Sunday, November 2, 2014

If Barbie was a real woman...

Yeah, yeah, I'm here whining again about this.

The #1 and most important thing with this is that BARBIE IS NOT A WOMAN, SHE'S A DOLL.
She is made of plastic, she doesn't live, she will not die, she doesn't have a liver, she won't ever give birth or get pregnant or menstruate, she won't walk on all fours or fall forward because her boobs are too big to her frame or carry her head, BECAUSE SHE IS A DOLL.

But - This is pretty much what Barbie would look like if she was a real person.

This, BTW, is Talina, a real life model one can hire for photoshoots.

I have never thought Barbie is a rolemodel and I think people who try to look like "real life Barbie doll" are stupid. But - their life, their body, their money, they do what ever they like.
Nevertheless, some people are up in arms because of the "unrealistic role model Barbie is". And I am all "What? It's a charicature of a human being! It's a doll! 99% of little girls (and boys) playing with Barbies KNOW this. Which seems to be something most feminists don't know...


This is "Libby", a real woman, photoshopped to have Barbie's proportions... And who ever made it, doesn't even understand that the doll best resembles the woman in real life, not the distortions. If "Libby" is supposed to have "Barbie's proportions", she should look the same in the two latter photos, but she doesn't.

"she would actually be on all fours because her legs are 50 percent longer than her arms"
Are they?
This is a Barbie doll, the new bellybutton body mold, without clothes. If she was 171 cm tall, her legs would be 80 cm long from crotch to heel and her arms would be 65 cm long from shoulder to fingertips. So - her legs are about 20% longer than her arms. Like on an average woman.
Which can be seen on the doll. Fingertips should reach about mid thigh, can variate about 10 cm both ways. It's totally normal to have short arms.
So - let's take this comparison. Jackie Kennedy's arms and Barbie's arms. Shoulder about the same height, wrist about the same height, fingertops, knee... Jackie's arms reach barely her crotch. How CAN she walk???

"She would need someone to support her head while crawling around because her neck is twice as long as the average woman's."

Oh?
This is Barbie and Julia Jamin. Sure, Barbie's neck is both longer and narrower than Julia's, but not twice as long. Actually, if she was 1,7 meters long, her neck would be (from shoulder line to jawline) 9,5 cm long, and her head 27 cm. So - how does Julia manage to carry her head? How did Audrey?(Of course, her neck is unnatural. SHE IS A DOLL. But it's not as unnatural as they make it sound. Barbie's neck is not twice as long as a normal person's.)

"Her feet (size 3 shoes) are so proportionately small that her pointy chest would pull her continually forward on to her toes."

Her feet ARE ridiculously small. Could be size 3. Nevertheless, Dolly Parton uses high heels. Ballet dancers have less area to stand on.
Oh, Moira, Moira, you KNOW you CAN'T do that! You have too big breasts!

"She’d be 7′2″ and weigh 101 pounds."

Seven feet two? She is an 11.5 inches tall doll of 1/6 scale, giving her a height of 5 feet 9 inches - on toes.


I would say those are five inch heels. Let's say four to be on the moderate side. That would make Barbie 5'5, but the average model of 50's was 5'7, so let's run with that.

Now, Barbie's weight on Mattel's Barbie bathroom scale is 110 pounds. (Not 101 pounds.) That gives a 5'7 tall girl BMI of 17,2.

"This means that she would have a body mass index of 10 (lacking the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate). This would also make her infertile, forbidding her from having children if she wanted to."

Angelina Jolie is said to be 5'7 and weigh 110 pounds. She can have kids.
Here's photos of real life women who are 5'7 and weigh 110 pounds. They don't look like they have no intestines and serious joint problems. Or are infertile. Look pretty normal to me. Thin, but normal.

"Her waist would be the same as the circumfrence of a 4 month old baby's HEAD! Barbie's body would have room for only half a liver and only a few centimeters of intestines, as opposed to the usual 7.9m. She would suffer from chronic diarrhoea and death from malabsorption and malnutrition."

Taking her measurements following the 1/6 principle and using small unstretchable ribbon as measuring tape and taking the measurements in millimeters (smaller than 1/8 of an inch), I get the measurements 29-19-31.

Yes, the waist is tiny. She has a body of the size of a 12-years-old girl. Funnily enough, 12yo's have intestines and liver and other stuff inside their tiny waists.
Size 0 is a tad too big for her.

"Most of that weight would reside in her bra, because it’s an FF cup."
her US cup size is C or D, depending on which brand of bra she uses.
Also, FF breasts probably won't even weight 10 pounds. Half of that, perhaps. One can wonder what these people actually know about human physiognomy.

In this prepared image I have superimposed a barbie doll over Katie Wilcox' body. I have cut about 1/3 of the neck and shrunk the head - Barbie doll has an oversized head compared to a real woman; it's about 20% larger in proportion - to see what it really was if the real woman was to be sculpted to be exactly like the doll. As you can see, the neck part of the Oprah lines is totally wrong, and so is her face. The drawn waist and hips are close enough.

(About that head size... the fact that Barbie doll is about 7 heads tall, gives interesting effects to the rest of the measurements... even her proportions are that of a 12-years-old.)
 Frankly, it's not very probable a woman with those proportions would be 6 or 7 feet tall. More likely 5 or perhaps even shorter. 
And guess what? An average 12yo girl is 4'9 feet tall and weighs 100 pounds...
According to her measurements, Barbie doll is not an adult woman, she's a 12 years old playing being adult... and who is it who plays with Barbie dolls and what do they play?

"This is what Barbie would look like if she was a real woman".
No, she would look like a Barbie doll. That thing doesn't look like a barbie doll, so why would anyone even think Barbie doll would look like that if it was a real woman?

"For example, a Yale University study was purported to have determined Barbie-in-real-life would be 7’2” tall, with a 40-inch bust, 22-inch waist and 36-inch hips. In 1998, University of Arkansas art student Ken Perrodin built a papier mache model of Barbie based on those dimensions. It looked rather like a space alien, as you can see from this photo."
 - Barbie at 50: The Tears Behind The Plastic Smile

Barbie's health problems

Anyway, I can't think of a better example of why Barbie is not a good beauty ideal:

1 comment:

  1. Great article! At least one humoristic AND realistic (non-biased) point of view on the "Barbie issue" ;)

    ReplyDelete