Barbie
Nov 16th, 2010 by tiffrennick
I recently read Anna Bourak’s blog post called Age Defying Barbie. This brought up some more nostalgia for me, which seems to be a running theme for the past couple weeks. As a little girl, I grew up playing Barbie with my sister. You weren’t considered a normal girl unless you played with Barbie.
Anna made an interesting point in her blog about how these dolls have lead to these preconceived views about beauty, expectations, etc. She also demonstrated how if Barbie was marketed as her actual age or at a different weight, then no one would buy this product. I believe that recently Barbie has tried to change this negative aspect by coming out with more multi-cultural dolls and promoting the idea that girls don’t have to fit in the ‘cookie-cutter’ model.
An example of this is the following video, which shows girls can be anything when they ‘grow-up’, should believe in themselves, etc. 
Barbie is still an important staple in our society, but as Anna pointed out, Marvel should be more careful about the important image it can enforce on kids today.
“If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?” – Quote from a t-shirt