Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The new version of Women from the 17th century: The Human Barbie

Unfortunately, Barbie dolls are a girls best friend. But they may not be the best influence on children. The original Barbie doll was created by a woman named Ruth Handler, on March 9th 1959. The doll was named after Ruth’s daughter Barbara. The doll’s unrealistic characteristics cause some girls to feel ashamed of themselves. In an article from New York Times called “Barbie (Doll)” written by Yona Zeldis McDonough. McDonough said “There was a body, for starters, with breasts, a small waist, and long legs. Then there was her expression: sullen, knowing, and strangely convert. Her eyes were thickly rimmed with dark eyeliner, her lips, a candy-red apple.” But besides her physical appearance, Barbie is always shown swarmed by boys and girls who all have the same characteristics as her.

                 
These characteristics make young girls to try and change themselves thinking that wearing too much makeup and revealing clothing will attract more boys to them. But besides just changing what they physically wear, Barbie dolls also send out the message that being a pound overweight is bad and that its good to be so skinny that your ribs pop out of your chest. This whole concept reminds me of when women wore stiff corsets and wore white make up, even though these barbie dolls don't need to wear corsets. Thankfully some girls have realized that it doesn't matter how you look or how you dress, it only matter what's on the inside, but there are some girls who are stuck in this unrealistic phenomenon.
An article from the New York Times called “Such a Doll” by Ruth La Ferla written on May 31st, 2013 talks about human Barbie dolls. In her article, La Ferla talks about one girl named Venus Palermo, as well as a couple other girls who are stuck the intent of becoming life-size Barbies. These girls are pioneers in a movement that gained traction eastern Europe 2 years ago. The leader of the act is Valeria Lukyanova, a Ukrainian aspiring pop-star-tuned- Internet-sensation, whose mission in life she says is to achieve perfection as “the most-realistic-ever human Barbie doll.” says la Ferla. Girls take their cues from Ms. Lukyanova, whose “porcelain features and hourglass shape are the product of makeup and surgery.”




A couple of days ago, I was listening to the Jamn 94.5 and the speaker brought up Valeria Lukyanova. The radio station had an interview with Lukyanova and she said that she “maintained a diet that includes the consumption of no food or liquid, and attempts to live excessively on light and air.” The diet, called Breatharianism, as you can guess, is very dangerous to practice.

In the previous unit we had, Age of Absolutism, we wrote a blog post as if we were a person living back in 17th century England. One of the topics we could have wrote about was beauty/appearance.  Back then, women used to put gallons and gallons of white makeup on, made of crushed lead. These “human barbies” are doing the same thing, but instead of putting white makeup on, they use colors that are close but a little bit darker than their actual skin tone. Women back then in England also used corsets to make their waists thinner, and their upper torso to form in the shape of a “V”. The corsets were worn so tight that within about a year, the organs inside their chest would become damaged. These girls have brought back the style without bringing back the gear. The human barbies didn't use corsets to distort their bodies though, in fact an article from examiner.com written by Heather Tooley on April 24th 2012 interviewed Dr. Anthony LaBruna, Plastic Surgeon Director of Manhattan Plastic Surgery. LaBruna estimates that “Valeria Lukyanova spent in the neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of dollars -- maybe even half a million dollars --to get her near-perfect Barbie look.” LaBruna later continued by saying that if there was an actual human barbie, she would be about 5’9” weighing at 110 pounds. She would have to walk on her fours a makeup for her inaccurate proportions.



So maybe there is no real human barbie, but there sure are some that look very close to the doll itself.


Citations:

"Valencia Lukyanova" Examiner.com. Created April 24th 2012. Accessed March 12th 2014. http://www.examiner.com/article/real-life-barbie-valeria-lukyanova-what-did-she-spend-to-get-look

"Such a Doll" NewYorkTimes.com. Created May 31 2013. Accessed March 12th 2014.

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6 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 13, 2014 at 6:58 AM

    Great job! I really enjoyed reading your post. I never would have thought of this. I found this very interesting and it kept me wanting to read more. Overall great job!

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  2. NicoleMarch 13, 2014 at 7:10 AM

    Your blog post was really interesting and creative. I especially liked how you used lots of different sources to back up your ideas. You did a good job relating this to our lives and made me want to keep reading the whole time.

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  3. UnknownMarch 13, 2014 at 5:38 PM

    After I scanned over your title; I was immediately interested because like other girls, I used to play with Barbie dolls all the time when I was younger. Your introduction was fantastic and made it clear that although Barbie’s are fun to play with as a young child, they have an influence on how you want to look when you’re older. The story about Valeria Lukanova was very disturbing and definitely puts up a red flag to our society that something needs to be done. The way you shifted from this grabber and into our unit on the Age of Absolutism was also well done. I also remember reading about women’s beauty regimens of the period and being completely astonished at what they would put onto their skin to look “perfect.” I really liked that you included multiple quotes and pictures into your blog post. The only comment I have is that I noticed some wording errors, so a quick read through and some editing would have made it that much better. You did a great job and this post clearly conveys the disturbing things girls and women will do to make themselves look “perfect.” This has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

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  4. UnknownMarch 14, 2014 at 7:23 PM

    I really enjoyed reading your blog post! I liked how you connected a modern day concern of many women to something that they used to do in the past as well. It shows how some things just never change! I liked reading the quotes you took from articles and seeing what doctors and journalists had to say about this topic as well. It added a lot of detail to you post. Nice Job!

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  5. UnknownMarch 20, 2014 at 2:45 PM

    This was a great blog post! I really like that you used a modern day problem and related it to a history topic. I can't believe that some people strive to look exactly like a Barbie Doll. I learned a lot in this post and it was very interesting.

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  6. UnknownMarch 26, 2014 at 5:38 PM

    This post was extremely interesting. I find it crazy that people would do harm to their body to look like a doll. It is definitely sad that girls look up to an unrealistic looking toy. Good job connecting history to a modern day problem as serious as this. Overall, you made a great blog post that was very intriguing.

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