Samantha N. Perkins

The Female Body

This image shows a normal woman with no clothes on. She is holding up a Barbie doll which is what a lot of women are compared too. The image is trying to show that a woman’s body and a Barbie doll body don’t compare to one another. It is extremely hard, almost impossible, to look like Barbie because of her measurements. Barbie’s measurements are traced around the woman’s upper body to show the comparison.

  This image should discourage women from trying to reach unrealistic measurements. Barbie is a doll and that is all she will ever be. There is no such thing as a human Barbie because if there was, she would probably be anorexic. I think the craziest part of the whole Barbie measurements is the waist. In order to ever have a waist like that you could never eat any food at all. Even if you didn’t eat food, your body wouldn’t have that nice curve to it like Barbie’s does because you would look sick.

  In “The More You Subtract, the More You Add” by Jean Kilbourne it says “ Even very little girls are offered makeup and toys like Special Night Barbie, which shows them how to dress up for a night out. Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful and, above all these days, they must be thin” (Kilbourne, 232). This quote is true because almost every little girl is given a Barbie doll when she was a little girl. The girls end up dressing the Barbie and applying makeup to her face in order to make her beautiful. This is how young girls get ideas of beauty implemented in their head. Also, there was never a curvy or fat Barbie. Every single Barbie doll is stick thin, which gives girls the idea that only being thin is acceptable and beautiful.