Barbie Doll Influence

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A Barbie Doll is a plastic toy that can move and looks like a person. Barbie Dolls have been on the market since 1959. People who play with the dolls are as young as six or seven and have some bad feeling about them. Barbie Dolls have made over seven billion dollars over the past fifty years. However, the young children can get upset by how they look, how it can cause poor mental health and body image issues,and how they are not age appropriate. Many of the Barbie Dolls have had the same look of blonde hair and white skin. They are tall and slim, which hurts some of the younger children who are playing with them. According to the blog by Dr. Rebecca Hains “these dolls are a bad role model by saying you must be very tall, very thin, very caucasian, and very beautiful.”(Hains “5 Reasons NOT”). The dolls have been made the same for over fifty years and have not changed about what they look like. Researchers have said that the effect that they give off a negative effect on what kids do. An experimental study showed kids who played with the …show more content…

In the 1950s when the Doll came out many mothers were horrified with the doll because of how it looked and what it represented. It represented things that most people are offended by and parents disagreed with the dolls.(LOGOS) Barbie Dolls were made for the appeal of “tweens” and that they were mature Dolls not made for children younger than nine. According to the article of Dr. Rebecca Hains, she tells readers “that with the new generation of children no one wants to play with “baby” toys.”(Hains “5 Reasons NOT”) When “My First Barbie” came out 1981 it was to target preschool children and Mattel realized that they should not aim for children nine through twelve but younger. Barbie sales have fallen over the past couple years, as of June of 2014 sales dropped 15% in that one year alone.

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