http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WqmCAzxUxI
In Rice's article “Between body & culture: Beauty, ability and growing up female”, she discusses the confusing messages that we are sending young girls in Western culture that can have an extremely damaging effect on their body image growing up. When I first read this article, the first image that the words "damaging" and "body image" brought to mind for me was Barbie. I just came across this youtube commercial about the "Fulla Doll", and I found it to be very relevant to Rice's article, and many of our class discussions.
The Fulla doll is a popular barbie-like doll marketed to Middle Eastern girls created to represent Muslim identity and values, and display how Muslim parents would prefer their young girls to dress and behave. Physically, Fulla has long dark hair, dark eyes, and a darker complexion. She is wearing a hijab (Muslim headscarf), abaya (Muslim overgarment), and a pink felt prayer rug. She also has another set of clothes that are more similar to Barbie's to give girls the option to dress her in more popular fashion trends when she is not somewhere like work, or in a public space where girls know women are expected dress more modestly. Fulla is said to spend her time with her friends (not her boyfriend, unlike Barbie and Ken) shop, read, cook, and play sports. She upholds traditional Muslim values and girls are told she is honest, loving, devout toward her parents.
Arab girls have shown that they much prefer the Fulla doll to the American Barbie, and she has replaced Barbie altogether for many girls. I feel a reasonable explanation for Muslim girls preference to Fulla over the once popular American Barbie is because girls can relate better to her appearance and lifestyle. This concept is really interesting to me, and it makes me wonder why Mattel can't follow suit.
Over the years, Barbie has set an unrealistic standard of beauty for young girls all over the world. Many of her actions and different personas have caused huge controversy, and do not represent the values we should be teaching young girls to uphold. Almost all women would agree that she is a bad role model for young girls. However, we keep buying and buying Barbie and Barbie merchandise, knowing full well that Barbie represents a lot of what is wrong with the way women are perceived in our country.
Mattel has made some progress over the years to change Barbie's image and make her into a more positive role model for young girls, but I think a lot of their efforts are only to make up for past scandals so they can continue to sell dolls and merchandise.
The success of the Fulla doll proves that it is possible to create a doll that acts as a real role model for young girls that girls will still love and admire.
After reading your post I went back and watched the youtube video posted with it. While I agree that it relates to girls in that they are selling better than the American Barbie doll does, the first thing I noticed when watching the video is that her skin is still not particularly dark and on top of that she is still very skinny with curves and has a very pretty and traditionally shaped Barbie face. These things make me wonder how much better this doll is as far as how girls will grow up and feel about their bodies based on this doll. Although their Barbie is not pushing relationships I would argue that the American Barbie doll is not all about the relationship with Ken. This is evident in a couple of ways: one they officially broke up a few years ago, from what I remember and I had many Barbie dolls and aside from the dreamhouse and corvette I had a doctor Barbie and she had friends and other interests, so overall I think it comes down to the child playing with the doll. This is especially true as I think the main issue comes down to body image and this does not seem to have changed much from the version we know well here to the one that the youtube video was on.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Tina Fey's book Bossypants and as I was reading this post I was reminded of a passage in the book. Fey makes a point of telling her young dark-haired daughter that people, characters, dolls, etc. have "yellow hair" rather than blonde hair because she didn't want to her daughter to assume that blonde was somehow better or more attrative. Fey figured that she is described as having brown hair, so blonde people should also be described as having yellow hair. Despite her efforts, Fey's young daughter still preferred to play with dolls with blonde hair. Her daughter had a reversible doll with blonde Sleeping Beauty on one-side and dark-haired Snow White on the other, and no matter how often Fey flipped it so that the Snow White side would show, her daughter always flipped it back to Sleeping Beauty saying she didn't like Snow White's dark hair. It amazes me that even children with parents who make a consious effort to show that dark hair is beautiful too, still end up admiring blonde-haired dolls. The power of coroporate advertising today seems to be able to permeate just about anything.
ReplyDeleteWithin the first ten seconds of watching the video Annie posted I could see the exact connection between the “fulla doll” and our version of Barbie. The two are so similar it is shocking. Skinny, curvy and unrealistic are the three adjectives that immediately came to mind as I watched the video further… Nonetheless I think it is so sad how both societies and cultures have adapted such false (and virtually unattainable) images for teenage girls to ‘look up to’. It’s no wonder the number of teenage girls with eating disorders and self-esteem issues is rising at such an astonishing rate. I could not agree more with Stephanie’s comment about the power of corporate advertising today and its ability to permeate just about anything. Unfortunately, corporate advertisers are not concerned with creating and promoting “realistic” images for girls but rather images that sell.
ReplyDeleteI’ve read the book "Bossypants" by Tina Fey as well and I agree that in exploring alternative ways of categorizing dolls' hair colors as “brown” “yellow” would be more appropriate versus using the term “blonde” since it enables a more equal definition and description amongst the two. I thought Fey's perspective on this matter was especially interesting, since it was not something I had considered prior to reading her explanation of the theory. Why DO we use blonde instead of yellow? And brown instead of brunette? I think it creates an unequal and rather confusing distinction between whether or not blonde is considered more beautiful that brown haired dolls. Both are equally beautiful in my eyes.