She’s drab, she’s dumpy, she’s nothing to write home about, and she’s going to make the girls of America feel like beauty queens.
On the cover of today’s The Onion was the story: “New Homely Doll to Improve Young Girls Self-Image.” This mock-article suggests that Mattel, the long-time manufacturer of Barbie, is trying to compensate for decades of setting unhealthy beauty standards for young girls. According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, if scaled into real life proportions, Barbie would stand at 5-foot-9 inches, with the measurements of 36-18-33, and would lack the requisite 17 to 22 percent of body fat required to menstruate. The Onion proposes that Mattel’s new model, Plain Pamela, would be a “pale, unsightly plaything, which has a plastic torso scaled to the proportions of a 5-foot-4, 179-pound woman in her mid-30s” and that this will improve the self esteem of girls nationwide.
The “article” also suggests that beyond inculcating more “realistic” beauty standards in young girls, the doll would serve as something for them to feel superior to. Each doll comes prepackaged with various “unflattering and ill-fitting blouses to drape over her shapeless torso” as well as “stick on psoriasis spots.” Would-be buyers could also purchase various Mattel playsets and accessories including “the Plain Pamela Cramped Studio Apartment, complete with special Dinner-for-One Kitchenette and Depressing Stack of Old People Magazines.” The article suggests that girls might benefit from cultivating a delightful sense of Schedenfreude at an early age.
When I was young, I loved Barbie. I loved Barbie so much that I even made my male cousins love Barbie. We all played with her. It was THE THING to do. I thought she was *beautiful*. In speaking with my friends about the lass years later, I have found that what we loved the most about Barbie was giving her hideous hair-cuts, delimbing her plastic torso and making her have unsanctified sex with just about anyone. Most of the delimbing was somewhat accidental: Barbie kicked her leg too high when she was auditioning for the cheerleading squad; Barbie, while adept at flying, failed miserably when landing; Barbie just couldn’t handle the orgy at the beach, (aka. bathtub); Barbie wasn’t very resilient when poked into the spinning fan blades.
Yes, poor Barbie often wound up back in the bag with the others, naked, delimbed and disgraced. And probably when reassembled for another play date, she acquired the legs and arms of her comrades, never to be truly whole again. However, we NEVER sullied her with magic markers like other kids did, or gave her Mohawks, or made her bald. That was just wrong. Those kids were messed up. However, in the aforementioned acts, Barbie would, from time to time, become decapitated.
I salute Plain Pamela, in fact, I think it would be amazing if Mattel actually came out with a doll like this. But, for the meanwhile, girls across America can continue to deface the company’s prettier models.
Haha! Personally, I hated Barbies growing up, but since I was a girl, my grandparents insisted on buying them for me, which I was forced to appreciate by my parents. Oh, good times. I, too, accidentally popped off Barbie’s head and limbs, much to my dismay.
The Onion is hilarious; I hope Mattel actually comes out with this doll, but I’m sure they won’t.
Honestly, it would be even more tragic if mattel comes out with this plain pamela doll. if you give the young girls of america a doll that most likely reflects their home environments, your going to take away the only reprive they have from the nightmare of life. you will take away the magic that barbie provides to give the kids a world that they can create, and live in to escape the pain of real life for awhile. If not for my barbie friends at the age of 7 i would have been lost. I played with my barbies so that i didnt have to listen to my parents argue all the time. i had imagined a world with out parents and yelling arguing couples. Barbie was happy. and through her, i was as well. i learned to cope with life by using my imagination… if i had a plain pam doll who had a drab doll house and looked like the world had snatched away her perfection, i probably would have committed suicide by age 14. Barbie does not give girls low self esteem. the girls learn that as they grow up and go to school to be faced with the judgmental children of their schools.