When selecting children’s toys, balance is critically important. All kids should have a true diversity of toys to play with—dolls, constructiontoys, play food, craft supplies, vehicles, and so on—to encourage a richly imaginative play life.
Fashion dolls, however, have long been the sticking point in this plan. Fashion dolls can be really fun, but the most common fashion doll—Barbie—has become so riddled with problems that it’s a poor choice for little girls, even when balanced out by other toys.And I don’t just meanthe body image issues everyone has heard about: many other problems pervade the brand, too.
Fortunately, manyfun, healthynewfashion dolls have debutedin recent years. Thanks to these new offerings, there’s no longer a good reason to buy Barbies for little girls.
Here are five good reasons to avoid Barbie altogether:
1. Barbie’s beauty ideal is unhealthy and damaging.
Let’s beginwith the reason everyone’s heard about. The best-known reason to avoid Barbie is crucial: The doll has an unrealistic body type and a rigid beauty ideal that studies show can beharmful to girls. As body image expert Marci Warhaft-Nadler, author of The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents, explains:“Barbie sends our girls one message, and it’sthis:‘You can doanything and you can beanything—as long as you look like this:very tall, very thin, very Caucasian,and very beautiful.'”
The scholarly research documentsBarbie’s negative consequences on girls’ psyches.For example, aDevelopmental Psychologystudyreportedthat“girls aged five to six were more dissatisfied with their shape and wanted more extreme thinness after seeing Barbie doll images than after seeing other pictures”—and that among girls ages 6 and 7, “the negative effects were even stronger.” Anotherwell-designed experimental studyfoundthat girls who played with Barbies were more likely to restrict their eating afterwards than girls who played with the fuller-figured (now discontinued) Emme dolls.
Autumn Leaves Lottie, modeled on the dimensions of an average 9-year-old girl
Studies like theseinfluenced the creation of new fashion dollsdesigned with girls’body images in mind:theLottie dolls and the Lammily doll. According to Lottie’s creator Lucie Follett, she was inspiredto createLottie when sheread a newspaper article about the Developmental Psychology study on girls’ body dissatisfaction after playing with Barbie.“This provided the inkling of an idea,” Follett explains.“We then went on to contact the researcher, Dr. Margaret Ashwell, OBE—formerly head of the British Nutrition Foundation—and her colleague Professor McCarthy.They helped us ensure thatLottie has a childlike, age appropriate body that is based on the scientific dimensions of a 9 year old girl.”
Barbie vs a Lammily prototype, using dimensions from an average 19-year-old girl
Educational psychologist Lori Day, author ofHer Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More, urges parents to choose healthy fashion dolls.“There are so manybetter choices for girls than Barbie,” Day argues. “So many fashion dolls, products, and media constitute a tidal wave of unrealistic body types and needlessly sexualized imagery, which collectively do send a harmful message to girls.
“In contrast,” Day notes, “Lottie Dolls, Lammily, and others present girls with a much healthier and diverse image of the female face and form. If there are better choices out there—and there are—why not choose them?”
2. Barbie products portray girls as unintelligent.
In 1992, Mattel’s “Teen Talk Barbie” infamously chirped,“Math class is tough!” Mattel recalled this sexist toy reluctantly, after the American Association of University Women brought widespread awareness tothe issue.
You’d think Mattel would havelearned its lesson from this gaffe, but apparently not. Just this year, Mattel had to recall its disastrousI Can Be a Computer Engineer!book featuring Barbie as a computer science student. Given our currentwidespread cultural attention to the importance of preparing girls forSTEM careers, the topic sounds like a great choice—butI Can Be a Computer Engineer!portrayed Barbie asincompetentand constantly in needher male classmates’ help.
“‘I’m only creating the design ideas,’ Barbie says, laughing. ‘I’ll need Steven’s and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game.’ ”
Not cool, Mattel. Not cool.
3. Barbie has a race problem.
Mattelstruggles topresent Barbies of colorin ways that surpass tokenism—in ways that are equal to the brand’spresentation of the iconic, Caucasian, blonde Barbie. Mattel’sadvertisem*nts and the dolls’ arrangement in toy stores (which Mattel cannot control, but does influence) both have aproblem with this.
Unlike Bratz dolls, which competed with Barbie so successfully in part because of the dolls’ racial diversity, kids know that there is only one “real” Barbie—and that Barbie is blonde and white.
