Crossposted @ Choice Words
That’s right, one of the most controversial dolls of all time is celebrating her fiftieth birthday. For nearly as long, feminists have been debating Barbie’s merits. You may remember a few years back when the tall blond doll was quoted as saying “math is hard.” Perhaps that is because math reveals some hard truths about Barbie’s body and the probability that it could be found in nature. Anyway, in honor of her golden birthday BBC News decided to determine once and for all whether it is possible for healthy women to have Barbie’s body type.
The findings were surprising, as most agree that Barbie’s proportions are possible to achieve, but certainly not healthy. In fact, only about one in one hundred thousand women look like her naturally (as opposed to one in fifty men who naturally have Ken’s proportions).
The BBC went a little further, though. They took an average-sized woman (five feet and six inches tall, who wears size 10-12) and figured out what she would look like if she had the doll’s proportions. The results were interesting:
If [the woman’s] waist size of 28ins (71.1cm) were to remain unchanged, then applying Barbie’s proportions to her would mean [she] shoots up in height, to an Amazonian at 7ft 6ins (2.28m) tall. That’s just two inches shorter than the world’s tallest woman, Yao Defen. She would also have hips measuring 40ins (101.6cm) and a bust of 37ins (83.9cm).
But what if, instead, [her] height of 5ft 6ins (1.68m) was to remain unchanged. Doing the maths, [she] would have an extraordinarily tight waist of just 20ins (50.8cm), while her bust would be 27ins (68.5cm) and her hips 29ins (73.6cm). Even the famously slight Victoria Beckham reportedly only has a 23ins (58.4cm) waist. But neither are they unheard of - Brigitte Bardot was famous for her 20ins (50.8cm) waist.
Apparently in real life, Barbie would look a lot like Bridget Bardot! Perhaps as Barbie embarks on her next fifty years, Mattel will consider changing her proportions to reflect average women. Not to say that there is a magical “normal” body type that all women should strive to achieve, but I’m pretty sure most of us don’t look like Bridget Bardot.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Happy Birthday Barbie.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12381
Great article, but reading the comments on the BBC article is super depressing. Most seem to be from men saying "well gosh I didn't strive to be an action figure, don't assume girls are sensitive." Just, ugh.
Also, am I the only one who saw Barbie's fiftieth and hoped/thought they'd make one that actually looked-y'know-fifty? I would totally buy a realistic 50 year-old doll.
I don't know about those measurements. Where on the bust did they measure? I'm 5'6", and my bust is about 27" around the rib cage - not including the actual bust part of the bust. IRL, Barbie's rack has got to be way bigger than my rib cage.
Yeah, Barbie's waist/bust difference looks like it would be way more than 7 inches.
My bust was 27 inches when I was in grade 4. My grandmother had to take my measurements because she was making me a dress. I don't know how I still remember that. But I was NINE! And I was a skinny kid, too. That really puts it into perspective, eh!
I hate how on the BBC comments all the men are commenting things like "Ken dolls never gave ME an eating disorder, why are stupid women so impressionable!" etc. Maybe because every other commercial on tv doesn't deal with men needing to lose weight so they can be sexy and sell products? heh..
I often wondered just that when I was in my women's classes in University as a Canadian Spanish woman- I'm not a Latina, but I would have expected to hear more about Latina points of view and seen more actual Latinas in my class than I did. It's not like there aren't any Latinas in Montreal, in fact the Latin population in Montreal seems to be growing, I can literally hear it bedroom furniture when I go out. There is Gloria Anzaldua though.