All Mermaids have Tails

Everyone knows Barbie.  Her voluminous blonde hair, cunning aqua eyes, and thin figure make her the epitome of beauty and sex appeal in America.  Her name has become synonymous with good-looking; heck, if someone told me I looked like a Barbie doll, it’d probably make my day.  How could it not when I have been shown that models that resemble Barbie (for example, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid) can make millions of dollars just because of their looks? 

Gigi Hadid

 

Kendall Jenner

  

 

 Society has accepted the Barbie as the standard for beauty, and her impossibly unattainable measurements of “a thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist (354)” play on the insecurities of young women to maintain the competition that exists among them to achieve male approval and adoration.  After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that any wealthy man must be in want of a wife, right?

  However, once upon a time, Barbie was seen as an element of the feminist movement.  Her rebelliously scandalous clothing and independent career paths made her the model liberated woman.  Her mere existence was a visual rhetoric against the idea that women had to be complacent, casserole-baking, apron-wearing mothers. 

 

 Barbie was successful in contributing to the destruction of the image of women as wives and mothers, but her oversexualized nature gave way to sexism.  Men manipulated her empowering stance as a beauty icon, and turned her into a standard to be followed.  Today, the feminist movement is working to reverse the damage these expectations have inflicted on women (eating disorders and self-loathing) by drilling one ideal: equality is derived from the freedom of choice.  Girls today are encouraged to be whatever makes them happy, whether that be a stripper, housewife, or astronaut, it is their choice, and whatever they choose does not make them any less powerful as a woman.  If you want to be a porn star, you are no less worthy of respect than Hilary Clinton.  It’s 2016, girls, anyone who tells you to adhere to certain standards must be seeing purple elephants, because women today are saying NO to traditional guidelines for beauty.  Ashley Graham was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Madeline Stuart walked the runway during New York fashion week, and Alicia Keys is leading the no make-up movement. 

Madeline Stuart, model with down syndrome, on the runway

 

Curvy model Ashley Graham

Alicia Keys with no make up

Change is in motion, and beauty is no longer exclusively defined by long hair, tiny waists, and big breasts.  Mattel has even acknowledged this change by producing a new line of Barbies that more realistically represent women’s various body types.  Jesus may have made all of us different, but he made all of us beautiful. 

 

 

 

 

Today, feminists strive to create a society in which women of all sizes, skin colors, and professions are viewed as equally feminine and beautiful.