Everyone says that Barbie has unrealistic proportions, but have you seen them? Denise Winterman at the BBC decided to make a visual, borrowing one Barbie doll, one real human woman, Libby, and the wonders of photoshop.
First, Barbie’s measurements:
- bust 4.6ins (11.6cm)
- waist 3.5ins (8.9cm)
- hips 5ins (12.7cm)
Second, the transformation:
Writes Winterman:
If Libby’s waist size of 28ins (71.1cm) were to remain unchanged, then applying Barbie’s proportions to her would mean Libby shoots up in height, to an Amazonian at 7ft 6ins (2.28m) tall. That’s just two inches shorter than the world’s tallest woman, Yao Defen. She would also have hips measuring 40ins (101.6cm) and a bust of 37ins (83.9cm).
But what if, instead, Libby’s height of 5ft 6ins (1.68m) was to remain unchanged. Doing the maths, Libby would have an extraordinarily tight waist of just 20ins (50.8cm), while her bust would be 27ins (68.5cm) and her hips 29ins (73.6cm). Even the famously slight Victoria Beckham reportedly only has a 23ins (58.4cm) waist. But neither are they unheard of — Brigitte Bardot was famous for her 20ins (50.8cm) waist.
Citing scholarship, Winterman reports that “the likelihood of a woman having Barbie’s body shape is one in 100,000. So not impossible, but extremely rare.”
Via Jezebel.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 72
Rajio — January 18, 2011
Also I don't think carebears are proportional to real bears. Scandal!
marc sobel — January 18, 2011
That 1 in 100,000 seems off by a factor of about 1000.
angelica — January 18, 2011
Bardot may have been famous for a 20" waist, but that doesn't mean she had one - if it was ever that, it was only when cinched. Meanwhile, if yr going to quote the bit about 1 in 100,000 you may want to include the whole paragraph:
"Serious research on the subject has drawn certain conclusions. Academics from the University of South Australia suggest the likelihood of a woman having Barbie's body shape is one in 100,000. So not impossible, but extremely rare. Researchers at Finland's University Central Hospital in Helsinki say if Barbie were life size she would lack the 17 to 22% body fat required for a woman to menstruate. So again, not an unachievable figure, but certainly not a healthy one."
And it doesn't say anything about the background of those 1 in 100,000, only their body fat. To reach that size (and associated body fat), you need to be emaciated. End of. So to claim that her dimensions are unfeasible isn't quite true, but to claim that it's possible to look like her (and sure, of course people don't look like toys, but on the basic level of being those proportions and not being visibly at death's door) certainly isn't either.
MissDisco — January 18, 2011
this article is two years old.
Andie — January 18, 2011
In M.G. Lord's "Forever Barbie" a fairly reasonable explanation for Barbie's exaggerated physique is provided. Seems it came as the result of the problem of putting 1:1 fabric on a figure that is maybe (arbitrary numbers here, be warned) 1/20th of the size of a human being. It's near impossible to 'miniaturize' the thickness of the fabric used to make Barbie's clothes, so after being sewn and seamed, putting the clothes on a reasonably proportioned Barbie would result in the clothing appearing heavily padded. The tinier waist was needed to provide a more 'natural' (which, yeah I know, leads us into a whole OTHER debate) looking silhouette on clothed Barbie.
larrycwilson — January 18, 2011
What a waste of time!
Penny Picasso — January 18, 2011
This is pathetic. Why not take a heavier woman, put her next to a slim one, and then extend HER height to stupid proportions. I"m not defending Barbie, but it's s stupid woman or mom or little girl who thinks Barbie is supposed to be a goddamned ROLE MODEL in the first place. To say otherwise is to say that women are idiots, something I absolutely find disgusting.
Some screeching harridans out there are the reactors and main proponents of this moronic line of discussion. The rest of us need to look elsewhere for diversion.
Lisa B — January 18, 2011
It's not about girls or women seeing a Barbie doll and immediately thinking, "I should look exactly like that!" It's about being surrounded, pretty much from birth, almost constantly, with unrealistic images of women. You don't have to be an "idiot" (just human) for all these images to affect how you see yourself and how you define the feminine ideal.
Many people think Barbie is a particularly potent example of our culture's beauty ideal, which is fed to girls from a young age and can have a signifcant impact on their self image.
