Barbie to appear in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition

[Gravekeeper]

so, should the argument have been "man her body fucks up kids images of themselves", or should it have been "man this might encourage kids to pick up sports illustrated swimsuit issue".

That's irrelevant, I brought up the body image problem and you responded to it by saying it was "just a doll", then saying Monster High is worse and then put forth that they don't make chunkier dolls due to joint issues. When they clearly do.

Thus that was the topic. You can't retroactively change the topic when you willingly engaged in it.

also, barbies are low-range for what you can buy in a store (12-30 bucks for the kids ones, same as bratz, mh etc), you don't get into the 50$+ range until you start getting into massive accesssories, or adult collector dolls like the holiday sets.

Low range Barbies are around $16-20 on average. A GI Joe is around $8-10. I price checked before I opened my mouth. -.-

and no, you keep missing the point of the joint issue. GI Joes with the limited articulation you posted are also shitty as fuck posers and have the odd triangle-shape torso, like a barbie. you are validating what i'm saying.

I didn't even post any GI Joes ( and Papa Munster is incredibly disturbing. Why does that exist? >.> ). I recognize #4, I use to have him ( Cobra Viper. 12 inch Snake Eyes needed something to pummel ). But he's from the 90s when there was a a brief relaunch of the 12 inch figures. Which were, yeah, basically just a standard male doll model they put military clothes on and gave light up weapons too. They didn't want to commit to any custom designs.

The modern 12 inch figures are beefier in the limbs and less so in the chest. A tad more balanced out bulk wise. But they're a custom body now.

that the more joints the chunkier (and wonkier) things are made, the less joints the skinnier.

What? You posted a 4 paragraph thesis with image references arguing that limbs had to be thin for ball joints otherwise range of motion would be grievously affected. Not that more joints = chunky. Less joints = skinny.

I argued that there were plenty of dolls and figures that were chunkier than Barbie or Anorexia High that were not meaningfully affected by the extra bulk ( Hell, the Emme doll was made specifically to spite Barbie ). Thus there is no reason for Mattel to keep Barbie's mutant stick beast figure especially given the ever increasing criticism they're facing.

And this it seems especially tone deaf for them to go to SI and declare hater's gonna hate and Barbie's mutant stick beast figure is just her being herself and we should all celebrate her individuality.

[siead_lietrathua]

Did you miss the part where research has shown a link between shit like Barbie and body image / self esteem problem in children? Or would you like to discuss how half of 3-6 year olds worry about being too fat and 90% of all eating disorders are females age 12-25? >.>

Or how about the Fiji Effect? When TV was introduced to Nadoga in 1995 in the span of 3 years they went from literally never have a case of an eating disorder amongst the population, to 74% of adolescent girls reporting they felt too fat and 69% reporting dieting.

Its a serious problem and it needs addressing.

if you really expect that only the dolls and toys and images and TV are to blame, ok. i prefer to ask why parents are letting their kids play with/ read/ watch things outside their age range.
it's like parents bitching that their 5 year old may have picked up bad language from a pg13 movie. or the parents that buy their kids GTA5 and then freak out about the violence in it affecting their kids.
no shit, you shouldn't have got it for them!
a three year old with barbies? an age where they will constantly be losing or breaking the pieces for them? wow. there are dolls actually ment for that age group. just cuz your kid asks for something doesn't mean you have to give it to them. (and just because it says 3+ on the box doesn't mean it's designed for them. it just means they won't kill themselves using it)

you regulate what TV your kid watches, don't use it as a babysitter. you regulate what your kids read. don't go handing them books and comics for teenagers. you regulate what toys they play with. if research shows that XYZ effects a kid's mentality in a certain age range, you don't buy it for them!

seriously, a parent controls a child's world until they hit school and beyond.

