The Representati

on of Female Body

The Barbie Doll

A Little Girl’s best friend...synonymous of perfect body

• Western ideal of beauty

• Perfect Plastic

• Plastic: Can hold any shape and can reproduce the tiniest of details. Makes perfect what nature makes approximate.(M.G Lord)

• Can Barbie’s body be naturally achieved?

• Tiny waist: promotion of anorexia?

• Over the years, Barbie did not grow older but did somehow gain weight to become more life-like.

• Importance of the issue of Barbie’s weight. Controversy of “Barbie Slumber Party” sold with bathroom scale set at 110 lbs (49kg).

• With such mensurations, Barbie wouldn’t be able to conceive a child. Moreover, the doll has never been anatomically correct despite being fashionable correct.

• Barbie had many jobs, but never had a mother role as such, and never got married. However her best friend “Midge” got married to Alan with whom she had 2 children : Ryan and a unnamed child featured in the “Happy Family” collection. In this story, Barbie is portrayed as the “baby doctor”

• Barbie, instead promotes the image of the modern woman, the career woman.

• Recent ranges of Barbie doll such as “Pink” portraying her almost as a bimbo girl.

What representation of womanhood does she give?

Universal ideal of beauty?

• Contested view of beauty

• Western representation of perfect body with no taboo, opposed to eastern view of woman and repression of the body.

• Barbie Totally Stylin’ Tattoos: good or bad image to give? Is Barbie an influential model? As Bordo suggests, body has almost become a simple commodity.

• Fulla Doll (or Islamic Barbie): clothing covers her from head to toe. Different ideal: “promoting good virtues for little girls”.

• Plasticity of postmodern paradigm.

• Desire for perfect body as the sign of normalisation in the modern society. Body no longer customised

• Body standardised along icons such as Barbie or Madonna

• The society does not seem to put any limit to the transformations of the self. According to Bordo, media encourages the audience to “choose” their body

• While technology used to be designed to replace malfunctioning part of body, it is now used to redesign the self

• Body is then materialised.

• Influence of Barbie on girls: Kids Beauty Pageants.

Susan Bordo and the cultural plastic of the female body