On
March 1, new Barbie dolls will be found on store shelves. Barbie will now come in “three new body types
and in a variety of skin tones and hairstyles.” The new doll will be available in tall,
petite, and curvy body types. Barbie
spokeswoman, Michelle Chidoni, stated, “the product line [will be] a better
reflection of what girls see in the world around them.” Evelyn Mazzocco, senior vice president and
global general manager of Barbie, said, “We believe we have a responsibility to
girls and parents to reflect a broader view of beauty.”
Barbie
came up in conversation in the Adolescent Life Classes for seventh graders this
week. The girls focused on body image
and the factors that impact on how we as women and girls view ourselves and our
bodies. We discussed the impact of the
media. The waiflike models or the
photoshopped bodies we see in magazines contribute to our developing body
images. Barbie, is similarly affecting
young girls. Barbie is “so
exceptionally thin that her weight and body proportions are not only
unattainable, but also unhealthy. The
ultrathin female beauty ideal she embodies has been linked with the
extraordinary prevalence of negative body image and unhealthy eating patterns
among girls and women.” Until 2006, this was hypothesized, but not yet
substantiated by the research. In a
2006 study in the Journal of Developmental Psychology “Does Barbie Make Girls
Want To Be Thin? The Effect of
Experimental Exposure To Images Of Dolls On The Body Image of 5-8 Year Old
Girls,” the effect of Barbie on body image was explored. Girls ages 5-8 were exposed to photos of
Barbie or Emme (described in the article as U.S. Size 16). (Studies
on girls indicate that their desire to be thin begins at age six!) In this study, they sought to demonstrate that
“Dolls like Barbie can serve as an imaginary point of view from which to see
one’s own bodily self, through which young girls come to understand the meaning
of beauty and perfection by pretending to be their dolls, which are embodiments
of the cultural ideal of the female body.” Results of this study did indeed demonstrate
that girls do experience, “heightened body dissatisfaction” after exposure to
images of Barbie versus images of Emme.
Am
I saying that we should all take our Barbies made before March 1, 2016 and
throw them away? No. Likewise, we aren’t going to go and tell our daughters
to stop watching commercials that feature the models mentioned earlier. As parents, we need to educate them. Through direct messages such as: “Beauty is
not about weight.” “Being healthy is important,
not attaining a certain weight.” “Each
person has his/her own individual beauty.”
We reinforce the “self- talk” (as mentioned in my blog these past two
weeks), where our young women tell themselves that “I am beautiful.” As parents, and particularly mothers, we model
for them as well. We never talk about weight in front of them. We focus on eating healthy- not losing
weight. We don’t complain about how awful we look in front of them.
In our classes this week, we spoke of other
sources of body image aside from the media- parents, peers and boys. (The boys also focused on how they speak to
and about the girls, and what true beauty is).
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
has some incredible videos which I showed, among others, which highlighted that
beauty is a state of mind. We need to work on that positive state of mind in
the face of the messages which bombard us daily.
In
this week’s Mishpacha Magazine, Dr. Kiki Ehrenpreis’ research on the
impact of weight on dating in the Jewish community was described. She studied
“all stripes” of Orthodox Jews, and in all communities higher weight led
to decreased frequency of dating among women (not men). These findings are similar to research in the
general “Western society.” Interestingly
enough, there was a difference between the Orthodox community and general
society in that weight is a less of a factor in the religious sample than in
the secular world.
But,
clearly, we have a fight on our hands. We
need to strengthen our girls to win in this battle for their positive body
image and self-esteem. In class, we looked at the story of a girl named Bethany,
a youtube celebrity, who felt her life was represented by the lyrics in the
song Try by Colbie Caillat . The first paragraph
is:
“Put your make-up on
Get your nails done
Curl your hair
Run the extra mile
Keep it slim so they like you, do they like you?”
Get your nails done
Curl your hair
Run the extra mile
Keep it slim so they like you, do they like you?”
We want our girls to understand if
someone likes you just for your hair, nails, or your weight, then he/she doesn’t
truly like you. No one should
ever make you feel you need to change anything about your physical
appearance. You are more than that.
In the book of
Esther, we learn in 2:12-13 “Now when each girl's turn came to go to
King Achashverosh, after undergoing the prescribed twelve-month care for women
(for only then would their period of beauty-care be completed: six months with
oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and women's cosmetics with
which the girl would appear before the king), she would be provided with
whatever she requested to accompany her from the harem to the palace.”
Each girl spent weeks and weeks engaged in a beauty regimen to be ready for the
king’s approval.
Yet, in pasuk 15 we see, “And when the time came for Esther,
daughter of Avichayil uncle of Mordechai, who had taken her as a daughter, to
go to the king, she did not ask for a thing other than that which Heigai, the
king's chamberlain, custodian of the women, had advised. And Esther found favor
in the eyes of all who saw her.”
Esther had every piece of makeup and perfume available, and yet she asked for
nothing and still found favor in the eyes of all who saw her. Esther is a role model for our girls. She was more than her physical appearance.
Her self-esteem was not tied into the way she looked. People adored her because of who she was, not
because of what she looked like. Another
message of the Purim story.
Advisory Update:
Sixth Grade: Students
began discussing popularity and how it impacts them.
Seventh Grade:
Students came to understand that being
silent when there is injustice going on can be just as bad as perpetrating the
injustice itself.
Eighth Grade:
Students began to investigate the dangers of substance use, with the first
focus on alcohol.
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