[siead_lietrathua]

Furthermore, you are approaching this topic as an adult doll collector. Adult doll collector's are not who we are discussing...

you brought kids and body shape into it though... before that it was about the doll being in SI. which is an adult media. so, should the argument have been "man her body fucks up kids images of themselves", or should it have been "man this might encourage kids to pick up sports illustrated swimsuit issue".


also, barbies are low-range for what you can buy in a store (12-30 bucks for the kids ones, same as bratz, mh etc), you don't get into the 50$+ range until you start getting into massive accesssories, or adult collector dolls like the holiday sets.

and no, you keep missing the point of the joint issue. GI Joes with the limited articulation you posted are also shitty as fuck posers and have the odd triangle-shape torso, like a barbie. you are validating what i'm saying. that the more joints the chunkier (and wonkier) things are made, the less joints the skinnier.
all male figures here to show you (#3, 4, 5 on the image show all the joints). the papa munster on the end with the more joints, has a more realistic and less triangle shaped body. the ones in the middle have less joints and are more triangle shaped, and would have the same posing issues as a barbie does. the only small advantage a barbie would have is that her elbow, in some models, is on a post instead of hinging the two parts together. it won't allow the elbow to bend further, it just allows forward rotation.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1r38b50hSr...es-Set%2B1.jpg

[Gravekeeper]

Are we going to insist cartoon characters be realistically drawn, too? It's the same thing: stylized, rather than realistic, body.

Did you miss the part where research has shown a link between shit like Barbie and body image / self esteem problem in children? Or would you like to discuss how half of 3-6 year olds worry about being too fat and 90% of all eating disorders are females age 12-25? >.>

Or how about the Fiji Effect? When TV was introduced to Nadoga in 1995 in the span of 3 years they went from literally never have a case of an eating disorder amongst the population, to 74% of adolescent girls reporting they felt too fat and 69% reporting dieting.

Its a serious problem and it needs addressing.

[Kheldarson]

Are we going to insist cartoon characters be realistically drawn, too? It's the same thing: stylized, rather than realistic, body.

Well, given the debate in another thread about the PowerPuff Girls, maybe we should sometimes. If there were more normal women portrayed in media, then the stylistic woman (like Barbie) would stand out as stylized rather than the standard portrayal.

[HYHYBT]

Are we going to insist cartoon characters be realistically drawn, too? It's the same thing: stylized, rather than realistic, body.

[Gravekeeper]

i'm not complaining about it. i'm explaining WHY they are skinny.

And I'm saying they don't need to be super skinny for ball jointing. That's one of the biggest advantages of a ball joint over a hinge joint.

i'll take that same image you posted and explain what i did to it.

I know what they did too it. I don't post in-depth on a topic I don't research or have experience with. I likewise have figures of a bulkier nature that have no issues with said ball joints, hence I am arguing otherwise.

for fun, i also snagged the image of the barbie someone made with realistic porportions.

Yes, I've seen that. Seeing as that is literally the first image that comes up when you research this topic. Also the point of that was just to show the problem with Barbie's dimensions. Not to re-engineer the entire thing. So no "excuse" needs to be made.

also, GI Joes have way more complicated jointing then a barbie, even the fashinonista ones. modern GI Joes, so common i can get them in bulk at thrift shops, have tons of joints. in their arms alone there is a shoulder, upper arm, double elbows, forearm joint, wrist, and sometimes hand joints.

Er, no. What modern GI Joe has over Fashionista Barbie is a ball hinged shoulder, double hinged knees and ball hinged ankles for epic action poses. The latter two only appearing on the higher quality figures. Otherwise the points of articulation are very similar if not lesser than a Barbie Fashionista on the smaller figures.

edit: if you're gonna argue that a low-price fashion doll and action figure have the same level of jointing, you are very wrong.

You realize a Barbie doll costs twice as much as GI Joe, right?

and i'm sorry but in the case of the OP, i think we should be more worried about who lets their kid read the swimsuit edition more than that barbie would be in it if we're gonna worry about kids in this particular case.

But that's not what we were discussing. We were discussing the effect of Barbie on the body image of children. I pointed out this could be fixed very easily by Mattel and has been fixed by other doll companies. You deflected this by saying Monster High is worse. I argued that the point is not that there's something out there worse than this. Especially given Barbie is the #1 best seller.

You then began this odd argument about how range of motion = skinny and comparing range of motion to articulation when they are not the same thing. Now you've undermined the entirety of your own argument by using GI Joe as an example.

Furthermore, you are approaching this topic as an adult doll collector. Adult doll collector's are not who we are discussing. You're old enough to know Barbie's body dimensions are bullshit. The problem is not you and Barbie, the problem is Barbie and your 5 year old daughter. For her, Barbie is an expectation and goal for what she thinks/hopes she will grow up into and look like. When in fact Barbie is an unobtainable goal.

