Rehab recently wrote a detailed and worrying article detailing the impact Barbie, models and the media are having on young girls, and the results are shocking. They found that 4 out of 5 children aged 10 are afraid of being fat, whilst 42% of girls in first to third grade wish they were thinner. 1 in 10 students in the USA have an eating disorder by the time they start high school, in fact 90% of all individuals diagnosed with an eating disorder are girls aged 12 to 15.
The anxieties they experience are the product of a society and media culture that prizes a thin image for women above anything else, and devalues any woman who strays outside the false “norm” of a skinny body. In pursuit of that unattainable goal, they will literally starve themselves to death. They are dying to be like Barbie.
– Dying To Be Barbie | Rehab
Although it may appear researchers and the media are simply singling out Barbie as a bad role model due to her infamously unhealthy, unachievable body there have been numerous studies proving Barbie’s negative impact on young girls. In a study conducted in the UK, young girls aged 5 to 8 were asked to play with either Barbie or a more realistic Size 16 doll, those who played with the former showed signs of lower self-esteem and a stronger desire to be thin.
Due to this mounting concern The Yale Centre For Eating And Weight Disorders calculated how the average woman’s body would have to change in order to be like Barbie’s. Rehab have illustrated their findings in the following infographic:
Dying To Be Barbie | Rehab
Featured photo credit: Dying To Be Barbie | Rehab via rehabs.com
