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Multilating Barbie- why?

Phex: Dorset Doom

23:28 / 24.12.05

According to this article researchers from the University of Bath (U.K) have found that little girls (composed of sugar and/or spice, and everything nice) are actually creepier than previously thought, and an innocent blonde airhead is suffering as a result- 'removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving', Abu Gharib stuff, the kind of thing in Police dramas that gets the detectives saying 'the killer fancied himself as an artist... we're dealing with one sick son of a bitch'.
A study of branding involving a hundred children revealed that of all the brands presented to the participants, Barbie provoked the strongest reaction: 'rejection, hatred and violence'. "The meaning of 'Barbie' went beyond an expressed antipathy; actual physical violence and torture towards the doll was repeatedly reported, quite gleefully, across age, school and gender,"- says one of the researchers.
Now, as a boy I don't remember willfully damaging any my toys or my sister's, and as far as I know neither of my sisters have ever broken any of their toys on purpose. Once we grew out of toys they were just put into a box in the attic, so this isn't a behaviour I can really understand.
So what are the long-term implications of this exactly? Multilating toys is something that children grow out of, sure, but the joy expressed by the children in the study is likely to have lasting effects if, at an early and impressionable age, a child comes to associate fun with violence. Also, what long-term effects is this factor going to have to Barbie as a brand image? She's never been popular with feminists- referring to a girl as a 'barbie doll' is almost as bad as calling her a slut- so does this strike anyone as a rejection of the values associated with Barbie as opposed to something more sinister?

Disco is My Class War

02:33 / 25.12.05

I read the article last week, and I think it's great. I particularly liked what the researcher said about the mutilations being directed at how plastic and mass produced Barbie is. It sa kind of proto-feminist behaviour (maybe?) but also against the shallowness of mechanical reproduction. Yay kids.

(This is my post Xmas dinner, champagne and too much turkey opinion. I may return and offer a more considered, less drunk view later.)

20:36 / 25.12.05

Weird, quite weird...

Yeah, I can see all this barbie-mutilation as proto-feminism (rejecting a stupid, plastic, blond bombshell). Can also think it’s a symbol for growing up – rejecting their barbies and turning to theirs Diva Bratz (a cooler teenage doll, with manga-eyes and extreme make up). Could even conceive it as a manifest against capitalism (Barbie is a symbol as much as Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald’s) but it’s so strange imagine little girls doing all this damage. Little boys usually do that (I shaved my GI Joe when I was 9), not girls…

Maybe this is a signal that next generation women will be bolder than any other.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:58 / 25.12.05

It doesn't seem strange to me at all. I used to inflict all manner of harm on Ballerina Sindy (Barbie's less popular opposite number), although I stopped short of microwaving her. (Sindy spent a lot of time tied to things, IIRC, when she wasn't henpecking poor old Action Man*.) I remember other girls of my own age shearing and otherwise mutilating their fashion dolls in pretty much the ways described above--the jumble sales of my youth were always full of one-legged Barbies and Barbie clones, their golden tresses reduced to a few sad clumps. I don't think this is a new thing at all.

*Who frequently used to end up in Sindy's tutu.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:35 / 26.12.05

Reminds me of one of the vignettes in a Margaret Atwood story - "The Female Body" - wherein a mother and a father are arguing over their daughter's Barbie. He maintains that it'll only cultivate unreal expectations, et cetera. Right up until Barbie comes flying down the stairs into a potted plant, covered in purple tattoos with her hair shaved off.

From the other side of the coin, when I was little my Superman and Batman toys got a bit queer in between missions to save the world from the latest apocalypse...

Tryphena Absent

00:27 / 27.12.05

This isn't positive. Not because it's an act of vandalism but because this aggression is actually buying into a social trend. The bratz dolls look like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. If anything they're less realistic, more representative of a culture where our stars have heads too big for their bodies because they're starving themselves. The bratz dolls look like Renee Zellweger and Lindsay Lohan, Barbie looks more like Joan Collins and this is really only about rejection of one trend for another.

When I was a kid this other girl turned to me and explained that when she was 12 she was going to stop reading Bunty and start reading Just Seventeen... because she was 12 you see. This just seems like another example of that to me. "I'm too old for Barbie now and I have to make that clear by somehow getting rid of Barbie. My parents won't let me throw her away you see and when people come over I'm embarrassed by her".

14:15 / 27.12.05

But it's not like that girl in your example burned the magazine. She simply traded one magazine for another. This mutilation is a bit more "extreme".