That is the problem.

[siead_lietrathua]

posted seperate on purpose, since i'm more than well aware the jointing thing is a tangent:

we can't always use "think of the kids" as a valid argument. when dealing with adult oriented magazines, books, movies or etc we need to understand that invisible barrier between "this is for adult" and "this is for kids".

so yes, while barbie is a toy marketed to both child and adult collectors, the article is about her being in sports illustrated swimsuit edition. a magazine editon that is not only adult-targeted, but often joked about as being nothing more than wank-fodder. the "think of the kids" argument rings a bit false when it's targeted towards barbie's body INSTEAD of targeting the idea that having a toy in the magazine might encourage someone below it's readership age to try and buy it.

kids seeing an unrealistic toy, and kids seeing photo-shopped half naked adults are two different ballgames.

[siead_lietrathua]

I honestly don't understand exactly what or why you're arguing here...

well, first i was just talking about how she's not the weirdest shape body out there, then i was explaining why modern versions have skinny limbs for the jointing. which, in short, is that thin wires need thin vinyl, and ball joints need thinning around the joint areas to allow limbs to fold back properly.

i'm not complaining about it. i'm explaining WHY they are skinny.

but, rather than reiterating, i'll take that same image you posted and explain what i did to it.
the green parts are where the joints sit. in the shoulders, wide pegs fit into the body cavity. in the hips, balls attached to the torso sink into cups inside the legs (in most dolls, some have elastic strung through the hips to allow more motion). it's why you need wide shoulders, but hips can be thinner if need be.
the black and red lines are where you would widen out the torso and limbs on one side, to make them more naturally proportioned. since the doll doesn't have the ability to lift it's arms or legs out to the side, the blue spots are where the dolls would rub against itself/ any clothes they wear. which is a bad thing in a fashion doll. soft vinyl can wear, and stain, stick together if it gets hot enough, all kinds of unpleasantness.
i didn't draw in the wires, but they are not thick at all, and that extra few MM of vinyl means needing thicker wire, that still may have posing issues, or a higher risk of snapped-wire from the stress.

for fun, i also snagged the image of the barbie someone made with realistic porportions. you can see how the arms are held out a bit to keep the hands from hitting the body, and how they really widened the hips out so that her legs wouldn't rub on each other. and, all it's joints are limited. like, the neck joint bothers me. she wouldn't be able to look up or down, just turn side to side. thou, granted, she's just a 3d print. but i've seen some crazy 3d print dolls before with astounding articulation, so it's not really an excuse.
http://www.3ders.org/articles/201307...ual-woman.html



also, GI Joes have way more complicated jointing then a barbie, even the fashinonista ones. modern GI Joes, so common i can get them in bulk at thrift shops, have tons of joints. in their arms alone there is a shoulder, upper arm, double elbows, forearm joint, wrist, and sometimes hand joints.
fashinonistas have a shoulder, elbow, wrist. and those are set up as post-and-ball. any extra motion of the post in the socket is what seems to give them a greater range, but it's flawed because they can't bend their elbow as much, the arm itself gets in the way.
edit: if you're gonna argue that a low-price fashion doll and action figure have the same level of jointing, you are very wrong.


and i'm sorry but in the case of the OP, i think we should be more worried about who lets their kid read the swimsuit edition more than that barbie would be in it if we're gonna worry about kids in this particular case.

[Gravekeeper]

Here's the original Barbie in unpleasant clinical detail. She didn't move a hell of a lot.

I honestly don't understand exactly what or why you're arguing here. You would have to bulk up a doll considerably before the joints really began to suffer movement limitations. 12 inch GI Joe's use a similar design to modern Barbie without any issues and they're certainly beefier. So I don't know what sort of standard you're trying to hold them too but it seems absurdly high given that we're talking about Barbie dolls.

Additionally, your complaint about more joints in general looking bad. That's a direct trade off for range of movement. Limb thickness doesn't have much to do with it. Chest thickness sure, but Bodybuilder Bob isn't going to be as flexible as Yoga Teacher Barbie in real life either. So it doesn't make sense to level that complaint against a doll.

Besides, unless you're planning to strut the dolls around naked all the time the appearance of the joints isn't a huge issue. It certainly isn't one for Barbie, the best selling doll in the entire world. The less seams you have from joints, the more realistic it looks, sure, but the less realistic its posability becomes. Its much preferable for the doll to be able to assume more life like poses.

