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Comment by fchollet | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the entire point of Barbie dolls to represent a ridiculously unrealistic ideal? In the same way that boys' action figures are impossibly muscular, and superheroes have super-strength/superpowers.

When making a toy, the question to ask should probably be "is it exciting?" rather than "is it beautiful" or "is it realistic". Is average exciting?

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The difference is that the ideal that Barbie portrays is definitely negative; in general, it's that a woman is only "ideal" if she is beautiful and a "good wife", so to speak. What she does outside of being subservient to Ken is secondary, when it's defined at all.

With boys' action figures, the "ideal" that they push is rather more positive; the characters are "judged" on what they do, who they save, that they beat the bad guy. Their looks are very much secondary.

This is a good idea on paper, but it feels a little "Harrison Bergeron". I agree that there are major problems in our culture with body image, but Barbie seems like a minor culprit compared to advertising, fashion magazines, Photoshop [1], and celebrity culture. And I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with a certain level of idealization and fantasy in abstract representations like Barbie and He-Man.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(South_Park)

Or, maybe Barbies are way more damaging because they're aimed at children. While celebrity culture and photoshop are hard to escape for adults looking at most media, children are learning what ideal bodies look like not only from those sources but also from toys like Barbies and Bratz dolls.

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