Even veryyoung children noticethis inequality, with heartbreaking results.For example, one mom writes:
Several weeks ago my daughter Boogie (who just turned 5) had a Barbie doll eaten by one of our dogs. Normally this would lead to a meltdown of epic proportions. This time, however, she shrugged nonchalantly and said, “She’s just the Black one.” Keeping my voice calm (while internally freaking out) I asked her if that made the Barbie less important. She said yes. YES. What? Black children, especially girls, need to be told that they are important. It isn’t something they just assume. The racial bias is simply out in the ether.
Boogie is African American/Caucasian with very light skin and bright red hair. She has hazel eyes. Her little brother Bear is African American. He is very dark. So I then asked if she thought Bear was less important than a white boy. She said yes again.
She couldn’t remember why she thought that or where she heard it. I was completely heartbroken.
Boogie’s mom isright to be concerned about her daughter’sperception that her black Barbie was less important than her white ones, as well asBoogie’s extension of this logic to her own baby brother. According to critic Ann DuCille, author of Skin Trade,dolls help childrenfigure out who they are in relation to the surrounding world, andwhenmulticultural Barbies arebasically merely“dye-dipped” white Barbies—dolls“modified only by a dash of color and a change of costume” in inauthentic and unfair ways—the consequences for children are serious.
For black children, “Dreaming white is the natural response to what the child sees and does not see in society’s looking glass,” DuCillewrites. Meanwhile, for white parents striving to raise anti-racist children,racial hierarchies in the toy aisle can hinder their efforts.
The young African-American girls I interviewed for my book Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood On Screen and in Everyday Lifecould readily see these inequities in the Barbie brand, as well. For example, Rhea, age 9, lamentedthat Mattel doesn’t treat the Barbies of color fairly. “For the black Barbie dolls, they give ‘em, like, orange [outfits] and everything before the white, and [for the white] one, they give her, like, pink and blue or something,” sheobserved. “A lot of black people hate orange!”
Madison (age 9) agreed with Rhea’s assessment. She told me how these politics informed her shopping choices: “I buy Bratz dolls because all of them—all the Bratz dolls are treated right.” After all, all Bratz dolls wore equally trendy fashions, and all of them shared the stage in MGA’s advertisem*nts—whereas groups of Barbies are usuallypresented in a hierarchical fashion in Mattel’s ads, with white Barbie at the front, top, or center.
In addition to these problems, children also deducethat black Barbies are less important and lessvaluable than white Barbies when they see their disparate pricing in stores. Retailershave a pattern of pricing black Barbies lower thanor higher thantheir equivalent white Barbies, with negative implications either way. (This is beyond Mattel’s direct control, but it indubitably exacerbates existing problems with the Barbie brand’s handling of race.)Retailers admit that these otherwise comparable dollsreally should be priced identically—but all too often, they’re not. Sadly, disparate pricing of any kind sends a subtle message of inequality to shoppers perusing the toy aisleand should quite simply be against corporatepolicies.
Branksea Festival Lottie hasrich, dark skin and beautiful clothing with kid appeal
For fashion dolls representing girls of color, check out the beautiful dark-skinnedBranksea Festival Lottie andKawaii Karate Lottie, as well asButterfly Protector Lottie, who’s got medium skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. In theplush doll category, consider Go! Go! Sports Girls’ Basketball TayeandSoccer Anna. And in the Disney Princess lineup, the Toddler Tiana dolls area favorite. (As I explain in The Princess Problem,I really appreciateDisney’stoddler dolls’healthy body shape).
4. Barbie dollsare not age-appropriate for young girls.
Barbie dolls were originally meantfor girls9 to 12 years old. At the time of Barbie’s debut in the late 1950s, the dollwas controversialbecause it presented such young girls with a sexy female form, and many parents objected.But the exciting new concept of the“teenager” (created by marketers of that era, akin to the invention of the “tween” category by marketersin more recent years) appealed to pre-teens, who enjoyed having a mature, aspirational doll to play with. Compared with the baby dolls that had previously dominated the girls’ doll market, Barbie and her career-oriented activities presenteda whole new world.
With every new generation of children, however, the toy industry has increasingly felt the squeeze of age compression. Marketers have pursued revenue growth by targeting ever-younger children with their products, but in consequence, items embraced by little kids have fallen out of favor with the older children who originally enjoyed them. After all, no self-respecting child wants to play with a “baby” toy!
Therefore, in the aftermath of the successful release of Mattel’s“My First Barbie” in 1981—a simple, inexpensiveBarbie doll meant for a new audience of preschool girls—Barbie has gradually lost its 9- to 12-year-old demographic.Matteltherefore abandoned the marketing of Barbie products to girls this age. To reach and captivate “tween” girls, Mattel execsrealized they would have to create a new toy line–leading to the release of the Monster High line a few years ago. (Note thatMattel’s loss of the 9- to 12-year-old audiencewasaccelerated by the success of the Bratz brand, whose edginess and diversitymade Barbie seem hopelessly dated in young girls’ eyes.)