I don't think this mutilation is new or dangerous. To the best of my knowledge, most children inflict "pain" upon their toys to one degree or another.

When my cousin was a kid, the big thing was those Troll dolls, you know the ones with the stupid hair and plastic faces. Anyway, my cousin was obsessed with undressing her dolls by any means necessary, and that includes cutting the clothes off. Also, some of the Troll dolls required drastic haircuts. Nobody thought this was strange in our family. It was somewhat amusing.

Who hasn't gone to the top of the stairs and flung G.I. Joe down the staircase? Who hasn't thrown Spider-man from the window of the second-storey bedroom?

P. Horus Rhacoid

22:43 / 27.12.05

I thought this was pretty interesting:

Whilst for an adult the delight the child felt in breaking, mutilating and torturing their dolls is deeply disturbing, from the child's point of view they were simply being imaginative in disposing of an excessive commodity in the same way as one might crush cans for recycling.

Because my initial reaction was something akin to "that's sorta cool, but fucked up." Cool because, you know, it's Barbie, but fucked up because kids are mutilating things that are supposed to represent human beings.

But I think the quote above says something else: it seems like those girls who are mutilating barbies (in the more violent manners, I think, eg burning- cutting hair etc seems different) don't even see a correlation between Barbies and people, ie at a certain age Barbie ceases to be a representation of a human being and becomes simply a piece of plastic. My point being, is Barbie eventually rejected precisely because she isn't a realistic representation of a human being, but is close enough to be- putting on a pretense, I guess?

The popularity of Bratz dolls seems to contradict this, because they're obviously much, much less realistic than even Barbies, or they've struck me as such the few times I've seen them. I wonder if that's part of why they're accepted, though? Because they're so far from realistic, I'm not sure how much pressure they put on girls to change the way they look. I may be wildly underestimating how impressionable young girls are, never having been one myself.

Nina, is your objection that it seems that young girls are abandoning one unrealistic construction of women for another?

Disco is My Class War

09:48 / 28.12.05

I don't know that I would assume all children would consider a Barbie doll or toy a proper representation of a human being, at any stage. Children don't necessarily have an inbuilt humanist care for human life itself, let alone the plasticated fantasy 'representation' of Barbie or the symbol of whoever a child might desire/identify with/hate. I too think mutilation of Barbie dolls has probably gone on forever.... Isn't this also because after a while, Barbie gets very boring? What else is there to do with her other than destroy her? Sure, exchange her for another, cooler doll -- which one will eventually destroy anyhow.

I also thought the researcher claimed boys weren't mutilating their GI Joe dolls. What do people make of this?

Phex: Dorset Doom

03:30 / 29.12.05

Well G.I Joe/Action Man is a soldier, playing with a soldier means putting them into violent situations in which maybe they get a leg pulled out of those little plastic sockets (or even like Mr. Mcbee's Action Man: shaved). Barbie is a 'regular' girl, she drives her pink car around and lives in her dream house. Think of it this way: if you were writing an episode of 24 you could put in a scene where Jack Bauer (our Action Man) gets shot or tortured (even shaved), if you put the same scenario into an episode of Desperate Housewives that'd be pretty messed up. That's what children do when they play, make little stories.
Now, I'm not arguing that even very young people correlate their toys with real people, they don't. But what was worrying to me about the article was the 'rehearsal' of torture onto a representation (arguably, a simulacrum) of a human being. Remember how soldiers were once trained to shoot at targets which were basically circles, and during World War 2 (I think) they often found that conscripted soldiers were unwilling to target enemy soldiers; they'd fire their guns but just as supressing fire until another soldier did what they couldn't. To counter this the U.S army replaced their targets with that familiar picture of a generic enemy soldier and suddenly, by Vietnam, soldiers were shooting to kill.
Maybe the same thing applies here. Obviously not every person who cuts up a barbie doll is going to become a torturer (I'd be interesting in knowing the state of Lynndie England's barbies...) but the idea that when somebody is no longer of any use to you there is carte blance to do whatever you want to them motivates everything from corporate layoffs to marital infedelity. If a person's experience with this feeling when they are young is positive then this behaviour is likely to be repeated when they grow up, right?

08:11 / 29.12.05

I'd rather we put our efforts into responding appropriately when children abuse each other, or pets or other small animals, than worrying whether there's some deep meaning in their destroying unwanted toys. I'm quite sure Nina hit the nail on the head, Barbie is embarrassing once one is too grown-up for her. I suspect boys just forget about their toys when they no longer interest them and that the nostalgia noted was seen only when they were made consider the old toy.

the idea that when somebody is no longer of any use to you there is carte blance to do whatever you want to them motivates everything from corporate layoffs to marital infedelity. If a person's experience with this feeling when they are young is positive then this behaviour is likely to be repeated when they grow up, right?