Putting this strange argument aside, the original point of this entire cafuffle is that Barbie harms the body image of young girls and there's no reason for it. I mean when Lara Croft dolls have more realistic body proportions than the modern Barbie doll there's a serious problem going on here.

Barbie would barely lose any range of movement if she had more realistic proportions and the only area she'd really lose a little range would be the chest. That's a pretty negligible trade off for stopping her from psychologically damaging children don't you think? >.>

[siead_lietrathua]

- At least you can't claim that SI is ageist - the cover model for their current swimsuit issue is 55 years old.

ok... that was a good one.

[wolfie]

A few things I'd like to point out:
- Barbie was inspired by an "adult novelty" doll.
- Barbie and Ken got their names from the developer's children. Sort of puts a different twist on their relationship.
- At least you can't claim that SI is ageist - the cover model for their current swimsuit issue is 55 years old.

[siead_lietrathua]

male dolls have the same issue by the way. wither you need to sock in a ton of joints, or thin them out. but fashion dolls also have the bane of having to look good, so the more joints you sock in the worse they look as a fashion doll.
it doesn't matter how distorted a GI Joe looks so long as he can pose well.
here's a male body to show what i mean. i can't remember if he's obistu or volks. i wanna say obitsu.


and this is a volks with a massive amount of jointing. 4 torso pieces alone.
http://www.volksusa.com/2227ne0009.html

[siead_lietrathua]

for referance for everyone, this is the original barbie
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/barbie/

which really is not that off proportion from other modern dolls. her arms and legs are thin, sure, but again it's a fairly thin wire that has to bend a thick vinyl skin. broken-leg-wires is a bane with barbies and a big reason why i don't use them. having to frig with the wire inside a thicker base would be that much worse.
think of it like artificial flowers. really easy to bend the individual stems on the skinny ones but harder to bend the thicker stems cuz of all the tape.

and i never said ball joints didn't make motion better.... i said that you need thin limbs for a decent range of motion, or add in extra joints. the obitsu i showed not only has elbows and wrists, they have a good rotating shoulder and a second joint in their upper arm to rotate the arm around that way, and they are still a pretty limited mortion. i used to have an obitsu, and the biggest bane was, if you tried to force an pose the wrong way, their joints would pop apart. huuge pain. even this more realistic body will have motion issues because of how her hip joint comes down so low on the legs.
http://www.monkeydepot.com/Boxed_Fig..._p/plb0007.htm

it's worse with double-jointed dolls, where having too thick of a limb can prevent kneeling. i found a blog with a liv doll in various poses, one of the barbie-price range dolls with double-joint legs. you can see how, even with the better jointing system, because her legs are too thick around the joints she can't kneel fully (by which i mean butt to heels of feet).
http://vansdolltreasures.blogspot.ca...to-barbie.html


when you get to torso joints, it gets even more tricky. if you don't have a slimmer middle piece than the waist and bust joint it can limit posing quite a bit. granted, the example i'm posting is a much larger scale doll, but the issue is the same. without her thinner middle i would never be able to get this much of a slouch. she also has a large range of side-to-side movement.

[Gravekeeper]

Human "ball joints" in the pelvis consist of skeletal parts. Unless you design a Barbie doll with flesh to cover the much thinner ball joints, no, it's not the same. In fact, the fact that Barbie dolls resemble skeletons is probably more realistic joint-wise than if they didn't.

I didn't say it was anatomically correct. I said it was more realistic. As in it offers a range of motion closer to the human body. We're not going to get a super 100% realistic fashion doll with working musculature and real skin and flesh covering its joints. If we had that kind of technology Barbie would sure as hell be the last place it got applied.

Also, Barbie did not resemble a skeleton. The original Barbie hip joints were basically just a stick nailed to a block with another pyramid that had vague breast lumps stuck to the top of that. Her legs went forward and back, period. So I don't know what you're on about. Especially since Barbie has used ball joint hips for a couple of decades now.

This is why Jem always stomped Barbie's ass when I was staying at my cousin's place. Because Jem had ball joint hips before they became the norm for Barbie. So she was capable of a much wider variety of Kung Fu.

Barbie's only two moves were front kick and Heil Hitler.