{"id":61967,"date":"2014-03-12T09:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=61967"},"modified":"2014-06-09T19:31:35","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T00:31:35","slug":"what-do-little-girls-really-learn-from-career-barbies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/03\/12\/what-do-little-girls-really-learn-from-career-barbies\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do Little Girls Really Learn from “Career” Barbies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of moms, I faced the Barbie dilemma when my daughter was younger. Ultimately\u00a0I \u00a0figured a little bit of Barbie would sate her appetite (and stop the nagging) without doing\u00a0too\u00a0<\/em>much harm. Like a vaccination, or homeopathic inoculation against the Big Bad. I told myself my daughter didn\u2019t use her dolls for fashion play anyway: her Barbie \u201cfuneral,\u201d for instance, was a tour de force of childhood imagination. I told myself I only got her \u201cgood\u201d Barbies: ethnic Barbies, Wonder Woman Barbie, Cleopatra Barbie. Now that she\u2019s 10 and long ago gave the dolls away (or \u201cmummified\u201d them and buried them in the back yard in a \u201ctime capsule\u201d), I can\u2019t say whether they\u2019ll have any latent impact on her body image or self-perception. It would seem ludicrous, at any rate, to try to pinpoint the impact of\u00a0one\u00a0<\/em>toy.<\/p>\n

But now,\u00a0according to a study published this week<\/a>, \u00a0it turns out that playing with Barbie, even career Barbie, may indeed limit girls\u2019 perception of their own future choices. Psychologists\u00a0<\/a>randomly assigned girls ages 4-7 to play with one of three dolls. Two were Barbies: a fashion Barbie (in a dress and high heels);\u00a0and a \u201ccareer\u201d Barbie with a doctor\u2019s coat and stethoscope.\u00a0(NOTE: I just pulled these images from the web: I don\u2019t know which actual Barbies they used.)<\/p>\n

\"5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The third, \u201ccontrol\u201d doll was a\u00a0Mrs. Potato Head<\/a>, who, \u00a0although she comes with fashion accessories such as a purse and shoes, doesn\u2019t have Barbie\u2019s sexualized (and totally\u00a0unrealistic<\/a>) curves.<\/p>\n

So, after just a few minutes of play, the girls were asked if they could do any of 10 occupations when they grew up. They were also asked if boys could do those jobs. Half of the careers, according to the authors, were male-dominated and half were female dominated. The results:<\/p>\n

Girls who played with Barbie thought they could do fewer jobs than boys could do. But girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head reported nearly the same number of possible careers for themselves and for boys.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More to the point:<\/p>\n

There was no difference in results between girls who played with a Barbie wearing a dress and the career-focused, doctor version of the doll.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, the study is not definitive. Obviously, one doll isn\u2019t going to make the critical difference in a young woman\u2019s life blah blah blah. Still, it\u2019s interesting that it doesn\u2019t matter whether the girls played with fashion Barbie or doctor Barbie, the doll had the same effect and in only a few minutes.<\/p>\n

That reminded me of\u00a0a study<\/a>\u00a0in which college women enrolled in an advanced calculus class were asked to watch a series of four, 30-second TV commercials. The first group watched four netural ads. The second group watched two neutral ads and two\u00a0depicting stereotypes about women \u00a0(a girl enraptured by acne medicine; a woman drooling over a brownie mix). Afterward they completed a survey and\u2014bing!<\/em>\u2014the group who\u2019d seen the stereo- typed ads expressed less interest in math- and science-related careers than classmates who had watched only the neutral ones. Let me repeat: the effect was demonstrable after watching\u00a0two ads<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0guess who performed better on a math test<\/a>, coeds who took it after being asked to try on a bathing suit or those who had been asked to try on a sweater? (Hint: the latter group; interestingly, male students showed no such disparity.)<\/p>\n

Now think about the culture girls are exposed to over and over and over and over and over, whether in toys or movies or tv or music videos, in which regardless of what else you are\u2014smart, athletic, kind, even feminist, even\u00a0old<\/i>\u2014you must be \u201chot.\u201d Perhaps, then, the issue is not \u201cwell, one doll can\u2019t have that much of an impact,\u201d so much as \u201cif playing with one doll for a few minutes has\u00a0that much impact\u00a0<\/i>what is the effect of the tsunami of sexualization that girls confront every day, year after year?\u201d<\/p>\n

Peggy Orenstein is the author of four books, including\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times\u00a0best-seller\u00a0<\/em>Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow her at her blog<\/a>, where this post originally appeared<\/a>, on facebook<\/a>, and on twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of moms, I faced the Barbie dilemma when my daughter was younger. Ultimately\u00a0I \u00a0figured a little bit of Barbie would sate her appetite (and stop the nagging) without doing\u00a0too\u00a0much harm. Like a vaccination, or homeopathic inoculation against the Big Bad. I told myself my daughter didn\u2019t use her dolls for fashion play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":61971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,279,223,55,2103,2099,2096,2093,2100,1711,675,76],"class_list":["post-61967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-objectification","tag-childrenyouth","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-objectification","tag-gender-work","tag-toysgames","tag-psychology","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/03\/112.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61967"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62872,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61967\/revisions\/62872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}