Kass Plastic Fantastic Barbie Summary

In the article “Plastic, Fantastic Barbie” by Amy Goldman Kass she rebuttals against the war on the Barbies that girls around the world have loved since the beginning of their 54-year career. Koss defends the physical stature of Barbie saying that “Kids don’t care about Barbie’s proportions; they just appreciate that she’s older than they are and can therefore take greater risks and have wilder adventures.” (Kass 1) She makes that point that children don’t necessarily care about what their dolls look like they just want something pretty to play with. The majority of little girls don’t look at Barbie and immediately want to have her body if anything they look at her make-up and clothes, which are entirely obtainable for anything.

Parents seem to be attacking this concept of the perfect Barbie physic as something that is actually threatening their children which is in Kass’s opinion entirely ridiculous, there is no reason to blame a seven inch doll for a child’s body image problems. This fear of children wanting to look like her comes without warrant. They say just because a select few

She addresses current situation that a picture created by an artist named Nickolay Lamm has created for Barbie. He transformed her image to be a more realistic depiction of the “average” girl. Making her shorter, less interesting and with more realistic features, but what most people don’t realize is that this is a doll, a children’s toy, and it is made to play with not to use as an idol. Lamm used a picture of a doll to create a realistic human form that surely children wouldn’t be as interested in playing with, not because she is less attractive than Barbie but because normal is boring to children. They wouldn’t be as interested in their other toys if instead of a troll and a princess dress they had a short obese man and a basic sundress, it just isn’t as