Barbie dolls: Barbie as a role model for young girls

From the beginning, Barbie has been used as a role model for young girls. Originally introduced as a fashion doll, Barbie’s costumes educated future consumers about how to dress. With a wide variety of styles then available, Barbie did not limit its users to a single concept. Therefore, creativity in dressing the doll was encouraged. For this group, Barbie represented fashion change.

That would all change as marketing conepts morphed the fashion doll into a representative of lifestyle choices. Encouraging mostly middle-class young girls to desire more and more luxury items for the doll created a market for similar items in the real world, as the girls matured into adults. Barbie had raised expectations about goods sold in the marketplace.

This prompted debate about other aspects of the doll’s influence. With the body of a runway model, Barbie had never represented her target market of young girls, a roundly pre-pubescent group of individuals. Households, throughout the United States, were divided concerning how much influence Barbie’s appearance should have on developing young women. In some households, the aspect of appearance was never taken seriously. In others, anorexia began to emerge as a problem in young teens.

Some young women equated other contemporary pretty statuesque females as representations of Barbie. “Looking like a Barbie doll” reduced these individuals to the realm of vacant doll puppets. As an image, it was forcibly eschewed by those upon whom it was thrust.

Reinventing Barbie once again, while retaining images of upscale lifestyle choices, marketers transformed the doll into a kind of avatar, which reintroduced creativity in costumes. Unlike the original focus on real fashion concepts, though, this Barbie represented an inhabitant of a fictional realm. Barbie, as cartoon, had finally emerged. Perhaps Barbie had finally become the doll-puppet that she was always meant to be.