This is something very different. I agree that, to the extent it's not merely a matter of showing Mum just how completely one is finished with Barbie (no implication of this being the end of a relationship), that might be what is going on. In that case the abuse is clearly intended to show everyone that a reconciliation is out of the question. Shouldn't people end a relationship like that, Phex?

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:28 / 29.12.05

Of course a person, if they are in a unsatisfying relationship, should end it. What they shouldn't do is go out to deliberately harm (emotionally, that is) the person they are breaking up from. Telling them you don't want to see them is enough; sleeping with other people, posting 'candid' pictures of them on the internet, throwing all of their stuff onto the lawn may be cathartic in the short term but it'll end up with the person saying 'wow, I'm really an asshole/bitch'. The link I was trying to make here is that when a child's relationship with one of their toys ends the healthy thing to do would be to put it in a box and not play with it again.
Now, as you're probably thinking, both examples hinge on the feelings of the breaker-upper/child being relatively weak: 'I don't think this is working out' basically. Of course if a person wants to break up with somebody who's an abusive shit then they are justified in doing something a bit more drastic. When it comes to an inaminate (sp?) lump of plastic , even one that represents a human being, why go to such extreme measures to show your rejection?

03:07 / 30.12.05

Hmmm. I know we mutilated our Barbies and baby dolls....I think it was at least sometimes kind of an extension of dressing them up. We would just get the urge to give them a bath and wash their hair. And then their heads would get all full of water from the little pin holes... And then you'd have to pop the head off to get the water out... And then you'd say, well this doll's kind of messed up already. Let's cut the hair! And then the head would, eventually, just start coming off without any effort and... eventually it just is a lump of plastic; it's not invested with human-ness at all.

My kids also did the Barbie mutilation thing in a big way. They had a newsletter that they wrote out on Barbie-sized paper demanding "torso rights," because the heads and limbs tended to lord it over the torsos. I don't know--I found it pretty hilarious. And my kids are truly fine fine people. Partly, I think they especially attacked the Barbies because they had so many. I think we had something like 32 dolls, between the two of them? And there's something terrifyingly Rockette about them.

When I think back to my own feelings about Barbies, I know that at some point they kind of freaked me out. They had those bizarrely mature bodies, with the huge nipple-less breasts and no genitals and "mattell" stamped across the butt, and the limbs that only moved in limited ways (knees bent, eventually, but not on the oldest Barbies), and the legs didn't, for example, spread. (Hmmm, wonder why....) And, of course, the high heel feet. I really believe that, even as a child, that stuff kind of freaked me out, bothered me. I never liked Barbies that well. And their hair would eventually get so ratty, you'd just have to cut it, and then we'd give them tattoos, and...

So, I don't know, I just think that linking this kind of activity to violence against real humans feels like a stretch. And the tone of shock I'm hearing here is especially surprising: "boys" games direct them to virtually killing on a regular basis: GI Joe is a soldier, for chrissake, and he's got nothing on many video games targeted at young boys! So this shock seems to have more to do with gender stereotypes about girls than actual concern for their mental health.

wembley can change in 28 days

09:40 / 30.12.05

My name is wembley, and I am a girl who mutilated. On one hand, it was my brother who really tore apart my Barbie dolls, but I was pretty ruthless with old, falling-apart GI Joes, a magnifying glass, and a sunny day. I hated Barbie - loathed it. What on earth kind of enjoyment are you supposed to get from the permanently-on-her-toes, same-as-ALL-the-others, drives-a-pink-goddamn-car doll? Too big to involve in war with GI Joes, too small to get attached to, and so utterly boring. What do you do? Play shopping?!? So naturally, when it came time that I was curious as to what would happen if I cut a doll's hair, Barbie was the obvious, expendable candidate. But the rare toys, the doll my mother made, the ones that were actually special, I'd get teary-eyed and nervous when my mom put them through the laundry. And books - never mutilated books.

But the thing about Barbie - and those heartless Cabbage Patch Kids (lord, how I begged for one all year and then never gave a toss about it) is that it's so cheap. It's the same. It's junk. Kids know it's junk. GI Joe dolls come apart after 100 or so parachute missions - everybody knows this - so who cares if you burn a hole through its torso, because you can always get another. The fact that they're human shaped just helps the imagination along, I think. It's not fun to burn books because you can't imagine them suffering - then you've just ruined a book. But for me, the idea would not be to inflict pain upon a doll, but to identify with it, make some kind of a swan song storyline around the doll, imagine that you're captured by pirates and they shave your head, etc. But the whole "I'm older now and I reject you, Barbie" thing I can't understand, because I hated that doll from the very beginning. I never understood the appeal, and I suspected that nobody actually enjoyed playing with Barbie dolls.

