If you ever thought that Barbie's unearthly proportions were part of a sinister corporate plot to breed a generation of girls that would lust after spindly Twiglet legs, matchstick arms, waspish waists and enormous heads, it turns out you were wrong. The real reason, the toy's manufacturer Mattel has claimed for the first time, is so her clothes fit.
“Barbie’s body was never designed to be realistic,” said Kim Culmone, vice president of design for Barbie, in an interview with Fast Company Design. “She was designed for girls to easily dress and undress.”
Because, as we all know, squeezing on those skinny jeans is much harder when your legs are wider than pipe-cleaners – and how on earth would that jewellery fit if your neck was thicker than your wrist? Although surely putting on a jumper would be quite tricky if, like Barbie, your head was twice the width of your waist.
“It’s primarily the 11.5-inch fashion doll size we change over time, depending on the needs of the product,” said Culmone. “There are some that her legs don’t even bend. There are some that her arms are straight. Primarily it’s for function for the little girl, for real-life fabrics to be able to be turned and sewn, and have the outfit still fall properly on her body.”
Ah, so to make her look like a normal person when she's wearing clothes, you have to turn her into an emaciated alien underneath, or else she'll just look like a sausage in a sack, which wouldn't be fun for anyone, right?
“You do!” said Culmone. “Because if you’re going to take a fabric that’s made for us, and turn a seam for a cuff or on the body, her body has to be able to accommodate how the clothes will fit her.”
The explanation comes after Barbie's odd vital statistics have long been accused of providing a damaging physical role model for young girls. A 2006 University of Sussex study concluded that thin dolls like Barbie “may damage girls’ body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling.”
And what would they end up like if they managed to achieve real-life Barbiedom?
Analysis by rehabilitation website Rehabs.com has shown that, if she were a real person, Barbie would have to walk on all fours due to her size three feet, and would be incapable of lifting her enormous head with her tiny little neck. Her 16-inch waist, meanwhile, would leave her with room for just half a liver and a few inches of intestines.
Researchers at the University Central Hospital in Helsinki have taken the real-world analysis one step further, concluding that, with vital statistics estimated at 36 inches (chest), 16 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips), Barbie would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate. So you can say goodbye to that Barbie pram set.
Controversy over Barbie's body image has been with her since the very beginning of the plastic princess. The first models, issued in 1959, came complete with nipples moulded at the peak of pointed breasts, which were quickly deemed inappropriate and done away with. Her cheeky arched eyebrows and saucy sideways glance were also soon tamed, while her face became progressively more child-like over the decades, fattened and given a pug nose in the 1970s. In 1997, her waist was expanded and bust made smaller, said to reflect a more “real” female body type – although it seems to have had more to do with a change in the mechanics, when the twist-and-turn waist was abandoned. So, after all these years, why not just make Barbie a bit more normal?
“There’s the issue of heritage,” said Culmone. “This is a 55-year-old brand where moms are handing clothes down to their daughters, and so keeping the integrity of that is really important. Everything may not always be able to fit every doll, but it’s important to me that the majority of it does, because that was my experience as a little girl. There’s an obligation to consistency.”
So your mum's 1960s hand-me-downs might no longer fit? Well they probably wouldn't in real life either. And surely it would make better commercial sense for Mattel to force each new generation to buy an entirely new wardrobe for their newly-shaped doll? Perhaps the real reason for Barbie's continued form has nothing to do with clothes fitting, or brand heritage, but the fact that kids don't generally aspire to grow up looking like their dolls.
“Girls view the world completely differently than grown-ups do,” concluded Culmone with a flash of common sense. “They don’t come at it with the same angles and baggage and all that stuff that we do. Clearly, the influences for girls on those types of issues, whether it’s body image or anything else, it’s proven, it’s peers, moms, parents, it’s their social circles. When they’re playing, they’re playing. It’s a princess-fairy-fashionista-doctor-astronaut, and that’s all one girl.”
I grew up playing with Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and have resisted the desire to paint myself green, find a talking rat sensei and go and live in the sewer. So far at least.
