Pester power: my 4 yo really wants Barbie, what to do?

[Greythorne]

i know it's not the most taxing question on the feminism board, but how would you handle this?

DD1 has never had Barbie, although various Polly Pockets and Strawberry Shortcake dolls have made their way into our house :)

I just feel so strongly that Barbie is a terrible representation of the female body, i.e. She's completely out of proportion, her hips are impossibly thin, her waist ridiculous etc. And that's before we start on the predominantly pink outfits, the emphasis on appearance etc.

I know children enjoy role playing via dolls and recognise the developmental need to play house, play parent, play at setting up a little imaginary world. And so I have steered DD1 towards.....Sylvanian Families, which, while heavy on gender clichés feature animals rather than fetishised female forms.

But of course all her friends have Barbie. And Barbie is everywhere.

Just one more instance to chalk up to be being "well-intentioned but (perceived by child as) evil mummy?

I've just bought my niece a teacher barbie in tesco, it has little bookshelves with it, they have a camping one too

Like this but with a chalkboard and suchlike

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BARBIE-CAN-ART-TEACHER-PLAYSET-BRAND-NEW-BOX-/140628227365?pt=UK_Toys_Creative_Educational_RL&hash=item20be187525

DD1 has a dentist Barbie and it scared the Bejaysis out of me when I was changing DD1's bed and out of nowhere a dentist drill sounded and an American woman said "now spit" ....

I would never have bought one, but a friend of mine with older DDs gave me a load of them (think Malifilence upthread proportions). The DDs like playing with them, they tend to have a lot of adventures. I'm not deeply worried about the body image because all dolls tend to be a bit odd in some way. They have saggy old me for body image!

When we were on hols in Spain when dd was about 3, we walked into a toy shop and I uttered the words "dd, you can have anything in this shop you want. Anything." Yep.......no hesitation, she chose a Barbie.

She had had every steering-away-from-that-sort-of-thing-imaginable in her first 3 years.

But now at 11y.o. she, as an individual, shows little/no sign of being 'dupped' into Barbie-world and all the messages that come with it. I do think we can underestimate the critical faculties of our children, and over-play our anxieties over the messages being delivered by toys. Their understanding of how the world actually works, and how Barbie is massively inconsistent with it, get worked out.

I had loads of Barbie was not obsessed with becoming a vapid airhead. I just liked making her clothes, swapping her heads, occasionally making her and Ken do things they really shouldn't be able to do with their neuter bodies. Stick to the sports stars/vets/doctors and you should be fine.

Another one who had loads of 'barbies' (hotchpotch collection of barbies, cindys, and disney character dolls) as a child and is perfectly happy with their body.

If I remember correctly they tended to go camping with my brother's action men a lot.I liked them specifically because they had 'grown-up' bodies, so could do things my child and baby shaped dolls couldn't, like have a job or drive around or be mummies.

Just one thing tho, if you do decide to get her one. Try to find one with the same skin/hair/eye colour as your daughter. I remember loving curly brown haired, blue eyed 'barbie' the most because she looked like me.

I find it a bit odd the assertion that just because something didn't harm you that it is therefor harmless.

Yes, you can grow up to be a true feminist if you have barbies but you also might not. Barbie reinforces the idea that your body is not good enough. I wonder how many people here who say that barbie hasn't harmed them have felt compelled to diet (and not for genuine health reasons like your fibromialga (sp) is easier to manage when you weigh less) or alter their body in some way or felt they must shave their legs or under arms or do their hair every morning or wear make up to work or wear high heals.

No, barbie may not actively harm girls but she is a tool of the patriarchy to teach girls that looks are important and that a woman should always be judged on her appearance no matter her other accomplishments and that their time and thoughts should be taken up by appearance and striving for a patriarchal beauty construct.

i actually don't think barbie is a tool of the patriarchy. i think she's a tool of the toy industry. the patriarchy has decided we must all be scrawny with big tits, and so that's what the toy industry has produced. bit chicken and egg. i don't know enough about consumer behaviour around the barbie invention period though. wasn't it something to do with the designs of the dresses she had to wear as to why her body had to be so weirdly shaped or some such nonsense?

tbh i'm more of the opinion that it's about a developmental stage that requires conformity between 4 and 8ish tbh. if the marketers for a gender free product were as hard nosed, rich, and into mainstream advertising as mattel, they would all be wanting the something completely different

yy i suppose if you don't have parents who are looking critically around them and pointing stuff out to dcs, then barbie could be seen as a tool of the patriarchy. but the way barbie is used in this house, and (i susoect in most of the others on this thread) it is no such thing - rather a tool of equality.

embrace your barbies and point out their flaws, and use them wisely. (those zip lines and luge runs are an ideal start.)

Buy the kid a barbie. They're fun - they can do and be anything you want them to be. It really doesn't matter which one you buy, she'll be naked and look like she's crawled through a bush backwards in no time

She will see lots of bodies while growing up and frankly there are far worse influences out there than a barbie doll.

