Barbie a Good Role Model?
“I'm a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world
Life in plastic, its fantastic!
You can brush my hair; undress me everywhere
Imagination, life is your creation.”- Aqua
It’s a life in plastic. She has a family, pets, a boyfriend, a profession, and various outfits. It’s what most young girls grow up with. Their very first doll can make a difference in one’s life. The Barbie doll from the early adolescents’ experiences with, and views of, Barbie article states that, “it is one of the most successful toys of the 20th century and arguably, the icon of female beauty and the American dream (Rogers,1999; Turkei,1998). Barbie has been discovered as early as the 20th century and continues to formulate the toy industry. Not only has it been revolutionizing the toy manufacturing but has been illustrating the lives of every day adolescences.
The evolution of the Barbie doll is a reflection of the changing role of women in society.
Barbie goes way back. It came from a Das Bild comic strip called Lilli. She was portrayed as a blonde, and later produced as a pornographic doll famous to bachelors in postwar Germany. On a trip to Europe, Ruth Handler had seen her daughter play with paper dolls by giving them adult roles. The toy companies at the time lacked adult figures. So, she and her husband Elliot (co founder of Mattel) thought it would be a great idea to create a doll. This is how they discovered Lilli. Ruth supposed that the prototypical doll would facilitate girls in the vein of her daughter, Barbie; to picture her future life in other views than of her mothers’. Therefore the eleven and a half inch Barbie doll went from the German sex toy into a teenage doll that made the most successful product in the history of toy making. On March 9, 1959 was Barbie’s first debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. This date is officially used as Barbie’s birthday. From the article, Barbie at 50: The doll revolutionized the toy industry, states “with
Life in plastic, its fantastic!
You can brush my hair; undress me everywhere
Imagination, life is your creation.”- Aqua
It’s a life in plastic. She has a family, pets, a boyfriend, a profession, and various outfits. It’s what most young girls grow up with. Their very first doll can make a difference in one’s life. The Barbie doll from the early adolescents’ experiences with, and views of, Barbie article states that, “it is one of the most successful toys of the 20th century and arguably, the icon of female beauty and the American dream (Rogers,1999; Turkei,1998). Barbie has been discovered as early as the 20th century and continues to formulate the toy industry. Not only has it been revolutionizing the toy manufacturing but has been illustrating the lives of every day adolescences.
The evolution of the Barbie doll is a reflection of the changing role of women in society.
Barbie goes way back. It came from a Das Bild comic strip called Lilli. She was portrayed as a blonde, and later produced as a pornographic doll famous to bachelors in postwar Germany. On a trip to Europe, Ruth Handler had seen her daughter play with paper dolls by giving them adult roles. The toy companies at the time lacked adult figures. So, she and her husband Elliot (co founder of Mattel) thought it would be a great idea to create a doll. This is how they discovered Lilli. Ruth supposed that the prototypical doll would facilitate girls in the vein of her daughter, Barbie; to picture her future life in other views than of her mothers’. Therefore the eleven and a half inch Barbie doll went from the German sex toy into a teenage doll that made the most successful product in the history of toy making. On March 9, 1959 was Barbie’s first debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. This date is officially used as Barbie’s birthday. From the article, Barbie at 50: The doll revolutionized the toy industry, states “with