Chris — January 18, 2011
Barbie is a DOLL. It is not a human being. I'm female (36), I grew up with barbies, and I don't understand why a doll is seen as a negative influence on body image. She's a doll. She's not real. I never wanted to have a body like Barbie. I still don't. I was smart enough as a kid to realize she wasn't real; why is this even a topic of discussion?
The first commenter doesn't deserve the ridiculous "Male privilege/snappy comment FAIL" insult, either. Should we all discuss how GI Joe's body is disproportionate as well and is harming the male psyche?
K — January 18, 2011
Did this article get linked on a Barbie forum or something?
anon — January 18, 2011
The thing that's the most freaky (to me at least) is not so much the body proportions of the woman after being "barbified" but that the head is SO MUCH out of proportion with the body in the far-right image, and that the arms are WAY out of proportion in the middle image.
Now, c'mon, that's focusing WAY too much on the bust, hips, waist and not at all on the face or arms as additionally important signals of attraction.
Ctl — January 18, 2011
I don't think this graphic comparison even really does much. It doesn't even compare an average woman to barbie - it compares a rather slim woman to barbie. 5'6 with 32 inch hips? R u srs? Not only that, but the image editing is awful, which helps it make its point even less.
Also, they're probably not measuring the waist at the same place as in the barbie research - in the image, it looks like the pantwaist is being measured, while i'm fairly sure in the research they refer to her natural (as natural as a barbie gets) waist.
SuezanneC Baskerville — January 18, 2011
If the two images on the right both have Barbie's proportions, shouldn't they look like the same shape but different sizes? The two images are proportioned very differently from each other, so how could they both have Barbie's proportions?
Syd — January 18, 2011
I've said it before; if Barbie was made to look like a real woman, the fact that she is a doll, and NOT a real woman, would make her incredibly creepy (seriously, check out Barbie-type dolls that are more realistically proportioned because they're imitating a celebritiy. Even imitating an attractive celebrity, the dolls are terrifying and revolting). Applying human proportions and standards to imitations of humans is as silly as applying doll-like standards to humans.
jgh — January 18, 2011
What interests me far more than the post is how quickly and stridenly some commenters dismiss the idea that we absorb messages from the culture surrounding us, including those about the ideal body.
Molly W. — January 19, 2011
In Barbie's defense, she was one of the first toys, and for a long time one of the *only* toys, that encouraged girls to imagine themselves as something other than future mothers.
It's really easy to pick on Barbie, but she's one small cog in a much larger machine that messes with women's heads and bodies.
Of course it's useful to identify a particular cog -- but hasn't Barbie been identified to death? (I know kids whose parents prohibited Barbie for some of the very reasons presented here -- and those kids are in their *30s* now.)
It's easy and fun to stay stalled in outrage over Barbie, but perhaps more productive to move on to critique the larger landscape of factors that influence women's (and men's!) perceptions of how women's bodies should be shaped.
Ricky — January 19, 2011
Here is a picture of a woman that does look like Barbie.
http://www.just-whatever.com/2010/08/24/real-life-barbie-creepy/
On being round — February 1, 2011
[...] ever and every single show on TV). That’s why you have to talk to your children about Barbie (because being thin isn’t enough — you also have to have boobs and stuff) and why you [...]
Anti-Anorexia PSA Ads–The Fashion Industry and the Institutionalization of Feminine Beauty and Body Ideals | Inequality by (Interior) Design — May 8, 2013
[...] attention to the more dangerous aspects of adherence to industry ideals. Similar to depictions of what Barbie might look like as a real woman, altered images of dangerously thin models aside these sketches have a very different feel from the [...]
The_L1985 — June 3, 2013
Gives a horrifying new twist to the song from the original commercial: "Someday I'll grow up just like you/'Til then I know just what I'll do--/Oh Barbie, beautiful Barbie,/I'll pretend that I am you!"
The toy that launched a million eating disorders, indeed.
The Fashion Industry and the Institutionalization of Body Ideals and Feminine Beauty - — June 5, 2013
[...] attention to the more dangerous aspects of adherence to industry ideals. Similar to depictions of what Barbie might look like as a real woman, altered images of dangerously thin models aside these sketches have a very different feel from the [...]