house with his dark hair, chiseled features and tall, muscular frame, offers her a hand, and helps pull her out of the car. Despite what some people say, she stays with him. Even if he never makes enough money to buy his own house or car, and even if he never asks her to marry him, they make the perfect couple and so she’ll never let him go. He goes upstairs to take a shower for the PETA event they are attending that evening, and Barbie heads for the kitchen. She thinks about her life and how full it is.
She still gets fan mail from when she was in the spotlight: little girls, mostly, write to tell her how much they admire her, how beautiful she is, how lucky she is, and how they want to be just like her when they grow up. They don’t understand. The mail sits on the kitchen counter, but she doesn’t take the time to open it right now. Not now. She doesn’t want to read all the praise little girls have to give her, doesn’t want the pressure. Shaking, she opens the pantry and tears open a package of Ding Dongs, stuffs them into her mouth and goes back for more. She knows she can finish the whole box before Ken gets out of the shower, and throw it away without him noticing. Sometimes, though, she wishes he would notice. The water turns off. She wipes her face, and heads upstairs to change.
She looks at herself in the mirror. She is gorgeous with her long blonde hair and blue eyes. Her simple gown made of yellow satin clings perfectly to her supple bosoms and wraps around a tiny waist, leading to long, thin, toned legs. The spaghetti straps rest on her thin broad shoulders, showing slender, delicate, bronzed arms. Gorgeous. She looks at herself in the mirror while he waits to show her off. The perfect woman: proportioned, fit, classy, thin, thin. What he doesn’t notice: her softened teeth behind pretty pink lips, the tiny teeth imprints on two middle fingers of her right hand. Her esophagus burns inside her long, skinny neck. She flushes, opens the door and smiles a perfect smile.
“You finally ready?” He asks. “You look gorgeous.”
Ruth Handler may or may not have unwittingly started our obsession with our bodies, but we continue to perpetuate it. The blame does not lie solely with Handler, nor with men alone. Men too suffer and struggle with often times unrealistic physical standards set in place by the masses. We—women—are a part of the masses. We occasionally forget that we helped create the physically focused atmosphere in which we struggle to survive. Many of us criticize and ostracize other women who somehow manage to fit into the Barbie standard. We sometimes view them as bitches, as drug users, or as anorexics because otherwise