Critics of plans for a live action Barbie movie are already saying a real life human Barbie would look “absurd” based upon the physical proportions of the doll.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , one designer created a plus size Barbie in order to prove what an overweight Barbie should look like.
If you took the proportions of a not so fat Barbie doll, and applied them to real women, then a real life Barbie would have a waist line measuring 16 inches while the average American woman is 37.5 inches (even the Human Barbie called Valeria Lukyanova isn’t that thin ). According to Rehabs.com , less than 100,000 women on the entire planet have the 32-16-29 measurements necessary to become a human Barbie and this image problem has caused many young girls to have an unrealistic perception of what is considered physically fit, leading some girls to “hate” their own bodies.
Because of these real life problems, Case Western Reserve University’s Renee Sentilles, a professor of women’s history, believes the human Barbie movie will force a woman to match a mold in an impossible fashion:
“If filmmakers try to remake a real person to look like Barbie she will look too absurd for anyone to concentrate on the story.”
But Jennifer L. Pozner , executive director of Women and Media in News, believes the real problem with the Barbie movie is the message it conveys to young girls:
“Whatever very tall, very thin, huge rack-having, genitally incorrect, long-haired, blond, white actress they get to play Barbie, even though she will be structurally sound unlike the doll, even though she won’t fall forward on the weight of her own breasts and the lack of ability of her frame to hold herself up, she will still be taking a franchise into 3D that tells girls that the farther away they get from that white, skinny, tall, blond, big rack ideal, the less pretty, the less valuable, and the less successful they’ll be.”
The lead Barbie designer at toy maker Mattel has previously defended the unrealistic curves of the Barbie doll . They admit that “Barbie’s body was never designed to be realistic,” and they say the reason for the physical proportions is pure practicality from a toy-making perspective. It’s claimed the reason the original 1959 Barbie doll was given these proportions was because it made it easier for little girls to dress and undress their dolls with the multitude of outfits that came down over the years.
Do you think the actress picked out for the Barbie movie role should have more “normal” physical proportions?