Barbie: A Cultural Icon For Young Girls

Barbie is a cultural icon for young girls all over the country. Created by Mattel in 1959, the doll has received criticism for decades because the physical appearance of the doll sets unrealistic body standards for females. Barbie is scaled to be extremely thin, usually Caucasian, with blonde hair and blue eyes. An African-American Barbie doll was released in 1980, except the features of the doll are extremely similar to the Caucasian dolls, with small noses and petite lips. The un-proportional measurements of Barbie’s body are nearly impossible for a real woman to accomplish, with a 16” waist. The average American woman’s waist is 35”, so Barbie’s waist is half the waist of a healthy female. According to a scholarly article written by Helga

The Bild Lilli was modelled after an extremely popular cartoon and was only manufactured for about ten years. Despite unpopular opinions of the doll at the annual Toy Fair in New York in 1959, the Barbie doll was welcomed into the homes of Americans later on that year. The very first Barbie doll looked exceedingly like the Bild Lilli bombshell doll in Germany, with blonde hair and blue eyes. The doll remained to look the same way for about twenty years, with small variations of facial features to follow along with the modern beauty standards at the time. In the 1980’s, the first African American doll was released following the Black Power movement of the 60’s and 70’s. The features of the doll were exactly the same as the original doll, with a petite frame, and small facial features. The African-American Barbie doll has created lots of stir among the general public over the past thirty or so years because it appeared as if the doll was just a ‘painted’ Caucasian doll. The Black dolls were exactly the same as the original doll up until 2009 when Mattel released a collection of Black Barbie’s that have typical African American features and curly, textured hair. This was the first instance of a major variation of the original Barbie dolls, with many more variations to come in the