fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3315 ]

[ SECRET POST #3315 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3315 ⌋

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A lot of the Barbie drama makes me feel like it's true that being a dick to overweight people is the last acceptable prejudice.

Everyone insisting that Barbie stay the same doesn't seem to realize this whole move was because the company has been falling behind. Sorry but Barbie has been boring for a while and needed an update.

I agree that Barbie is pretty dated at this point. Kids don't want generic dolls so much anymore as they want specific character dolls, like Elsa and such. Like Halloween costumes - fewer kids want to be generic "ghost", etc, they'd rather be a specific character. Barbie as a product absolutely has to constantly update itself in a world where commercialization of kids' toys is moving and changing faster than ever. Barbie needs to be appealing both to kids and to parents, and one way to do that is to remind people that Barbie still exists - so making headlines about being "progressive" (no matter how accurate that is) is a great way to do that.

To be fair, Barbie IS a character at this point (she has movies and such.) I think the problem is the Disney Princess lines and things like Monster High dolls have a lot more fun characters and accessories to them. Barbie is essentially the same thing over and over and over again. Occasionally she has "friends" but they were too few and far apart.

But yeah, they definitely did need to make a move either way.

And it's not like the 'standard' Barbie has stopped production.

That's what I don't get about the outrage, it's not like anyone is forcing anyone else to buy from the new line. It's just giving people an option rather then like before where if you wanted a Barbie, you often only had one choice.

My biggest problem with it is that if I would have had to buy all-new warderobes for every Barbie in a different shape than the classic one, making it much more expensive. The fun with Barbie is the dressing up part, or it was for me at least, and for that only one shape is a million times better.

That's the only argument against the new dolls I can understand, but it's not the only argument that is being made, a lot of arguments are boiled down not wanting ANY change at all.

But that's probably also why Mattel did it, this isn't the first time they've changed the Barbie mold, it's just the first time they've had so many different ones all at once and they full intend to make money off of it. Even if they had not done it this way, they'd figure out another way to get people to buy as many dolls and outfits as possible.

It's not going to FORCE anyone to buy more though, old Barbie will still be available, and parents can always choose a body type they want to buy and only buy accessories for that body type, or if their kids are interested more in the dolls then the clothes, they could sacrifice the amount of accessories to buy a more diverse doll collection.

Honestly Barbie was always trying to sell people as much shit as possible so I don't think this will suddenly put people in the poor house. It should ideally, give consumers more options rather then being stuck with the same doll in different outfits.

"being a dick to overweight people is the last acceptable prejudice."

Yawn. Call me back when people are systematically incarcerated and murdered solely for being fat.

Speaking as someone who was fat until her last year of high school, I can say that fat people are definitely discriminated against. Maybe I wasn't incarerated or murdered, but I was bullied mercilessly (classmates made cow sounds when I spoke, stuck pictures of cows on my locker, asked me insulting questions, ridiculed me, etc) and most of the teachers in my school turned a blind eye. When my mom came up to the school to discuss my bullying she was actually told, "Maybe she should consider losing weight, then she wouldn't have a bullying problem." I would step into a shop that only catered to small sizes--not to buy something for myself, but for other people--and would be looked down and sneered at. Complete strangers would snicker and insult me when they passed me. I was afraid to eat anything in public because people would stare at me. I've even had WAITERS/WAITRESSES give me disgusted looks when I ordered anything besides a salad. And don't get me started on employment. Apparently employers thing that fat people can't be hard workers.

I was 16 when I couldn't take being treated like I was less than human and made a suicide attempt. Would have succeeded, too, had my mom not left her wallet behind and found me. I never made another attempt because of my mom. Eventually I lost all the weight through starving myself. Thanks to an amazing friend I made online I managed to get healthy again, but that wasn't for a long, long time.

So yes, fat people are discriminated against and treated as subhuman. I wasn't the only fat person in my school who was treated that way.

Even more worryingly, I heard people flat out say the would not not hire a fat person. People in the position of hiring people. As someone struggling to get hired in my field, that is always at the back of my mind.

Man, I finally saw those dolls the other day and I was like "but fat Barbie doesn't even look fat tho".

She isn't supposed to be fat. She is curvy. There's a lot of stuff in the media that tends to attack or, using photoshop, gets rid of those curves even on women who AREN'T fat. The ideal isn't what that Barbie even looks like. It's the original Barbie or the new Tall!Barbie.

So, seeing a curvier Barbie is a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. And I like that there's a curvier dark headed, dark eyed one that's coming out. She may not look like me, exactly, but she's close enough that I kind of want the doll. I just wish they were more articulated.

Oh. Well, she doesn't even look "curvy" to me then. She looks like a normal woman.

But then, Barbie never looked like a normal woman at all, so.

That's the thing, for all the outrage Barbie was never "normal" skinny, when someone did the math she had humanly impossible proportions.

Now I don't mind if dolls aren't exactly real, but the new "curvy" barbie does not look like she's obese and she still looks like she could belong in the Barbie line so I don't know why people are up in arms over her at all. She only even looks big if you compare her to the other super skinny dolls.

Well, shame on me for assuming that Mattel was going to actually represent any real range of figures beyond normal weight and underweight then, I guess.

That's the point though. And she's stylized at that. But they're trying to make more body type options than just the standard doll so we can start normalizing the fact that, hey, real people have different body types, too. Let's stop making fun of them for it.

I didn't know that fans were complaining about the new body types! But then I'm used to complaints about Barbie's stupidly long legs being unrealistic, etc.

I think the new body types look pretty neat, if still very leggy.

Well, they aren't supposed to Lammily. They are still very stylized, but trying to promote the sense that, "hey, people, especially women, have different body types, let's recognize that, yes?"

So even if they are still unrealistic, it's a step in teh right direction. and I quite like them.

Lammily (which is what that secret from, yesterday(?), was about, set to make a doll that WAS realistic...except that the dude focused on the average skinny woman. And she ended up being very uncanny valley to me and ugh. Not to mention, I'd have liked to see whathis take on an average size 14 teen/woman would look like...and it'd still probably be very creepy looking. And that's because dolls are meant to be fantasy and not realistic, but still have nods TO realism.

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[ SECRET POST #3315 ]

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