Barbie Essay -- essays papers

Barbie Since the beginning of time, toys have often been an indicator of the way a society behaves, and how they interact with their children. For example, in ancient Greece, artifacts recovered there testify that children were simply not given toys to play with as in the modern world. The cruel ritual of leaving a sick child on a hillside for dead, seems to indicate a lack of attention to the young (Lord 16). The same is true of today’s society. As you can see with the number of toy stores in our society, we find toys of great value to our lives and enjoy giving them to children as gifts. Ask just about any young girl what she wants for Christmas and you’ll undoubtedly get the same answer: â€Å"A Barbie.† But what exactly has caused this baby boomer Barbie craze, and how did the entire world get so caught up in it? The answer lies in Ruth Handler’s vision for the first children’s adult doll. Mrs. Handler’s eleven and one-half-inch chunk of plastic began causing problems even before it’s public debut in 1959, yet has managed to become one of America’s favorite dolls. Ruth Handler and her two young children, Barbara and Ken, were merely sightseeing in Lucerne, Switzerland, when Mrs. Handler first saw the doll she herself had been trying to create (Lord 29). In the window of a small gift shop was an eleven and one-half-inch tall plastic doll with a slender woman’s body and a long blond ponytail. Her name was Lilli (â€Å"Bad Girl† 1). She had been created from a cartoon character in a West German tabloid similar to the National Inquirer (Lord 8). Dressed provocatively, and with a seductive look in her eye, Lilli had become a â€Å"popular pornographic gag gift for men† (â€Å"Bad Girl† 1). Excited to see her long-time idea a reality, Mrs. Handler bought three of the dolls and hurried home to begin work on her own doll (â€Å"Bad Girl† 2). It was 1956, and within three years, Mattel Creations began marketing the â€Å"teenage fashion model† as â€Å"a new kind of doll from real life† (Tosa 30). The new doll, deemed â€Å"Barbie†, was named after her own daughter Barbara, who’s many years of play with paper dolls had actually inspired her to begin designing the three-dimensional adult doll (Lord 30). Though Mrs. Handler’s version of the doll was not as racy or alluring as Lilli, her imitation of the â€Å"German streetwalker† would come back to haunt her many years later (†Bad ... ...body and a new focus, she has plans to become even more spectacular with many new adventures and many new friends. Barbie’s new look includes a wider waist, smaller hips, a less â€Å"torpedo-like† bust, and flat rather than pointy-toed feet (â€Å"Bad Girl† 3). She is also playing an active role in new research in prosthetics. Jane Bahor, a woman who makes replacement body parts, had experimented with the plastic knee joints in Barbie’s legs. She has found that they work well as prosthetic fingers for her patients because they â€Å"are more realistic-looking and useful†. So far, Bahor has provided the replacement joints for more than a dozen of her patients and has been extremely successful in her studies (â€Å"Bad Girl† 27). As Barbie gets ready to turn the big 4-2, it is unreal to think that she has completed her last makeover. No doubt that as time changes and people’s attitudes towards life change, this timely doll will also be forced to adjust to the needs of society. With more than 75 successful careers, her own official website, and a namesake magazine, this little doll has become more than a child’s plaything. Whether we love her or hate her, she will always be a part of us all.

