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Jessica McAfee
Professor Bolduc-Simpson
ENC 1101 CRN 80569
11 November 2013
Barbie Dolls Shaping the Way for Girls
Ad 1: Barbie Ad 1966
Ad 2: Barbie Ad 2010
A beautiful tall, blonde hair, blue eye doll named Barbie came about in 1959 by
Ruth Handler who was the co-founder of the toy making company Mattel. Barbie was
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made specifically for Handler’s daughter, but she brought it to people in America and the
world went wild. Since 1959, Barbie has had over 125 jobs and has had different family
members, friends, and pets (Bellis). Every year before Christmas, an advertisement
would come about showing what will be the new “in” thing for the upcoming year when
it came to Barbie. The advertisement from 1966 shows a specific style that the girls are
wearing: big jackets, dresses or skirts, and they all have the same sort of hairstyle. But
one thing that really sticks out is that there are no Hispanic or African American dolls in
the picture. But if you look at the advertisement from 2010, you see something
completely different. There are twelve different types of barbies and no two are the same.
This paper will contrast two different Barbie advertisements by their use of culture and
design.
Ad 1 shows dolls that are both brunette and blonde. They are both poised with
similar hairstyles and clothing choices. None of the dolls are wearing pants, but instead
they are all wearing either dresses or skirts. This somewhat influences the girls who are
wanting the dolls that they should dress the certain way and have the same hairstyle as
the dolls. It also helps shape the style of America because the dolls are wearing the kind
of clothes that all the celebrities and people that the girls looked up to were wearing. The
parents of the girls must have liked the Barbie dolls for dressing the way that they did
because they kept buying them so the Barbie dolls continued to grow.
On the other hand, the 2010 advertisement, Ad 2, is completely different. There
are brunette, blonde, black, and red hair dolls. They also have different races in the dolls
including white, Hispanic, African American, and Chinese. All of their dresses are
different, trying to represent their different personalities. Barbie dolls are showing girls
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that they do not need to have one specific look or one specific style to be considered
beautiful. You can be any race…Barbie does not discriminate. This also shows that
America has opened up to different races since the 1960’s where it was usual to see a
blonde Caucasian and unusual to see a Hispanic girl on the street.
Many contrasts appear when you look at the advertisements side by side. The
design is really different from the 1960’s to today, but it is also different because of the
culture. The design is different because ad 1 is more colorful and spaced out. There is
also more writing with the advertisement. Ad 2’s design is different because it is more
modern. It does not have any color except for the doll’s hair. There is no detailed writing
about the dolls. It is very clean cut and not cluttered compared to the ad 1. Culture is
another difference in the advertisements. The dolls in the ad 1 are both Caucasian girls
with brown and blonde hair. They are supposed to represent the “norm” of America, but
really that does not even start to represent America. Segregation was still going on at the
time the advertisement was going on so people thought the ad was relevant. But, looking
at the ad now, it really does not show what America really is. Ad 2 really shows what
America is…it is a salad bowl. There is no specific look of an American girl. It shows
that every girl is beautiful in her own way no matter what.
Looking at the way girls and families had to live in the 1960’s, I, along with
others, am happy that we get to live in the world that we live in now compared to then.
With discrimination, being proper, and trying to live the perfect American life, I feel that
living in that time could have been really stressful. Barbie dolls are supposed to represent
the American girl of the time. Barbie’s mission statement says that “through the doll, the
little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a
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woman has choices” (Gibbs). This mission statement helps prove to each and every girl
that picks up a Barbie doll that they can be anything if they put their mind to it, and that
the girl is beautiful in their own unique way.
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Works Cited
Bellis, Mary. "The History of Barbie Dolls." About.com Inventors. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventions/a/The-History-Of-BarbieDolls.htm>.
Constantine, Hayley. Barbie Asos. 2010. Ceriselle, UK. Life In Plastic, Its Fantastic.
Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
Danny. Barbie Advertisment 1966. Ebay, United Kingdom. Ebay. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
Gibbs, Jazmine. "Barbie.": Brief History & Mission Statement. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://barbiemar100.blogspot.com/2012/09/brief-history-missionstatement.html>.