14 DAY TRIAL // That Barbie, the famous Mattel doll, has very little to do with reality is something that you were probably aware of. However, in a bid to show how media images alter women’s notions of right and wrong where body size is concerned, Rehabs.com has released an infographic detailing each measurement she’s been factory-endowed with.
Click on the second image included in this article to see it in full.
Barbie doesn’t just have perfect skin and perfect facial features, she also has a body that might seem ideal but is downright impossible in real life.
No such woman exists as to sum up all of Barbie’s traits because most of her body parts are inhumanly small, the infographic proves.
Comprising data from the 1966 study “Ken and Barbie at Life Size,” the infographic compares parts of Barbie’s body to a real average woman’s.
Her impossibly long neck, her tiny wrist, her minuscule ankle and foot, her small hips to waist ratio, and her large head can rarely be found in real life separately, let alone in just one woman.
In fact, the graphic shows, if Barbie was real, her neck would snap from the weight of her head (and because it’s too long and thin), she would have to walk on all fours because her feet and ankles wouldn’t be able to support her body, and only half of the vital organs could fit in her body because it’s too small.
The infographic is part of a larger piece pleading for the need for women to have a healthy body image even when everything else around them seems to teach them the contrary.
“Anorexia nervosa is the single deadliest mental health condition. 5% to 20% of people diagnosed with anorexia will ultimately die from its ravaging effects on the body and mind: cardiac complications, organ failure, and even suicide,” it says.
“These are the fruits of a media culture that prizes dangerously skinny, digitally altered bodies over those of real, healthy women,” the piece adds.
“From underweight and anatomically impossible Barbies, to jokes at the expense of normal-weight female characters on television, women are trained to hate their own bodies from birth until death - and pointed toward starvation diets as the only way to be loved and appreciated,” it says.
Only by being aware of the way these images are manipulated can women learn to love themselves at a healthy weight and not strive for the impossible.
The full piece is here.
