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The dark side of ‘Barbie’: It’s not all pretty in pink amid plastic surgery craze
new study found that an overwhelming 82% of the 1,000 multi-generational, female case studies think Barbie dolls — which take center stage in a highly anticipated Margot Robbie movie premiering Friday, July 21 — promote unrealistic body expectations to girls and women.Female dolls have historically featured slender figures with long, straight blond or brunette hair — and shockingly perky bosoms, especially for the 1950s, when they first hit the market.“They didn’t think that the public would accept a doll with breasts for children,” the late Ruth Handler, who invented the figure in 1959 after seeing her daughter play with paper cutouts of adult dolls, once said. “I knew they were wrong,” the co-founder and former president of Mattel, who died at 85 in 2022, bragged of the then-controversial endowment.Fast-forward to 2023: The new research from Harmony Healthcare IT further found that 69% of women think Barbie can actually lead to dangerous body image issues.
