The Unrealistic Proportions of Barbie

 

     The image above is one of the images I plan on using in my multimodal project over Barbies influence on our distorted definition of beauty.
   
     The image above is a photograph of a woman holding a Barbie in front of her chest. Half of her body has been left normal while the other half has been photoshopped to fit Barbies proportions.

     I think the fact that Barbie is in the center of her chest not only serves the obvious job of covering her chest but also of putting the image of Barbies beauty into the center of womens being. Women revolve their idea of beauty and of what they think they should look like around unrealistic portrayals of beauty such as Barbie.

     I also think it is important to note that most of the woman's head is not shown in the picture. This serves to  allow all women to relate to the picture. It is not simply a picture of one woman but symbolically of all women.
   
     The skin colored background is not distracting in any way so that all the viewer notices about the picture is the woman.

     The purpose of this picture is to demonstrate visually how unrealistic Barbies proportions are. It also serves to encourage girls and women of the fact that they are beautiful just the way they are and do not need to try and live up to unattainable expectations of beauty.

Sources:
ImageURL: http://content.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/20120807-090608-246x156.jpg

Article about Barbie that I plan on using in my writing project

     In my English class we have to write a research paper over a topic we find interesting. I chose to write my paper on Barbies influence on our modern definition of beauty and the harm that this definition can cause to girls.

     One of my areas of focus in this paper will be how unrealistic Barbies measurements are. I think the photo below does a very good job of summing it up.

     In addition to the photo above (that I plan to use in my visual presentation) I found an article that focused on a study in which  Barbie was scaled  to life size, had her measurements taken and was compared to the measurements of average women. The title of the article is " Measuring Up to Barbie: Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture" and it was written by Jacqueline Urla and Alan C. Swedlund. I determined that this article was scholarly and therefore a good source for my paper because it includes a study with data divided into multiple sections and has multiple references. Below is the main table I plan on using in my paper:

Measurement                         Barbie                  Average

Height                                     5'10"                     5'4"

Chest Circumference               35"                        35.7"

Waist Circumference               20"                        31"

Hip Circumference                  32.50"                   38.10"

Hip Breadth                            11.6"                     13.49"

Thigh Circumference               19.25"                  22.85"

     The article had many other interesting points such as how Barbie continues to strive in changing social climates. For example Barbie used to have careers such as ballerina and candy striper and now in the modern times she has jobs such as doctor and astronaut to reflect the roles many modern women play in society.

     

     Another interesting thing the article brought up was Shani who was "essentially brown plastic poured into blond Barbies mold" (Urla, Swedlund). While the doll had more ethnic clothes and her features were claimed to be more realistic of African American women she could still share clothes with Barbie. They were still very similar in body type which just serves as another example of how Barbie tries to fit all body types and races into a certain ideal of what beauty should look like. 

    This article conveys a very successful rhetorical image. It does so through logos. The authors don't simply make claims and show pictures that may or may not be accurate. They rely on data from experiments to back up their claims. 

Source:

Urla, Jacqueline and Alan C. Swedlund "Measuring Up to Barbie: Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture" Gender and Sexuality. 133-143. Web. 12 April, 2013. 

Barbies influence on girls definition of beauty

   

     In my last blog post I talked about the medias influence on Americas definition of beauty. I'm going to narrow my topic in this blog to one of the earliest influences on young girls perspective of beauty: Barbie. 

  As a young girl I had dozens of Barbie dolls. They all had perfect little clothes, cars, pools and boyfriends. But most of all they were pretty...or perfect. As a young girl I loved playing with Barbies because for those moments in my imagination it was like I was the one with the perfect looks and life.

     Looking back I feel like Barbie was my first introduction into the world of beauty. She was the first (or at least one of the first) things that influenced my definition of beauty: unattainable perfection. 

     I think it's sad that as young girls the most common toy we get only serves to set us up for failure, disappointment and a completely distorted view of beauty. As young girls our favorite toy shows us that our only value as humans is our looks. 

     Below are measurements comparing what Barbie would look like in real life to the average sized woman. I got these measurements from an article by Jacqueline Urla and Alan C. Swedlund called "Measuring Up to Barbie Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture".

                                             Barbie                                                Average Woman

Height                                   5'10"                                                   5'4"

Chest Circumference             35"                                                      35.7"

Waist Circumference             20"                                                      31"

Hip Circumference                32.50"                                                 38.10"

Hip Breadth                          11.6"                                                   13.49"

Thigh Circumference             19.25"                                                 22.85"

     The fact that Barbies measurements don't even reflect that of a normal person make matters worse. If little girls are going to look up to a beautiful doll as their idea of beauty she should at least have the proportions of a normal human. 

     I don't think we should get rid of Barbie or anything like that. I just think that she should be made a little more realistic so that young girls don't grow up thinking that one day they too should look perfect like Barbie. 

     

Culture of Beauty

     Americas culture highly values beauty, which would be fine if we valued a realistic and  attainable  beauty. However we do not, our ideas of beauty are influenced by the media even though most of us  know that the pictures we see on billboards and in magazines have been photoshopped .

     Below is a video from Dove, it shows how much photoshop can change a persons appearance.

     I find this video to be very sad yet eye opening. The fact that Americas image of beauty has become so distorted is just sick. Young girls grow up being shown that beauty is a synonym for perfection. To be beautiful one has to be tall, skinny, tan, have perfect skin, lips and eyes.

     Magazines show pictures of photoshopped women next to cosmetics, claiming that a certain brand of foundation made them beautiful when in reality it was a computer.

