Barbie Community Paper

"I wanna be just like her when I grow up!" No I am not talking about Britney Spears or Hilary Clinton but Barbie. Believe it or not but Barbie was originally a real person. The doll idea came from Barbra Handler and her mother Ruth. Ruth wanted to make a three dimensional doll for her daughter and her friends to play with. In 1959 the American Toy Fair founded Barbie with Mattel. Girls went wild over her and set a new sales record for Mattel the very first year. Since then the Barbie Doll's popularity has rarely waivered and all. Barbie is one of the most successful toys in history.

Barbie was one of the number one dolls when I was a child. They came in one shape and size and that was a white, blonde haired, blue eyes. Every girl in my class owned at least one. I think dolls like Barbie are the reason why girls strive for perfection so much. Barbie was created with long legs, a small waist, slender hips, giant breasts, and slender shoulders. They were taught that Barbie was beautiful and that's how you had to look to be beautiful. Barbie can make a young girl look in the mirror and feel ugly according to today's society. I believe that our strive for perfect in dolls has created the madness of perfection today. Everyone is getting nips and tucks, or recreating huge parts of their bodies. People dye their hair and wear colored contacts and go on crash course diets just because society says that's what is beautiful.

Barbies never survived long in my house. I had two older brothers who liked to steal my barbies and blow them up. On numerous occasions I came home to a disfigured, burned, melted piece of plastic. Although you'll never hear me say this, I am kind of glad that my brothers made it very hard to keep a Barbie alive. Babrie is not who young girls should look up to be. They should be taught that no woman naturally looks like that and everyone is beautiful in their own way. Barbie is just a piece of plastic, young girls are not