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How Does Barbie Affect Children

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Children never sit back and think how the toys they play with affect how they see the world around them; and often the adult in their lives don’t worry about how much their child’s favorite can affect them, now and in their futures. With Barbie being a popular child’s toy for decades, and with her in a world that has become increasingly filled with ways the media can reach children, one can wonder, how much of an impact does a seemingly docile doll have on children?
Barbie caused quite a stir when she was first introduced in 1959. Many adults were outraged claiming she had too much of an adult figure to be a toy for children. Soon after Barbie’s introduction to toy shelves though, women realized that Barbie could be used as a teaching tool …show more content…
Models are thin, leggy, big eyed, with long hair. These women and how they look are projected daily through the television, movies, descriptions of heroines in books, and online Body modification is at an all time high and so are rates for children’s and young adult’s eating disorders. Its unrealistic to expect young girls to be comfortable with looking like a normal girl, when Amazonian-like beauty is pressed in on them daily. “I looked at a Barbie doll when I was 6 and said, ‘This is what I want to look like.’ I think a lot of little 6-year-old girls or younger even now are looking at that doll and thinking, ‘I want to be her.’ The previous quote was said by a model, Cindy Jackson, during a CBS News interview in 2004. Scientists have spent a good amount of time and effort trying to decide if Barbie and her ideal figure have a hand in young girls developing eating disorders. In a study done by Helga Dittmar and Emma Halliwell they found that young girls are extremely impressionable when it comes to how they feel about their bodies when compared to Barbie. During the study, 162 girls, all of who were between the ages of five and eight were exposed to one of three different images of a doll. The first group was shown images of a Barbie doll, the second group was shown images of an Emme doll (she is a doll in the UK, who’s body dimensions equal that of a woman’s size 16), and the final group was the control …show more content…
In addition, girls’ ideas about careers for themselves compared to careers for boys interacted with condition, such that girls who played with Barbie indicated that they had fewer future career options than boys, whereas girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head reported a smaller difference between future possible careers for themselves as compared to boys.” (Sherman,

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