According to a recent article inAdvertising Age:
For all her purported business sense, Barbie’s sales are falling. For the most recent quarter ending in June [2014], worldwide Barbie sales dropped 15% year over year, the third consecutive quarter of double-digit losses. Barbie’s brand sales have decreased in eight of the last 10 quarters.
Toy analyst Reyne Rice said age compression, with Barbie dolls now appealing to a smaller age range of girls, is partly to blame, along with increased competition from edgier and more contemporary dolls like Monster High (which Mattel also owns) and Disney’s “Frozen” characters.
Mattel now targets girls ages 3 to 7 with Barbie dolls—but there’s no doubt that these girls would be better served by dolls withoutthe problems outlined above,noteseducational psychologist Lori Day, author ofHer Next Chapter.
“I know a lot of women my age who played with Barbie and comment that it did not hurt them, and it’s true,” Day explains.“But I have to point out that the context for playing with Barbie has changed, and context matters. When I was a child, older girls played with Barbies, not preschoolers—and those girls were not barraged with sexualized dolls and hyper-feminine products set against a backdrop of pinkwashed girlhood.Barbie was naturally balanced out by so many other options for girls that have since disappeared from the market or are now labeled ‘boy toys.’”
5. Barbie buys its way into pro-girl spaces, appropriating girl empowerment to sell more dolls.
Mattelis the 5th-ranked global licensor worldwide, with $7 billion dollars behind it—giving it a value greater than many countries’ entire GDP. With such deep pockets, Mattelhas a long history of insidiously buyingBarbie’s way into pro-girl spaces, in an effort to “goodwash” Barbie’sproblems away by its association with credible girl empowerment brands.
Examples of this corporate practice abound in minor and major girl empowerment brands and communities alike, but the most prominentexamples areBarbie’s2010 sponsorship of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Dayand Barbie’spartnership with the Girl Scouts, announced in March 2014.This new partnership involves the release ofa Girl Scout-themed Barbie doll and aBarbie uniform patchfor Girl Scouts to work to earn. Mattel paid the Girl Scouts a cool $2 million for this association in an effort to improve their brand image. Unfortunately, the dealdamaged the Girl Scouts’ image and dinged their credibility, but given the organization’s financial problems, it’s understandable thatthey would make such a compromise in order to continue their service togirls.
Mattel’saffiliation with the Girl Scoutscaused as much or more incredulity and controversy as the essay “Barbie” wrote when Mattel placed images of the dollinSports Illustrated’sSwimsuit Edition just a month beforehand, in February 2014. In theessay, Mattel appropriated feminist ideas to justify placing Barbiein Sports Illustrated,a publication knownforreducing women to sex objects…despite having claimed for years that Barbie is a career woman who is a good role model for girls.
In machinations such as these, it’s clear thatMattel is not actually promoting girls’ empowerment—just Barbie. Barbie’s empowerment discourse is a marketing strategy, nothing more. For this reason, when I see blog poststrying toconvince the worldofBarbie’s empowering potential, I’m suspicious of the underlying motivations.
Josh Golin, associate director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), agrees.”Mattel markets girls on the illusions of choice, telling them they can ‘be anything,’ but really, of course, the goal is to limit choices to the Barbie brand,” says Golin.“The Girl Scout sponsorship epitomizes Mattel’s attempt to make it virtually impossible for girls to make the choice to be something other than a version of Barbie. Traditionally, the Girl Scouts have represented everything Barbie is not: Girl Scouts’ mission is to build ‘girls of courage, confidence, and character,’ while Barbie teaches girls to focus on appearance, outfits, and shopping.”
For this reason, Golin explains, the CCFC has spoken out against the Mattel-Girl Scout alliance. “Coopting what had been the quintessential ‘anti-Barbie’ organization is quite a coup for Mattel,” he notes, “and a heartbreaking loss of Barbie-free space for girls.”
In conclusion, when you’re selectinggifts for the little girls in your life,don’t give Barbie a second glance.With just a little time and care, you can find a perfectly fun, appealing, and healthy fashion doll that thechild will love and cherish.
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Rebecca Hains, Ph.D. is a media studies professor at Salem State University and the author ofThe Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years,a book meant to help parents raise empowered, media-literate daughters.
Rebecca isonFacebookandTwitter.If you enjoyed this post, you may follow Rebecca’s blog by hitting the “follow blog” button at rebeccahains.com/blog.
