Barbie Body

Answer me this: what is the most ubiquitous girls' childhood doll? (Think pink!)

If you answered Barbie, you are correct!

Barbie has been the most popular girl's doll since it was first introduced in the American market. Barbie has become synonymous with the ultimate woman: gorgeous, capable, can do anything (and everything  -- even become an astronaut and president!) Barbie has been an icon for girls and young women everywhere, but there are some inherent problems with her nature. Her first quality is her extreme physical proportions. The physical design of the Barbie doll has such unrealistic proportions and sets such impossible standards of beauty for young girls.

In some studies done, many young girls identified more positive traits with being thin, and identified Barbie as being their ideal.

To combat this mindset in young girls, one startup company came out with a doll, Lammily, that is proportioned to the size of an average 19-year old American woman. Many other groups are changing dolls to create more realistic standards of beauty. Only recently, Mattel released new Barbie dolls that come in three different body types and with different skin tones which is a start at showing that all people are beautiful no matter their weight or height or skin tone. By showing a range of body types in their dolls, I think that Mattel is finally starting to send a positive message to young girls: that no matter what they look like, what they want and try to accomplish in life are better goals than trying to get a thigh gap or trying to just look like Barbie.

Check out a great video about the recent changes in Barbie dolls here.

Mattel's Barbie is not the only influence young girls are given to tell them how they should look. Disney has often come under fire for having their Princesses portray extremely exaggerated proportions about women's bodies, and often not be central to the action of their own movies. Buzzfeed had their video editors alter the waistlines of Disney princesses to accurately reflect women's real bodies, and their staff was surprised at how much they had been conditioned to accept the original as what they should have looked like when they would grow up.

Some video editors have even edited Disney characters to have normal facial proportions, and the results are incredible.

I would be lying if I told you that these sources didn't shape me growing up. Even now, I struggle with accepting my "imperfections" as perfect. I grew up looking at these images of unreal women, and I internalized that this is what I was supposed to be: pretty. Frankly, I've since learned that there is so much more for me to want in life than to just be pretty.

While it is easy to point to influences like Barbie or Disney Princesses that put an unrealistic standard of beauty on girls for who they ought to become, ultimately the real people who matter in their lives, parents, teachers, coaches and family, are responsible for teaching girls to love themselves as God made them.

Dove Soap is a brand that has created a very successful marketing campaign over the last several years, creating the image that their brand is a champion of body-confidence. Several years ago, they released an advertisement in which they interviewed moms about their body insecurities and later their daughters about their body insecurities. Check it out below.

In the video, the insecurities that the mothers have about themselves their daughters mirrored in their own fears. The things that the mothers said they liked about their bodies, their daughters independently said the same about themselves.

In our increasingly globalized world, the toys and media sources we provide for our children, especially girls, tell them that they have to fit a specific narrative and body type to be beautiful. Our culture has taught us to view our bodies as projects and not as temples of God. We have stopped expressing "the unity of the human race to the degree that it preserves the particular aspects of the different civilizations" (Gaudium Et Spes 54) because, frankly, our norms of beauty have been whitewashed and it has become more difficult to see the beauty in others and even in ourselves if we do not fit the social norm.

Even when the developments of the secular culture around us promote a solitary narrative about which of God's creation is precious or that love should be conditional on our beauty, the Church must remind everyone that they are loved by God, and to love each other as children of Christ. In the same way that the mothers in the Dove video passed on their insecurities to their daughters, we need to be confident in our worth because we know our Creator, otherwise we in the Church pass on the worst of our humanity because we don't remember our own worth.