I was babysitting tonight and the kids Dad switched the TV to a kids channel for them, he was sitting watching it with us while their Mum got ready. There was some weird animated thing on and the girls were incredible - legs up to their armpits, very ample, pert boobs, very flat tummies, waspish waists and generous hips (there were a lot of fairies flying around??) and the things they were saying - I'd be far more concerned about kids watching that, than playing with Barbie. [two girls, one 5 and one 6, one thought it was good the other thought it was crap]

Also, give her a little credit. Most 4 year olds will say something like 'she doesn't look like a real lady ' She will give you ample opportunity to redress the balance too - when you are changing barbies clothes for the millionth time because it's too fiddly for her, it's easy to slip in comments like 'this would be much easier if she was a normal shape'.

My dd was indulged in the pink stuff when she was young. She knew her mum didn't like dolls much (I loathe them...always have) but she had a couple from grandparents etc.

When she got into Barbie, I went with it. Bought the movies and the dolls when she was into them. She was little and I wanted her to have the things she wanted (within reason) as I was very poor as a child. They all ended up gathering dust on her shelves eventually. She had one of the shortest lived Disney/Barbie phases of her friends and once over it, she turned into grunge girl.

She would rather play with Dr Who toys and Lego than dolls or pink stuff now. She's 10, loves being 10, has no desire to be grown up yet...takes everything as it comes and is just a lovely young girl. She has no body issues and we often talk about the ludicrosity of the perfect image of women in the press, in children's toys, etc. She sneers at boob jobs on telly and doesn't even want her ears pierced. Definitely not a girly girl any more!

I understand the underlying fears that Barbie subverts the natural vision of what a woman should be, representing a poor role model for our girls, but really...there are far more insidious things dangled in front of our faces on tv, in magazines and pretty much everywhere. Don't get me started on the non-celebs all over the place these days and bloody half naked women gyrating to every single cd in the charts.

The doll is a bit of plastic that will be forgotten before it's broken.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread but we have let DD have one. I like the idea from the book 'Playful Parenting' about challenging the stereotypes through play. So when I play Barbies with DD we ditch the heels and short tight dresses and Barbie goes on adventures where she needs to explore, run, jump, kick etc. Barbie gets into fights too, to be honest I haven't really thought that through but it means DS will join in too so I can slip away when I've had my dose of imaginative play.

To those saying "just buy her a barbie", I would respond that I have bought her the Sylvanian lot and so she can have lots of fun dressing things up, creating scenarios, doing imaginerybplay etc.

Yes, she has asked for a Barbie but I don't think she is being deprived completely.

I don't know, I am really shocked that the consensus seems to be just go with the Barbie flow.

Where's Dittany when you need her? :)

Is there a SAHM Barbie? There bloody well should be. Thats also a full time, worthwhile career.

So what your op really meant was, my dd wants a Barbie. Give me lots of good reasons why I can feel good about not buying her one. You're a woman. You get to make so many choices in your life. You don't need to justify this one. If you want everyone to agree with you because you think you're right, it's not likely to happen. Most people accept that buying a Barbie these days is not the issue it used to be. And I love somme's playful parenting idea that toys can be used to challenge conventions. If I had a son and he wanted a Barbie, I'd buy it him...crap role model or not. It's only a representation of something more sinister if you allow it to be. Your child will not see the allusions that you as an adult will make.

And body disorder is not down to the dolls you did, or did not, play with as a child as an earlier poster implied. They are much more to do with our insane society and the ridiculous pictures of perfection they present to us, often wrapped in an unhealthy dose of anorexia and a compulsion to be vacuous. And that's bloody everywhere! I have to say to my daugther, when lollipop headed women appear on tv, that this is NOT normal! That's a much harder battle to fight than the stereotype a 1950s doll represents.

I love the idea of SAHM Barbie.

Is there a pregnant Barbie, btw?

I don't think the problem is with Barbie herself - I know that her body shape is entirely ridiculous,but I don't think the message little girls get from that is that that is what they should be aspiring to.It is too far separated fron reality for that. All the Barbies DD and her friends owned as little children ended up with cut hair,painted faces,and often with missing limbs,not as pristine role models.
The problem is still with society and I don't think banning Barbie afects that.
(I have a bigger problem with toy animals which you can bathe,feed ,take for walks - and the more realistic kind of baby doll - why have real when plastic does the job so well? Not that that is a feminist issue...)

No,they didn't,it was just lazy word choice on my part.
Though you could perhaps argue that OP wants to ban Barbie from her home??
To me Barbie's body shape is so unreal that her shape is "doll" not "woman"
and that alters the effect she will have on body image.In the same way that Bratz dolls are "doll" shaped.
The whole "of course girls want to play with pretty dolls with fashionable clothes" is the issue I've noticed more.

I must go now and play chess with DS,so will vanish again...

Does Barbie still have feet made for high heals only?