Incidentally, naked Barbie without her head always reminded me of a stretched pre-roast turkey.

11:44 / 30.12.05

for me, the idea would not be to inflict pain upon a doll, but to identify with it, make some kind of a swan song storyline around the doll, imagine that you're captured by pirates and they shave your head, etc.

I can identify with that. If I'd had a doll he or she would have spent a great deal of time in just such desperate situations, but I also know the whole "I'm older now and I reject you, Barbie" thing happens, from hearing about my niece growing out of Barbies and into Bratz, or whatever they're called. I don't think she's tortured her Barbies though. Barbies really are just an aggregate of femme symbols, aren't they, and from my mother's generation.

Tryphena Absent

12:02 / 30.12.05

The link I was trying to make here is that when a child's relationship with one of their toys ends the healthy thing to do would be to put it in a box and not play with it again.

I agree with alas' point to an extent. For instance all of the Ken/Tintin (male) dolls ended up wearing skirts rather than trousers and Barbie was generally dressed in trousers and a shirt. Linda who was a Zapf doll had a diamond painted on her forehead when I decided it would be cool if all humans were born with gemstones there but that's rather off the point.

The healthy thing would not be to put it in a box because actual aggressive mutilation is sometimes a child's way of expressing a change within themself or their perception of the outside world. That a child is sick of a doll does not necessarily mean they're bored of it. It can mean all kinds of things: 1)that Barbie does not represent them, 2)the recognition that toys are inanimate (I never quite got there), 3)that you can change the appearance of things and effect them on your own. So independence, self-image, differentiation, sentience. To express the dangers that are inherent in society towards a child (you-the mutilator) and to try to build up your fortress through rejection is hardly unusual though it might say a lot about your experiences as a child. Nevertheless this isn't a harmful thing to do, it's an intensely expressive thing and if it really is aggressive than it demonstrates anger at an ideal- I don't think that anger is directed at the image of the woman in society but rather more complex... an anger at being confined to a certain type of femininity possibly but that confinement is not to do with Barbie (I argue that Barbie is a feminist. She does everything as impractically as she wants, which for me indicates a freedom that many women do not have) or society, that's mummy and daddy.

Foust is SO authentic

05:57 / 01.01.06

Perhaps there is something of an uncanny valley difference between a barbie doll and a bratz doll. Maybe the barbie attempts to provoke a higher level of identification, and fails to do so. The bratz doll attempts less identification, and perhaps does not fail.

11:53 / 03.01.06

Well, the original link isn't working for me, so I can only comment based on what I've read in this thread.

I think attempts to call Barbie "mutilation" torture or any kind of proto-feminist statement is just adults projecting too much onto child play, particularly girls' play. When a little boy smashes up a radio he's showing mechanical interest - but when a little girl cuts up a Barbie, she's showing violence or iconic rejection?

Children are both more imaginative but also more literal than some adults suppose them to be. They may role-play with their toys but are usually still aware of the toys being "just" toys - with more sentiment attached to certain toys (like the dolls made by alas's mother). Destroying toys is usually a creative impulse, I would think. How is the head attached? What if you cut the hair? What if you switch the head with another doll head? If you cut into the leg, is it hollow or solid?

This may appear to appear be a rejection because, I suspect, younger kids are more invested in pure imaginative storytelling and/or role play with dolls - identifying with the doll, "I'm the princess," or "I'm the mommy, you be the baby." But kids grow out of that sort of play and they still have the dolls - but now they're into manipulating hair, outfits, and the doll's body. They no longer identify with the doll as a girl/princess - it's just a toy.

Some of you women who grew up in the 80s would remember a doll head that had hair coiled up inside the head, so that you could cut it and then pull more out. It was just a head, no body. It was the absolute coolest toy for girls around age 8 - girls that age being somewhat past the age of playing make-believe, and becoming more creative and manipulative in play. It was not any kind of commentary on girls' feelings about women, it was purely utilitarian in design - if you just wanted to play with the hair anyway, why have a body. And the hair was reusable so you didn't have to throw the doll away when you "mutilated" its hair.

