Barbie, the career killer: How fashion doll's sexually mature shape and pretty face can limit a young girl's dream job choices

By Misty White Sidell

PUBLISHED: 17:12 EST, 5 March 2014 | UPDATED: 17:14 EST, 5 March 2014


Girls who play with Barbie dolls have a narrower outlook on career possibilities for women, according to a new university study.

Thirty-seven young girls between the ages of four and seven were randomly assigned to play with either a fashion Barbie, a career-driven doctor Barbie, or a ‘more neutral’ Mrs Potato Head doll for ten minutes.

The girls, all of which hailed from the Pacific Northwest, were then shown photos of ten occupations and were asked which ones they could do, as well as which ones boys could do in the future.

Detrimental to girls? A new study unearths how young girls who play with Barbies have a narrower idea of career possibilities for women as a result

Detrimental to girls? A new study unearths how young girls who play with Barbies have a narrower idea of career possibilities for women as a result

The results, published in Springer’s Sex Roles journal, display how the children who were exposed to either the fashion Barbie or career-driven doctor Barbie were much more likely to see themselves in fewer occupations than boys.

The girls who played with the Mrs Potato Head doll however ‘reported nearly as many career opportunities available for themselves as for boys,’ reads a statement announcing the study’s findings.

 

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Research was conducted by Aurora Sherman of Oregon State University and Eileen Zurbriggen of the University of Santa Cruz and was spurred by their growing social interest in how young women are feeling increasingly pressured to be ‘sexy’.

Both women consider their study’s results to be ‘sobering’.

‘Perhaps Barbie can “Be Anything” as the advertising for this doll suggests, but girls who play with her may not apply these possibilities to themselves,’ Ms Sherman said in the statement.

She suggests that Barbie, as well as similar dolls, place an inappropriately early sexual burden on young girls, saying: ‘Something about the type of doll, not characteristics of the participants, causes the difference in career aspirations.’

She and Ms Zurbriggen feel that Barbie’s sexually mature body and facial appearance might be her psychologically-limiting culprit, considering that the dolls’ clothing differences did not have an effect on the children’s occupational opinions.

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Might help if they provide a bit more details on the jobs that the kids were asked about... Nothing scream agenda more than reports on studies that leave out all the details.

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quit hating on barbie, she is a doll, she was made to look that way many years ago. she is just a doll. personally, i thin girls like her or they do not. i DO NOT think she hurts them in any way.

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Oh good grief... A sample of 37 girl aged between 4-7! Utter tosh!

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Barbie's supposed to give little girls a complex about their bodies. Yet no one even mentions all the little boys growing up with He-man, Superman and all the super muscular action figures.

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Just this morning the DM posted an article about a male passenger writing a note to a female pilot, telling her the cockpit is "no place for a woman." It's time to stop blaming plastic dolls for all of our problems and start realising that we are the problem.

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