Are You Ready for BBW Barbie?

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They should call her “Belinda,” because all girls named “Belinda” are fat. There — that’s the only joke I have for this story:

A controversy is brewing over a request to remake Barbie in way contrary to the iconic image so many girls knew growing up.
Plus-Size-Modeling.com is suggesting Mattel create a plus-size Barbie. While some say more realistic curves would be a better role model for girls, others say an overly large Barbie would be an unhealthy example.
Plus Size Modeling conducted a poll on its Facebook page on Dec. 18 asking, “Should toy companies start making Plus Sized Barbie dolls?” In just under two weeks, a picture of the poll has received over 40,000 likes, 5,000 comments and 2,700 shares.
“Sure, but Barbie doesn’t need a double chin,” one comment said. “You can be ‘plus size’ w/o the double chin. They could make a ‘thick’ Barbie.”
“Portraying Barbie as a realistic woman with real curves is a very good idea and would send the right message to young girls about self-esteem,” another comment said. “Making a morbidly obese Barbie is BAD!!”
Then there’s this opinion:
“Okay I honestly don’t think how a Barbie looks affects a child’s self-esteem. When I was little I didn’t wanna look like Barbie. Lol. I didn’t think about my looks at all I just wanted to play…”

I dunno. If “Plus-Size Barbie” is a success, why not “DTF Middle-Aged Cougar Barbie”? “Crack Whore Street Walker Barbie”?

(Hat-tip: Modern Comments on Twitter.)

 

43 comments

  4. Trademark? Copyright? I am reasonably certain Mattel would fight for “Barbie” and her image. So…it’s not all that simple.

  10. Thanks for the hat tip, for starters.

    Also, if you go to the Plus-Sized Modeling website, their models, while plus-sized, aren’t as big and beefy as the proposed Barbie doll so I find it rather interested they’d promote a doll like that.

  13. Tonner Doll Company created a plus-sized doll based on the real-life plus-sized model Emme. I might have bought one except for Emme’s pro-abortion stance. He’s also used the same mold for one of Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters, the character Mama Morton (from the movie, Chicago, I think, brain not working this late at night) and Mrs. Claus.

  17. “Portraying Barbie as a realistic woman with real curves is a very good
    idea and would send the right message to young girls about self-esteem,”
    another comment said. “Making a morbidly obese Barbie is BAD!!”
    ================
    Likewise for just fat (bad). Normal weight is fine though.
    If we could get less anorexic models (on magazines and runways), that would even be better.

  20. Yep. They both needed help with their food issues (meaning other more profound psychological issues). I played a LOT with Barbie dolls, and I don’t recall ever thinking that she was something I would need to look like. But I did grow up in an environment intensely obsessed about thinness and that is what was really unhealthy. Not the doll, just basically every adult and peer around me was obsessed. Quite, quite crazy. Tremendous emphasis on appearance, very little on much more important things inside.

  21. Thought I’d check in here as i’m getting comment moderation from all kinds of different sites and for benign comments. who sets the moderation level? the site owner or disqus?

  24. We didn’t have Barbie. Except the one that slipped past the censor because the giver didn’t know of the Barbie ban. I think she bought a 6-pack because six little girls received the same Barbie for Christmas that year, one of the old bitch-face ones. By the time I became aware of Barbie, she had become happy cheerleader Barbie and unrecognizable to me. I learned that my doll was a Barbie when my mom gave me a copy of Smithsonian magazine with a Barbie foldout cover, on the inside of which were depicted many Barbies, including the doll I had. Who knew?

  25. It’s always extremes with these people. Oh she’s too thin, lets make her too fat instead!

    Why don’t they just make “average size barbie”?

  27. I know it’s been around for some time…about as long as feminazis have, oddly enough…but could the alleged influence of Barbies on girls’ self-images be more overblown hype?

    I played with the Six Million Dollar Man, army men, Mego superheroes, monster models and the original foot-tall G.I. Joe. But I never wanted to emulate any of them when I grew up nor felt from any corner that I was seriously expected to.

  33. I think it’s just one more expression of that pressure. So if you aren’t in an obsessed with thinness environment, it doesn’t matter. If you are, well it’s just another message in that sense. Not long ago, there was an Internet article with a famous pinup from the 40s, normal body. You should have seen the comments from young men. All of them saying nasty things about how fat she was! I mean, talking about her as if she was like this fat Barbie above! And she was slim, she just wasn’t anorexic like all these super models of today. So you see, this stuff gets into people’s minds, and that’s when it becomes toxic. The doll herself didn’t start it, but she comes to represent it.

  36. Disqus is being abused by a number of sites. NRO is one of the worst sites I’ve been to. AmSpec is getting things in hand. I actually posted the word “libtard” without going into moderation hell. I found saying “Jew” can send you to moderation hell at NRO.

  37. I like those 40s and 50s era pinups meself. I also married a girl built that way. Boys and young men these are much too affected by the gays that have determined a chick should look like a 10 year old boy with boobs glued on. My son, at 35, has a mild case of the problem.

  40. SIte owner can plug in a filter that traps certain words, but those are error-prone. Moderation of most “service” type comment platforms is through a dashboard provided by the platform developers (and/or per-post tools that only mods can see).

    Small sites (meaning relatively few commenters) can get by with a handful of mods. Huge sites have to have a large number of mods, and also be careful about closing comments after a cutoff date.

    The more comments to police, the more the mods depend on people flagging stuff. So flagging is important, even at a comment swamp like NRO and Breitbart.

    For example, the Telegraph.uk blog mods manage to keep reasonable control even when one blog post can typically generate over 2500 comments. I’ve found them to be lenient enough to allow rigorous debate.

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