I loved playing Barbie with my sister. My sister’s Barbie was blonde and had a “bubble-cut” hair style. My Barbie was blonde as well, with longer hair.
We thought she was beautiful.
We dreamed of being her.
We had all the Barbie houses, Barbie cars, and all the Barbie clothes my mother would buy for us.
I think I still carry with me the fallout from my “Barbie-obsessed” childhood. I spent years trying to be a size 4 or 6, while trying to look as perfect as possible. And I spent years in therapy trying to undo the harm.
Today, I read an article by college student, Galia Slayan, entitled “The Scary Reality of a Real-Life Barbie Doll.” It’s a terrific article. Galia was in high school in 2007 when she actually built a “real-life Barbie” for the school’s first National Eating Disorder Awareness Week and later introduced the life-sized figure to Hamilton College in 2011 for Hamilton’s first NEDAW.
“I was frustrated after quitting the cheerleading squad, frustrated with pressures to look and act a certain way and most of all frustrated with the eating disorder controlling my life,” she says in the article.
Galia’s Barbie stands about six feet tall with a 39″ bust, 18″ waist, and 33″ hips. These are the supposed measurements of Barbie if she were a real person. She would weigh 110 pounds.
More Barbie statistics from the article:
- There are two Barbie dolls sold every second in the world.
- The target market for Barbie doll sales is young girls ages 3-12 years of age.
- A girl usually has her first Barbie by age 3, and collects a total of seven dolls during her childhood.
- Over a billion dollars worth of Barbie dolls and accessories were sold in 1993, making this doll big business and one of the top 10 toys sold.
- If Barbie were an actual women, she would be 5’9″ tall, have a 39″ bust, an 18″ waist, 33″ hips and a size 3 shoe.
- Barbie calls this a “full figure” and likes her weight at 110 lbs.
- At 5’9″ tall and weighing 110 lbs, Barbie would have a BMI of 16.24 and fit the weight criteria for anorexia. She likely would not menstruate.
- If Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours due to her proportions.
- Slumber Party Barbie was introduced in 1965 and came with a bathroom scale permanently set at 110 lbs with a book entitled “How to Lose Weight” with directions inside stating simply “Don’t eat.”
Read that last one again. Now ask yourself how many women today see themselves as anything less than beautiful because their Barbie told them not to eat.
I understand now what I didn’t as a child.
Beauty is an inside job. Beauty is not defined by plastic poured into a mold.
Barbie, Beauty Myth, Eating Disorders, Galia Slayen, Holly Fulger,National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, Nedaw, Real-Life Barbie, Real-Life Barbie Doll, self esteem, speaking of beauty, Teen self-esteem
Holly Fulger’s lifelong passion to help women develop a positive and compassionate self-identity. It’s now the driving force behind her new web series, Speaking of Beauty with Holly Fulger, designed to open a dialog among women to address fears and insecurities to ultimately discover that beauty is an inside job.is an accomplished actress and the woman behind the new web series, Speaking of Beauty with Holly Fulger. Holly is married to character actor, Ron Bottitta, and lives with their two children and all their rescue animals, in Hancock Park, CA. Find her on Twitter as and
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