hiya Barbie hi Ken you're looking
unrealistically thin today funny I was
gonna say the same about you
Barbie is one of the most popular dolls
in America but that doesn't mean that
she's loved by everyone for years women
advocates have criticized the doll for
her proportions which they say set
unrealistic and damaging body
expectations for young girls in response
her maker Mattel created a handful of
new sizes in 2016
including curvy Barbie but how
unrealistic is Barbie really is curvy
much better and weirdest can fit into
all of this that's what we set out to
discover
hello and welcome to our Barbie
experiment today we're gonna open up
each of these three dolls and do a
little bit of math to try to figure out
what they would look like if they were a
life-sized we have your more typical
Barbie over here we've got a curvy
Barbie which is kind of a newer doll and
then of course we also have a Ken doll
because I couldn't not get Ken so let's
get started first we measured each of
the dolls their height waist and so on
and use some high school algebra to
figure out their life-size measurements
then we compared them to a real-life
woman for comparison our colleague
Jensen
so Jensen how tall are you I am five
three and a half so you are the average
height of an American woman Congrats
first thing we're gonna do is take some
of your measurements and then we're
gonna compare that to Barbie will you
point your belly button for me right
here okay
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although Jensen is the average height of
an American woman she has a smaller than
average waist but still it's not nearly
as thin as Barbies if we scale Barbie to
life-size her waist would be a mere 50
centimeters and her hips just 71
centimeters and if Jensen had Barbie's
proportions this is what she would look
like she'd have shorter arms a longer
neck and tiny feet in fact they'd be so
small that she'd have trouble balancing
and would be forced to walk on all fours
and what about curvy Barbie is she any
more realistic actually yes at least
relative to Jensen her waist would be
around 63 centimeters and her hips
around 90 the same as Jensen's now
here's Jensen with curvy Barbie's
proportions not that different though of
course she still wouldn't be able to
walk upright now we can't forget about
Ken this time I stood in for comparison
if we scale Ken up to my height his
waist would be just 63 centimeters and
he would also have unusually small feet
long legs and larger calves but his
biceps well mine are actually bigger can
you better watch out so as you might
expect most Barbies look nothing like
average Americans as fit as they may be
in fact researchers found that the
chance of a woman having traditional
Barbies proportions is less than 1 in
100,000 and that's a problem my name is
Debra Tolman I'm a professor of critical
social psychology and women and gender
studies at Hunter College at City
University of New York and according to
Tolman dolls actually have an enormous
effect on girls and boys sense of
themselves their ideas about body
particular thin body ideals if you have
an ideal and you're never able to
achieve it you don't need a cycle
you'll study to show that it makes you
feel bad but there are plenty of studies
that do a study published in 2006 for
example found that young girls who were
exposed to Barbie doll images had more
body dissatisfaction and lower body
esteem compared to girls who were shown
similar pictures of a larger size doll
but fortunately it goes both ways
playing with a more I guess quote chubby
doll actually suppresses the desire for
thin body so so thinking about it only
as negative really doesn't tell the full
story because there are ways that we can
introduce dolls and play that will
actually yield protective effects and
that's why some experts applaud Mattel
for creating curvy Barbie but it's also
led to a whole new business for people
who want to make even more realistic
dolls because let's face it curvy Barbie
still doesn't depict the average
American woman like I think like you
know it sounds good they go curvy tall
and petite we're all diverse and
everything but if we actually look at
their individual each dollar each doll
is still unrealistic because the kirby
is still like you know like the perfect
hourglass shape the petite is very
extremely slim and the tall is basically
like essentially the original Barbie
except just kind of a little bit taller
that's Nikolai Lam I'm the founder of
family which makes dolls with realistic
body proportions to promote healthy body
image Lam competes with Mattel for
business so of course there's some
difference in opinion about the perfect
doll but if you look at his dolls it's
easy to see how they differ from Barbie
curvy or otherwise and in the end maybe
there is no perfect doll after all
people come in all different shapes
sizes and colors and it's pretty clear
that dolls should too