Tryphena Absent

12:19 / 03.01.06

Well the article is about girls who showed a large amount of aggression and hatred towards Barbie, rather than girls who simply "mutilate" dolls. Generally I agree with you Ibis.

07:52 / 04.01.06

As the link to the article doesn't work, there are a few questions that I would like to first ask: How many children were surveyed? Did they come from single parent families? what was the ratio in sexes? What was the geographical scope?

When I was a child, we didn't mutilate barbie dolls, however I do remember cutting my sisters "my little pony" mane and tail. I decided that she needed a change. But felt quite upset as it looked rather ghastly afterwards. Also, I remember a friend, who was a good deal younger than me at the time, taking pleasure in drawing a picture of what she believed was her mother, and drawing female genitalia as the focal point, and then quickly drawing over it with harsh strokes. As she was mentioning this, she would smirk and quickly cover her mouth to stop herself from bursting into fits of laughter. Is there any difference between this and what these girls are doing to their barbie dolls? or is simply because barbie is a dual manifestation of opression, feminity that she represents women because in some shape or form, she exists as woman that generates this controversy? Times may have changed, but the process of identification of young girls hasn't. and this can be seen in an earlier comment on the Bratz doll. Young girls during childhood, to quote from Simone de Beauvoir, manifest themselves within the doll. They identify with it because it represents what they want to or will eventually become. Barbie held this role for quite a while.

So perhaps what we are seeing is a shift in the identification that young girls are seeking. The wholesome. middle class identification that "barbie" provided are obselete, and the streetwise, open-to-interpretation, if-you've-got-it-flaunt-it Bratz dolls have taken her place. They don't hate, but they certainly do reject her. the acts of violence come, it would seem, from from a lack of understanding of her role, what she represents.

17:35 / 04.01.06

I'm no psychologist, so what I'm about to say is merely a layman personal opinion.

I don't think it has anything with the dolls, specificaly. Kids just like to play with fire sometimes. I remember on time, when I was a little lad, that I had a wonderfull time melting my plastic toy cars. And I have no problem with cars whatsoever. Maybe young girls "mutilate" Barbies because that's the toys they have, that's the toys they are given...

17:33 / 04.02.06

I tied my GI Joe collection to the laundry line and shot them with a pellet gun. All for the sheer joy of blowing pieces off of something. I was not rejecting any ideals or social constructs. In fact, the GI amputees were not retired from duty at all. They recieved red model paint where their limbs used to be and became casualties in the field of battle.

At that stage I think every child experiments with destruction. Must it be foreshadowing some future psychosis? Maybe it's just fun to wreck stuff.

11:23 / 06.02.06

Playing with fire and blowing up stuff is cool (Yeah!). Or else we would not need to tell children not to do it in the first place.

03:22 / 14.02.06

I recently had a conversation with a female friend of mine who did this, her motivation was one purely of frustration. Apparently she wasn't allowed 'boy' toys and was only allowed barbie. She resented this and vented this frustration by destroying the doll.

I wonder how common a motivation is, considering the prevalence of gender segregation among younger children.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

19:54 / 14.02.06

Back when I was a lad I used to do odd things with my GI Joes. Never had sisters, so there were never any barbies. But I can remember the joy I felt when I discovered that a jewler's screwdriver, a hot glue gun, and a pair of pliers could turn my collection of some 100 action figures into thousands of different combinations, especially when I added things from my father's workshop onto them.

Mind that I DID tend to drill holes in some of them, or do atrocious things to them with belt sanders, hot glue guns, small power saws, and the like.

It wasn't so much about hurting them as it was making them more interesting. A plain looking GI Joe was boring. How could I make him cooler?

Now...mind you when we went over to my friend Kyle's house, and his little sister DID have a prodigious barbie collection, we mutilated the hell out of barbie dolls.

Like previous posters, I always found, even as a kid, the complete lack of genetalia on barbies to be disturbing. As I grew older I thought that barbie dolls should be shown covered in circuits since they were obviously either supposed to be robots or wearing some sort of cybernetic armor.

I used to try the magnifying glass trick on my GI Joes, but it never worked. I prefered a soldering iron, since that DID work.

00:39 / 17.02.06

This news story reeks of agenda. Are small children different somehow than they've ever been? I think not- at least for the last 30,000 years.

Humans agressive? Children agressive?

Sky is blue; film @ 11.

02:32 / 17.03.06

I recently read that a British university conducted a study that analyzed adolescents' responses to well-known brands. It showed as a side-discovery that there was a very "violent" response to the Barbie logo. Most of these adolescents questioned had mutilated their own Barbie (or their sisters'!)