Reality check: Barbie now tall, curvy and petite too

NEW YORK - Barbie, long the stereotypical blue-eyed blonde bombshell, has been given a makeover. The iconic doll will now be available in three new body types -- tall, petite and curvy.

The best-selling doll's manufacturer Mattel announced the new looks Thursday, ending a 56-year-old tradition of Barbie having just one physique: unrealistically perfect.

The new dolls join Barbie's Fashionista line, which will now feature four body types. It will also have seven skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles -- an acknowledgement, belated for some, that women come in many sizes and shapes.

"Barbie reflects the world girls see around them. Her ability to evolve and grow with the times, while staying true to her spirit, is central to why Barbie is the number one fashion doll in the world," Mattel President and CEO Richard Dickson said in a statement.

"We believe we have a responsibility to girls and parents to reflect a broader view of beauty," added Evelyn Mazzocco, senior vice president and global general manager of the Barbie brand.

NEW DOLLS COULD BOOST SALES

Mattel is not the first doll maker to shatter the mold of what pretty means.

In late 2014, graphic artist Nickolay Lamm introduced a doll named Lammily, which features what the company calls standard human body proportions.

In 2002, Tonner Doll came out with one called Emme, after the plus-size model who went by that name.

The new Barbie looks should help Mattel boost declining sales of the doll -- down for three straight years and by 16 percent in the first half of 2015.

Last year, Mattel launched "Hello Barbie": a version that uses WiFi and voice recognition technology so kids can actually hold conversations with the toy.

This is not the first time Mattel has released Barbies with different looks, although the body types are new.

In 1980, Mattel marketed Black Barbie, who had an afro-style hair-do.

Mattel's failure to change Barbie's body size had drawn a lot of criticism, but the company long defended the design.

"Barbie's body was never designed to be realistic. She was designed for girls to easily dress and undress," Kimberly Culmone, vice president of Barbie Global Creative, explained in 2014 in an interview with the website Fast Company.

Culmone challenged the notion that Barbie dolls could play a role in how little girls might perceive women's bodies and their own.

"Clearly, the influences for girls on those types of issues, whether it's body image or anything else, it's proven, it's peers, moms, parents. It's their social circles," Culmone said.

However, a British study in 2006 of girls aged five to eight found that those exposed to Barbie had a less favorable view of their own bodies.

These girls ended up wanting a thinner body than did girls not exposed to the doll.

After the new Barbie body types were announced on Thursday, social media lit up with messages of praise.

The stock market greeted the move with cautious optimism. Shares in Mattel were up 0.65 percent to $27.15 at around 1830 GMT.

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source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Barbie stirs up frenzy with swimsuit issue debut

WASHINGTON - Barbie has been many things in her life: A doctor. A paleontologist. An astronaut. A cheerleader. A race car driver. A candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Now, on the threshold of her 55th birthday, the world's most famous doll is stirring up a social media frenzy with her debut in Sports Illustrated's 50th anniversary swimsuit edition.

In a tie-in with toymaker Mattel, the top-selling US sports weekly has cast the leggy -- if anatomically impossible -- all-American doll on a mock cover, sporting a black and white one-piece reminiscent of the one she wore when introduced in 1959.

"The Doll that Started it All," reads the headline on the cover, being wrapped around some issues of the magazine. The hashtag #unapologetic features in the joint marketing campaign, which will also include ads in the magazine.

"From its earliest days, Swimsuit has delivered a message of empowerment, strength and beauty," said M.J. Day, the Sports Illustrated senior editor responsible for the iconic and highly lucrative special edition.

"And we are delighted that Barbie is celebrating those core values in such a unique manner," she said in a statement.

The swimsuit issue comes out Tuesday with bikini-clad Chrissy Teigen, Nina Agdal and Lily Aldridge on the cover, posing on a sun-kissed tropical beach, smiling back at the camera, toned buttocks well exposed.

But it's Barbie -- or more precisely the notion of giving her top billing in a magazine that pitches sun, sea and sex to impressionable American males in the dead of winter -- that has fired up the blogosphere.

"This is what is known as obvious trolling," wrote Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon.com.

"You plan on getting mad again this year about hot, barely clothed women in a sports magazine again this year, world? Here. Here's a plastic one ... a freaking mass-produced doll."

"Just as the swimsuit issue isn't for the kids, Barbie isn't for the grown-ups either," added Eve Vawter, editor of Mommyish.com.

"Barbie is no longer just a doll. She is a sex doll. Think about that the next time your daughter wants one in the toy aisle."

- Barbie losing her mojo? -

Alas, on the eve of the New York Toy Show, and hard on the heels of New York fashion week, Barbie is grappling with the middle-aged fear that she's no longer hot stuff.

Publicly listed Mattel revealed in January that worldwide gross sales of its Barbie products fell six percent last year, and three percent in 2012, putting a drag on the profitability of the world's biggest toy manufacturer.

"We just didn't sell enough Barbie dolls," said Mattel chief executive Bryan Stockton in a conference call with financial analysts, although its other doll lines such as Monster High are faring better.

(Sports Illustrated launched the swimsuit edition in 1964 to prop up circulation between the American football and baseball seasons. Now a stand-alone product, it is the best-selling of all Time Inc. titles.)

Barbie -- whose brand is valued at $3 million, a tad more than Oprah Winfrey's estimated worth -- is no stranger to controversy.

She's regularly been faulted in the past for setting an unrealistic example for young girls with her impossibly lithe figure, fabulous wardrobe and storybook romance with dashing boyfriend Ken.

If 11.5-inch (29-centimeter) Barbie was a full-grown American woman, she'd have a 32-inch bust, a 16-inch waist and 29-inch hips, as well as a child's size three foot, according to Rehabs.com, a website that addresses eating disorders.

Lindsey Feitz, who lectures on gender and women's studies at the University of Denver in Colorado, considered it "ethically dubious" to use a girl's doll to sexualize girlhood in a magazine seen mainly by men.

"We've evolved from the ink drawings of pin-ups in the 1940s to chronic Photoshopping and digital body alterations of today's cover models," Feitz told AFP by email.

"And now the model has disappeared and been replaced with a plastic representation of a sexy girl/woman. It's ironic."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com