbie is expanding their horizons with skin color and body shapes because they had extremely inappropriate expectations for younger girls,” Alyssa Bonfiglio, sophomore, said.

Little girls dress their dolls in princess clothes and dress themselves the same way. It is all part of a fantasy children subscribe to. They do not grow up then wanting to be fairies and princess. The doll has less meaning as it is just a vessel that children dress, a mere toy.
“I think that the new evolution of Barbie is amazing and will show younger girls that it is okay to not be ‘perfect’,” Kennedy Wojcik, sophomore, said.