By Erin Kirsten Stein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
December 4, 1997

Who Are You?

Arizona Daily Wildcat Erin Kirsten Stein

They're doing it again. Barbie is getting a face-lift, but they've done that before. This time she's also getting a boob job.

Mattel is changing Barbie to give her a more "normal" appearance by giving her a breast reduction and enlarging her waist, presumably in response to criticism that Barbie promotes an unhealthy self-image to young girls.

You know what I say to all this hullabaloo?

Bah, Humbug.

Barbie has always been used as the scapegoat for un-ideal ideals in this country; her and the supermodels. But Barbie is just a doll, a toy, and no one changed G.I. Joe or He-Man because they were too muscular for little boys to realistically live up to!

Supermodels are just skinny women who are not trying to be the most beautiful women in the world, but who are trying to make money as glorified clothes hangars! Models need to be rail-thin so clothes hang on them properly, not so they are the ideal shape. It is society that has built them into the commodities they are today.

The fact is, if you change Barbie's body, she won't be Barbie any more. She'll be some other doll. She'll be Barbie's cousin Bambi. Mattel is changing her identity.

Which is the whole problem with young people and the media today. Kids haven't figured out who they are yet, and the media is serving up ready-made identities for them to buy.

Hey girls! How about being Jennifer Aniston or Cindy Crawford or Barbie?

Hey boys! Be Harrison Ford or George Clooney or G.I. Joe!

Children are rarely told to be themselves.

But the media can't be blamed entirely. The consumers are the ones who buy into all this schlock, and they are the ones who glamorize and glorify celebrities. Advertisers wouldn't use supermodels if they didn't sell merchandise.

Barbie isn't the problem; it's the little girl who wants to be her.

And it's her parents.

Children are given the gift of a clean slate. They can become whatever they want to become. Saint, astronaut, serial killer or chef - it's up to them. But from the day they're born, the slate is filled in little by little by the parents. Suzy will not become a bedwetter. Suzy will become a person who cleans her room and who tells the truth.

Now, these are basics that everyone agrees that kids should learn. But what about other things? Parents tend to project their own interests onto their children. If Suzy is deciding between piano or saxophone, and her dad played sax in high school, she'll listen to his encouragement and take sax. Because children listen to their parents and they trust them.

So, if mom says David Duchovny is oh-so-sexy (which he is!) then the little girl will think, hmmm, so that's sexy. And when her mom sighs and laments over Cindy's hair and Claudia's boobs and Linda's lean figure, the little girl will think they are the ideal and she'll want to be like them too.

Just looking at a magazine does not make you want to be a supermodel. But when you read and hear how wonderful and perfect they are, and how jealous every woman is, then it calls into doubt your own body. Maybe I'm too fat, or maybe my boobs aren't big enough, or maybe my teeth aren't straight enough.

Girls worry too much about what other people think of them because our entire society is built on what other people think of them. You'll get a raise if your boss likes your work. You'll get a date if that guy thinks you're cute. You'll be loved if your pretty enough; that's the extent girls with eating disorders carry it to.

Do you see the problem?

Girls and boys need to be told from the very beginning that they are wonderful people themselves and they are beautiful in their own body, not someone else's. They need to be encouraged to live in their own identity.

Many children today are constantly trying to be what they think their parents want them to be, they want to please everyone. Or they don't want the pressure of pleasing everyone and they try to upset everyone in retaliation.

When these kids hit college, they have a sort of mid-life crisis, but it's a college crisis in their freshman or sophomore year. They get here and they're on their own and they can do whatever they want and they stop and think, "What do I want?"

They get in a funk for a while trying to figure out what the hell they want to do with the rest of their lives as their life yawns before them. Because, up till now, they were following other people's plans. Go to school, graduate from high school and get into college. Now what?

So pick your major, pick your career and pick your spouse - or don't pick any of them - but don't pick what the media has chosen for you.

Don't become a Barbie doll who changes with society's whims.

Erin Kirsten Stein is a senior majoring in creative writing, journalism and general fine arts studies.