     The irony in the above picture is ridiculous. One of the first things a person sees when looking at this add are the words " Don't mask me. FIT ME". However the purpose of foundation is to mask real beauty in order to achieve the perfect ideal image of modern beauty.  Not only that, but the woman in the picture probably does not even resemble herself after all of the photoshop that has been done to her.

     In the beginning of this post I said that America has a culture that highly values this fake version of beauty.  I'm sure that as many other countries are becoming modern their ideas of beauty are becoming just as distorted as ours. However there are a few places in which the natural and unobsessed  relationship with beauty still exists.

     Dr. Campbell did a study on body image in a nomadic community in northern Kenya called the Ariaal. He found that "Ariaal men are much more consistent than men in other parts of the world in their views of the average man's body [one like their own] and what they think women want [one like their own]." (Kottak, 31) The Ariaal did not have billboards or magazines, they only had one TV playing CNN. Their body image had not been ruined by the media.

     I wish America could go back to a time before our image of beauty became distorted. However since we can not reverse the damage I think that it is our responsibility to educate young girls (and boys) on the powers of photoshop before their perceptions of beauty become just as distorted as the rest of ours.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U

http://kimgray.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screen-shot-2011-06-21-at-8.06.48-PM.png

Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity. 15th edition. New York. McGraw-Hill. 2013

Classroom Papers

     In class we read an essay by Min-Zhan Lu in which she described going to school in China where only certain forms of writing were acceptable and others were viewed as anti-revolutionary.

   
     Here in America we students have a little more freedom of expression, we can choose to write about many topics, even controversial ones. However I can also think of many ways in which the american school system forces certain rules and guidelines upon students.

     I can remember writing papers in high school and struggling my way through MLA format, I was so stressed about getting every period and comma right that some of the joy of writing was turned into stress. I wanted to make sure I wasn't accused of plagiarism, which is important however I think we could give credit where credit is due without having so many stressful rules.

     I can also remember having to write many different styles of papers with many different expectations in each kind. The universal expectation however was for students to use  a more sophisticated flowery language. The "better" writers used many hard words and long sentences. Flowery writing was never my style, I felt that it sounded silly and unnecessary. And now I see that content is in many cases better than unnecessary fancy words. It would have been nice if a teacher had told me that a long time ago so I could have enjoyed writing without that unnecessary stress.

Nonhuman Primate Communication

     Language, whether written or spoken is our primary means of communication as well as mode of cultural transmission.  Language is based on learned associations between words and the things they stand for.

     Only humans speak. No other animal has a communication system approaching the complexity of that of humans. Other nonhuman primates communicate through call systems which consist of a limited number of sounds that are only produced under certain environmental stimuli such as food. However these sounds are automatic and can't be combined. For example if food and danger are encountered at the same time they can't combine the two calls to communicate the same thing.

     Many believe that culture is only characteristic of humans, primarily due to language. However chimpanzees and gorillas definitely fall into that gray area. (This isn't to say that chimpanzees and gorillas are on the same level of cultural complexity as humans or that humans evolved from them...an argument I have no desire in starting on here. I simply want to point how interesting and smart chimpanzees and gorillas are. They aren't on the same level as humans however they are on a higher cultural and intelligence level than other animals.)

     Several apes have learned to converse with people through means other than speech such as ASL (American Sign Language). The first chimpanzee to learn ASL was Washoe and the second was Lucy. Both were raised by humans and both exhibited several human traits in their communication such as swearing, joking, telling lies and trying to teach language to others. For example Fouts (a researcher) arrived at Lucy's place and found a pile of excrement on the floor. When he asked her about it she replied "dirty, dirty", her expression for poop. When Fouts asked whose it was Lucy blamed it on Fouts's coworker Sue and later on him.

     Something I found very interesting was a reply to a reporter by Koko, a gorilla. When asked whether she was a person or an animal, Koko chose neither and replied : "fine animal gorilla". Koko knew she wasn't human but also that she wasn't simply an animal. Her intelligence was greater as well as her cultural ability.

     Many may wonder why then, if chimpanzees and gorillas are so smart, do they not have language in the wild? The answer is. they lack the mutated form of a  gene known as FOXP2. This mutated form allows humans to speak. Those who have the nonspeech version of the gene can't make the fine tongue and lip movements necessary for speech. A British family known as KE had a severe speech disorder. They had the nonspeech version of the gene and couldn't even talk to each other.

     Chimpanzees and gorillas could have an even more complex culture if they had the mutated form of FOXP2 like we do. And again, this isn't an argument in favor of evolution or any big debate, simply a few interesting facts and ideas that I hope you guys will find interesting.
 

   

Folk Tales

       
     A anthropological theory from 1967 called Structuralism was mainly associated with a French man named Claude Levi- Strauss. He had a profound interest in structures of the human mind and aimed to discover connections between it and culture. He believed that human minds have universal characteristics and  that among these was the need to classify things. The most common means of classifying used by humans is binary opposition such as black and white, good and evil, old and young.

     Strauss applied his beliefs about classification to folk tales. He examined many tales and determined that many could be converted into another through a series of steps:

     1- Converting a positive element into a negative
     2- Reversing the order of the elements
     3- Replacing the male hero with a female hero
     4- Preserving certain key elements
   
     A good example is the tale of Cinderella and Ash Boy.

     I think it's interesting that even in very different cultures the basis of many folk tales are the same. This represents a unified more general human  culture shared by us all.