Gender Roles and Fashion Essay

Most people feel that the qualities and characteristics we perceive as specific to gender are inherent by nature. In America, physical strength is stereotyped to be masculine, while emotional behavior is stereotyped as feminine. Any straying from these expectations is sufficient grounds for alienation. However, historian Howard Zinn has documented that gender roles are a part of a system constructed by the ruling class during the formation of our nation. The gender role structure in the US was designed in order to maintain a centralized, wealthy ruling class. In order to keep wealthy, white men in control of the economy, women have been constructed as inferior to men — physically, mentally and emotionally. In Judith Lorber’s article â€Å"Night to His Day†, Lorber explains that the definition of being a man or woman is comprised of more than apparent genetic information. â€Å"Gender† is a socially constructed status, which has the intention of â€Å"choosing people for the different tasks of society†(Lorber 55). Thus, ideas about how one should behave in order to fit into a gender category are learned, not intrinsic. As a society assigns people as â€Å"men† or â€Å"women†, this categorization denotes the accepted and preferred â€Å"personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions† that create different classes and preferences for people (Lorber, 55). That is, the genderization system produces men and women who tend to have a â€Å"natural inclination† toward ideas, behaviors, and careers that help them assimilate to anticipated gender stereotypes. Parents, constantly in fear that people will not be able to dis tinguish the sex of their new baby, instinctually encourage dress, styles, and behavior that perpetuate the masculine and feminine labels from birth. The term â€Å"woman† itself was created by the masculine conception of what femininity should be. These criteria set up the dominant/subordinate relationship standard because women lacked the power to challenge the male point of view. Lorber suggests that â€Å"as a process, gender creates social differences that define ‘woman’ and ‘man'† through interactions and expectations of peers and family. As a stratification, gender ranks men’s work superior to women’s, regardless of skill or difficulty. As a social structure, gender organizes work habits both domestically and economically  (Lorber 60-1). For the average girl in American society, adapting to gender roles is taught in every single facet of life. The media, entertainment, and school cooperatively exhibit and promote gender assimilation. Barbieà ¤ dolls are the first toys I can recall playing with as a young girl. Her long blond hair, short skirts, disproportionately long legs, and spike heels set the precedent for how I would view true â€Å"femininity† throughout adolescence. By age six, my life became infiltrated by gender specific, â€Å"girly† activities. I: practiced ballet and avoided sports, painted fingernails, nearly always wore dresses with nylons, experimented with my mother’s make-up (rather unsuccessfully), joined Girl Scouts, grew out my hair to mid-back, and wished for everything to be pink or lavender. I was so excited and anxious for the day when the boys would†¦ finally†¦ notice†¦ me (sarcasm intended). Fashion trends and clothing styles, in particular, significantly aid the social construction of gender. The mere presence of a standard for the judgment of beauty automatically designates some group to be in control of the other. That is, individuals are constantly judging one another to make certain that they fit into the correct gender classification. Trendy, hip clothing are made for a very specific, minority group of women- narrow-hipped, small-breasted, tall, and skinny. The pressure to fit into these styles of clothes is unrelenting and produces insecurities and a poor body-image. These adolescent anxieties are not uncommon and can produce eating disorders, depression, and suicide. Joanne Finkelstein, in After a Fashion, explains that fashion can be seen as a device for confining women to an inferior social order. Throughout history women have been isolated from men by their fashion dues to society – women would risk spinal disorders from corsets, chronic foot pain and arch trauma from high-heels, and submit to a constant preoccupation of worry over men’s approval of clothing appropriateness. Fashions play such an integral role in how we judge one another – how much money we have, what music we listen to, how much education we have received – that any gender-bending fashions  exhibited by women are at best taboo, and at worst, unattractive to men (the alleged Ultimate Woman’s Worry). In many societies, gender is not considered a part of nature, but rather learned, acquired, or earned as a rite of passage. In some tribal communities, acquiring gender status represents maturity and responsibility. There is an unspoken agreement between American men and women that women will fashion their clothing and styles as part of a system that favors men. In part this system favors men simply by distinguishing a class apart from men, requiring someone to exist on the outside of an established social norm. John Lorber puts it best: â€Å"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at† (Lorber 46). In a society where many women still do not recognize the inequalities of genderization, the pervasiveness of gender roles in America remains perpetuated and profound. Works Cited Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: Viking Press, Reprint edition, January 1995 Finkelstein, Joanne. After A Fashion. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996. Lorber, Judith. â€Å"Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender†. Paradoxes of Gender. New York: Yale University Press, 1994. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Economical Correlations Concerning Business Cycle Instability Free Essay Example, 4750 words

The government expenditure during a recession does not decline. This is due to the inertia in government budgeting and spending process instead of financial activism. Net exports are that export-import increases during the recession. Domestic firms failing to experience sufficient demand in the indigenous market opt for selling the product abroad. If successful, it brings a shy of relief to the economy. So, if Y represents the GDP, then Y = C+I+G+NX, where C stands for consumption expenditure, I for investment expenditure and G for government expenditures respectively. Then it has been analyzed till now that during a typical business cycle, which is a continuation of expansion and recession leading to crest and trough respectively. Consumption rises during expansion and reaches a peak before declining towards the trough. The investment follows the similar route and NX behaves oppositely to C and I. Since C and I are the main building blocks of GDP, the GDP as a whole expands during expansion reaches the peak and then experiences the recession to reach the trough. It is interesting to note that even if consumption expenditures experiences positive growth during the recession, due to the assured decline in investment during the recession, GDP always declines. We will write a custom essay sample on Economical Correlations Concerning Business Cycle Instability or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page