Life Sized Barbie Dolls Hit the Runway

In 1959, she was introduced by Mattel as "the teenage fashion model," and today she is still posing as an unrealistic role model for young girls.

Life-sized Barbie dolls fashioned designers' new product on Saturday in New York's Bryant Park for an audience teeming with impressionable young girls. Among the designers represented were Bob Mackie, Diane Von Furstenberg and Peter Som, according to the Los Angeles Times. The show was reported to be the most popular event of the Mercedes-Benz fashion week by the Metropolitan.

This idealized feminine figure, with real life proportions 36-18-33, has been the source of social controversy since her first runway walk in 1959. Adorned in a black and white zigzag swimsuit, she quickly became the role model for girls nationwide at the original New York Toy Fair. This doll has been setting an example for the type of woman young girls strive to become for the last 50 years.

The impractical figure of Barbie imposes unrealistic standards for what a woman's body should look like. This toy impresses women at a young age with the idea that this is beautiful; impossibly thin, blonde and big busted. After all that women have gone through to attain equal status in society, we are still looking to Barbie to tell us how we should look. If she were not still the subject of such idolatry, the fashion show may have had a very different turnout.