When I was 8 or so, a relative gave me a huge pink plastic box full of barbies and barbie accessories. I hadn't asked for it, and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, but I said thanks and tried my hand at playing with barbies, because that's what was expected of me. After that, I kept receiving dolls as gifts--plastic dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls on stands, dolls in cases. I tried playing with all of them, because that's what I was supposed to do. I never got it, and I learned that I was abnormal because I didn't really like dolls.
What we tacitly expect of kids does shape them, to an extent.
It absolutely does. That feeling of abnormality is one of the things that helped push me into tech--I wasn't normal, so I went to a place where I hid my non-normalness in a way I never could (so thought my 15-year-old self) from real people.
Great end result for me, but painful at the time. I'm looking forward to the day when tech isn't something girls like me get punted into by accident.
Not if they never find out that there exist things called "barbies". We never introduced our girls to barbies or anything -- only cars, legos, etc. etc. and they're more than happy with them.
I think barbies dolls should be outright banned. Why're we teaching our children to worry about their looks at such a young age? That's what barbie dolls are -- "pretty woman", woman with obnoxiously pretty dresses, lipsticks, etc. etc. Why're we normalizing that kind of behavior for children?
Maybe Barbie doesn't teach them to worry about looks, but lets them relax about it? Barbie is pretty, after all. Like boys playing with batman figurines, they have a powerful actor that can do anything they want.
I don't want to defend them. I always chided my sister for playing with barbies, but she enjoyed it. She grew up to be a normal, non-pink woman with a serious occupation, so the damage from playing with barbies seems to have been limited.
