/media/ - Media

I had a bunch growing up. They were just vessels for my sick soap opera fantasies so I never thought about what they looked like much.

Barbies were no different than any other toy growing up such as Legos or playing outside: They were tools for my imagination to play with. I loved Barbies growing up. I noticed how sexualized and cheap they look now. My mom's Barbies from the 60s and my Barbies from the 90s are way better and more normal looking. The modern ones just look like Bratz rip-offs. And I've always detested Bratz for their sexualized and cheap quality and encouraging girls to have bad attitudes about everything. What are those resting bitch face Barbies are called?

idk maybe? as other have nonas said, I liked them a lot for being vessels to create stories and stuff, but there is a chance that there was some kind of subconscious association.

I've never cared about barbies, but I don't know if it's cause I was contrarian or I wasn't quite socialized. I preferred animal toys.

>Are they harmful to kids?

Yes and the new woke bullshit they're trying to do is so fake it's revolting. Don't get me wrong I loved them as a kid but they definitely did make me feel I needed to be a certain set of things to be womanly and beautiful.

They have LLM chatbot dolls that send recordings of your child to their marketing bots. I'm sure your local government can pay to have patriotic ideas added to the conversation at regular intervals.

What a time to be alive.

I used to not like them because of the whole unrealistic bodies for young girls thing as well the weird oversexualization Barbie went through. After seeing the 2023 Barbie movie I think the brand realized the issues and is trying to fix them so I at least respect the brand more now (other than the fact that Mattel has shown to be batshit). I never really owned Barbie's growing up, I was more of a plushie/pillowpet/squishmallows owner as a kid

>>37675
Are you serious? The brand doesn't want to "fix their mistakes" they only want to sell more dolls, and they realized that they needed to clean their image to do so.

>>37676
That poster is obviously pretty young to have had a squishmallow as a kid. We all have to learn some time.

>>37677
As the young nona I just realized that squishmallows and pillowpets are different. I only owned pillowpets as a child. Also I'm not that young but I appreciate the compliment

>>37676
This
>>37675
Companies don't really care about their consumers, they just realized that parents don't want to buy their daughters toys that can have a negative impact on their emotional well-being

>>37676
Probably but I still liked the movie tbh and I don't actually hate Barbies. Mattel does suck though

I had a few Barbies when I was a kid, and I loved them.
I also never compared myself to my dolls. Somehow, I always knew they were "examples" of American women and that I simply knew I would never be like them, which didn't bother me. I must have had an ideal of beauty ingrained in my mind because of them, but I never wanted to model myself on them; I always knew they were just toys.

>>37669
I also had this very clear and objective in my mind: my Barbies were characters in my stories.

>>37670
I noticed that Barbies are getting uglier and of lower quality with each passing year, I think I was lucky because I got a good phase when I was a child, and I had very pretty Barbies, but now there are much prettier ones than them.

>>37668
How are they supposed to be harmful to kids? It's only harmful if as an adult or teenager you compare yourself to a toy. Why would you want to do that?

>>37668
Bratz are worse, girls shouldn't be called that

>>37706
Bratz are definitely worse. I like them as an adult but I think they're not appropiate for kids.

>>37737
I’ve always found Bratz dolls kind of ugly, but I don’t really see what’s inappropriate about them. They have total stick figure bodies.

I've been playing Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures on the Switch and it is quite literally the worst video game that I have ever played.

>>37740
Well I don't wanna be too much of a purist but I just don't think young girls should aspire to be beautiful. Beauty is complete pain, I know we're kinda doomed but at least if I had a daughter I'd like to postpone her feeling fat and ugly as soon as I can, so yeah, kids so little shouldn't have Bratz dolls ideally.

When I was a kid, I didn't think about their appearance, but I understand that it might have been a source of anxiety for other girls. But nowadays I see lots of Barbies of different colors and sizes in stores, so I think it's better.

I always thought Barbies were unsettling with those stiff plastic barrel bodies, unnaturally long limbs and dead eyes. I had one or two but I never played with them.

I was really obsessed with Bratz however. I had at least a dozen and I sewed clothes for them with some help. Never compared my face or body to theirs since they had such cartoonish proportions. I definitely remember reading WITCH and thinking "their tummies are really flat and mine isn't, even that fat girl is skinny compared to me" but Bratz were thrown in with characters like Rayman.

>>37706
>>37737
My little sister used to love these things but I always thought they looked nasty. I remember the ps2 game being really weird with this make up system that let you turn the girls into horrible clowns. That and awful roller skating controls.

When I was a kid me (asian) and my asian friends used to draw ourselves blonde with blue eyes. Think it's better now though because they have different races/body sizes of Barbies.

I will always love the classic Barbie collection, Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper and Barbie in the Nutcracker were the most beautiful and enchanting toys I ever owned.. I still regret giving them up because now I see barbie collectors would give an arm to own either one of those.
I personally think there is nothing wrong with Barbie being conventionally beautiful, Barbie was never supposed to be realistic in the first place I think.
I don't like the current dolls and they ruined the appeal of the ethereal looking dolls.
I also loved the monster high and Ever after high dolls and there is not much difference I think.

>>37668
When I was a kid, I didn't like them because they're girly. I also avoided anything pink and glittery. Girly things were always being made fun of or shamed by my brother and father and I didn't want to be seen with something so embarassing.
There are reasons to not like super slim long mega-consumerist women in permanent make-up plastic dolls produced in sweatshops and all that, but when I see them, I feel a kind of resentment for my immediate family for robbing me of that simple joy regardless… It was probably for the best with barbie specifically tbf, but I wish my family had had more woke reasoning than "woman bad".
…but thinking of it, I wasn't that much of a fan of barbie for other (albeit perhaps adjacenty) reasons too. The ads were always about her going shopping, dressing up and doing her hair and it was just more boring than everything Playmobil and Lego was doing.
If I were to buy dolls for a child now, I'd probably go for smaller dolls that fit in a doll house. Barbies are a bit too big for regular doll houses and too hard, small and adult-looking to hug like baby dolls and plushs. They look like you have to prop them up if you put them in a doll house and don't want them to topple over.

As a fat little brunette girl playing with these and bratz not once did I feel like I needed to look like her. Classical feminine “I’m imagining I look like her”.
I’m not fat now but it didn’t inspire me to get surgery. I think having the dolls + toxic family and friends does it.