|
All-Time Favorite Toys: Dolls
Yara
Berg from Argentina In my childhood, dolls fascinated me. I had many latex-rubber baby dolls. All of them were named and were almost treated as real babies. They were cared for with kindness and affection, nourished, and put to bed. As I became a bit older, paper dolls started to attract my attention. I had lots of them, and I still remember my feelings of joy when my parents came home with a new one and its set of clothes. I spent hours clipping and playing with the paper dolls and their fashionable clothes for different occasions. The Barbie dolls were launched much later when I was already too old to play with them, but I really understand their appeal for the young girls today. The interaction with them is much more real than it was with the paper dolls. The young consumers can't resist the Barbie doll and her wonderful world full of a wide variety of products. Television advertisements bombard their their target group, making the acquisition of the Barbie and its accessories a must. Much has been said about the Barbie body image. Barbie is beautiful, pretty, slim, elegant, perfect, but her body proportions are incompatible with those in a real young woman. Young girls suffer from Barbie syndrome, trying to look like a Barbie doll. New marketing strategies now introduce Barbie models with proportions a little bit more realistic, in different races, or in a wheelchair, or even, as I heard from my personal trainer, with workout muscles. In our consumer society, we need to develop the skills for analyzing what is being offered to us, always and everywhere. We can't prohibit our children from playing with Barbie dolls, but we can discuss with them the positive and the negative aspects of the toy Barbie. I wish I could be a child again and play with Barbie dolls as I did with my paper dolls.
TOPICS
Online Magazine
- ©1997-2008 - Sandy and Thomas Peters
-topics.mag@gmail.com |
Photo:
S. Peters