MARY WISNIEWSKI
Assistant Living Editor
She is a baseball player, a scuba diver, a Marine Corp sergeant, an Army officer, an astronaut, a doctor, a rockstar, a photographer, a pet sitter, and a fashionista. Throughout all of this, she still manages to look good with trendy outfits, well-maintained hair and nails and always a fresh face.
Her job may be made easier by her height. She is only 11.5 inches tall. But what makes her job even easier is she is manufactured. She’s Barbie, a figure that people both adore and hate.
In a study conducted by Helga Dittmar and Emma Halliwell in March 2006 for Developmental Psychology, the women observed that when girls between the ages of 5 to 8 were exposed to Barbie dolls, they reported lower body esteem and a longing to be thinner than girls exposed to the plus-size Emme dolls or girls not exposed to dolls at all.
Senior Kamaile Maldonado said as a girl, she owned many Barbies. When her teacher asked her what she wanted to be in first grade, Maldonado said she wanted to be Barbie.
“I’m ashamed of it now, but it gives me the belief that it does affect little girls,” she said.
According to Barbie’s 1998 biography by John Kehoe, at human size, she would be 5’6” tall, weigh 110 lbs, and have a 39” bust, 18” waist and 35” hips; a feat that is humanly impossible despite the fact people still try.
In Japan, some stores carry the Barbie couture clothing line so people can dress like her, but clothes don’t go far enough for some. Cindy Jackson, founder of the Cosmetic Surgery Network, is one such person spending thousands of dollars to look just like Barbie. Jackson is not alone in her aspirations.
For women who want to look like Barbie without the surgery MAC, a cosmetic company, teamed up with her for Barbie loves MAC line that includes items like Don’t Be Shy powder blush, Springtime Skipper eyeshadow and Rocking Chick lipstick. There is even a MAC Barbie doll that is so in demand, it is sold out. The popularity of the line proves that some still desire to look like Barbie even as adults.
Senior Ali McCourt said she used to have about 18 Barbies.
“You get hit by Barbie by the time you are 5 years old,” she said. “MAC launching the line of Barbie makeup plays into the childhood fantasy in wanting to grow up to be beautiful.”
Maldonado said she didn’t think a big company would ever produce a Barbie makeup line because of the controversy Barbie has produced in the past.
“I’d think adults were past this ascetic ideal,” she said. “This proves we haven’t grown up from this little girl ideal of beauty.”
Maldonado said all Barbies look the same no matter what ethnicity they are suppose to be because they all have the same facial features. She said in the MAC Barbie advertisement, it’s hard to believe the black model is actually black because she looks exactly like the white model.
Maldonando said she is both sad and appalled that people still cling to this version of beauty so many years after events like post-feminism and model-bashing.
“We’re adults. We should be more mature than trying to achieve an idealistic sense of beauty,” she said.
McCourt said people are bombarded with beautiful people in the media and Barbie is just a component of that. However, she sees wanting to look like Barbie as somewhat silly.
“Trying to look like a doll is ridiculous,” she said. “Barbie’s appendages don’t even bend.”
Junior Carly Boone said she sees that some females desire to resemble Barbie.
“Being at Pepperdine and seeing girls that, in many ways, surprisingly, fit the stereotype of Barbie really well has made me more aware of that culture by being around it,” Boone said.
Psychologist and Assistant Director at Pepperdine’s Counseling Center Nivla Fitzpatrick said Barbie probably affects girls more than women.
“By the time you reach adolescence, you realize it’s a doll,” Fitzpatrick said.
However, Fitzpatrick said there is not much diversity in Barbie’s weight and views her more as a caricature of an ideal woman.
Of course, Barbie is not the only icon inundating women with a standard of beauty.
Director of the Counseling Center Connie Horton said she isn’t sure Barbie is the primary one to blame.
“What have other ‘constantly in our face’ media outlets, and probably even more importantly, our mothers, friends, and other role models taught us about the importance of being thin?” Horton said in an e-mail.
Horton also said airbrushed and anorexic models portrayed in the media give a distorted image of what is normal.
This results in the troubling truth that people use these images to compare themselves.
Fitzpatrick said being fit is part of the job in the media.
“We are harsh on the media but that being said, they don’t provide much help [toward body image],” Fitzpatrick said.
Fitzpatrick said as a psychologist, she asks patients what their bodies need to look like based on what they do.
She said students are multitaskers, and says it’s not their job to look like a supermodel.
Horton said it is important to explore the origin in wanting a perfect body.
“Rationally, most people know that, at the end of life, no one really cares that they were a size two,” Horton said in an e-mail. “It’s important to remember that.”
Horton said step two is to learn to care for oneself as well as to focus on what really matters in life.
These are complicated issues and counseling may be an important resource in seeking to move out of the prison of obsessing about trying to attain an unrealistic goal, especially when it comes to students endagering their lives.
03-22-2007