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by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

As a matter of principle my husband and I do not buy our girls Barbie dolls.

One we don’t want to have to buy the bedroom set and the kitchen set and the hundred other sets that go with the doll and secondly because we don’t want them to think that being blond and thin is an ideal to be emulated.

Besides there are several other for useful and skill building toys out there, which are better for them.

Barbie’s vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). If you scaled her up, her legs would be inordinately and disproportionately long. In 1965 Slumber Party Barbie came with a book entitled How to Lose Weight which advised: “Don’t eat.” The doll also came with pink bathroom scales reading 110lb, which would be around 35lbs underweight for a woman 5 feet 9 inches tall.

In July 1992 Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie, which spoke a number of phrases including “Will we ever have enough clothes?”, “I love shopping!”, and “Wanna have a pizza party?” In 1997 Barbie’s body mold was redesigned and given a wider waist, with Mattel saying that this would make the doll better suited to contemporary fashion designs.

I would imagine that there are a lot of ideas and concepts that children grow up with that foster this image of the ideal of beauty in the minds of impressionable children, but Barbie came to mind because it is a toy that children come into direct contact with, spend hours playing with and which has a very substantial impact on fertile minds.

I am not saying that no one should buy Barbie dolls, only that parents need to be aware of what their children learn and absorb while at play and if the toys that they buy their children are really good for them.

Luckily for us, when someone gifted our four year old a Barbie she lost interest in it fairly quickly, and reverted to her clay modeling which, although messier, is somehow more comforting to me!