There’s no realistic reason to read Yahoo! News. Yahoo! News is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to news sites, and its writers (all offense intended) suck at not only WRITING–which is kinda’ important if you’re only going to come across through a written article–but also reporting which, um, hate to break it to them, IS THEIR JOB. And I’m purposely overgeneralizing because I haven’t seen one writer who was actually worth reading. I mean, honestly people; do your job like it’s supposed to be done. I’d rather read a random North Korean news article on something that’s happening in the US than Yahoo! News.
I came across an article a day or two ago about a new type of doll called Lammily whose creator has big dreams of supplanting Barbie as a household doll. Capitalizing on the body-positive movement of 2014-15, Nickolay Lamm has put out a girl’s toy doll that imitates the average American girl. It even has the stick-on options of stretch marks, birth marks, etc…and she is a fair representation of what an actual teenager/early 20s woman looks like in America. It’s an awesome thought and product, and I really do hope it becomes popular.
But that’s still not the point of this post. If you go to the article and scroll all the way down you’ll see the comments. Most of them are (women) bashing on the idea of this doll and the fact that we’re even going through a body-identity crisis, which I find as hilarious and stupid as people believing that global warming isn’t a threat and the Holocaust didn’t happen. There is a ton of bullying that’s been happening for decades and fat-shaming is one of them.
Now, let me just say that there IS a limit between healthy chubby and unhealthy fat. I’m speaking about unfair bullying/shaming for the first one. If you’re overweight and it’s unhealthy, freaking do something about it. You don’t deserve to be part of the body-positive movement. For example, me. I’m 5’6 and 200 lbs…for a 23 year old female, that’s technically “obese”. HOWEVER, I don’t have any health issues because of it and I actually don’t really “look fat”. I just might have to run the mile in ten minutes instead of four and buy size 14 instead of 10. And each doctor’s visit I make confirms my good health.
I am all about loving your body IF YOU’RE TAKING CARE OF IT. If it’s starting to shudder and stall and your blood pressure is too high or your heart is strained, then you need to stop “loving yourself the way you are” and lose some freaking weight before you die young. All of this is besides the point too. I’m just trying to show you, dear reader, where I’m coming from when I tell you what happened in the Yahoo! comments the other day.
It takes a lot to get me fired up enough to waste my precious time voicing my opinion on the Internet, even on this blog, which is why I don’t post often. People I don’t care about at all are going to voice their opinions right back at me and they’ll probably try to start a fight which I don’t have time for. No one is going to change social views via the comments section so why bothering arguing your point there?
So I’m just scrolling through the comments, ignoring Yahoo!’s article as usual, and I start to get fired up for some reason. To this day, I still don’t understand why I was affected enough to take the time to write the below comment. It’s still on there; my username is LoRen.
“Every woman on here who is bashing Lammily needs to stop. I LOVED my Barbies when I was a little girl and I actually got upset when my mother’s husband didn’t let my half-sister play with Bratz or Barbies when she got to the appropriate age, but now that I’m in my early twenties and I’m having to deal with my own body issues, I realized that if I had had Lammily to play with instead of Barbie, I wouldn’t have as bad of a problem with my body NOW. It’s true that as little girls we really don’t care, but when you get older and that ideal body has been ingrained in your mind for the last 10 years, it’s hard to suddenly love your ‘not-Barbie’ body.”
I was SO tempted to call all those bashers “insecure blonde morons who need to feel better about their own body so they immediately gang-rape anyone who dares to imply that maybe there are girls who are confident enough to stand up and demand a real doll.” But anyone who’s insecure, blonde, or an actual moron would be insulted, so I refrained. Plus, I didn’t want to sink to their level.
But back to my comment. Of course, Barbies can’t be blamed for everything and I’m not trying to do that. But I’d say around 20% of my issues came from them, and it would’ve been nice to have Lammily around as well as Barbies. The rest of my problems come from my own self, the media, and growing up around skinny girls all my life until I hit like, 20 or something. It also didn’t help that my mom had me on diets since I was nine.
Anyways, I was waiting for trolls to pop up and sure enough, they did. A user name “ladylove” decided to question my intelligence as well as my parent’s capability to raise children:
“funny, I had a barbie, and when I grew up, I knew Barbie was just a doll, and nothing, absolutely nothing else
I still have that doll, my parents were not rich, and I grew up knowing what it meant for them to buy it for me. that is what gives a person a good body image, not playing with a perfect doll, but having parents that did their best for you, and you growing up to appreciate it.
I have a great self esteem, and am proud of all I have accomplished.
the doll is not the problem, its people telling young girls what they should look like. ads, TV programs, magazines. and a whole lot of other things.”
She did get one thing right with blaming the media, but I can’t ignore the fact that she blamed my issues for basically being ignorant about how the world (and dolls) work and being part of a rich family. I have three issues with her post:
- Barbies weren’t expensive; I remember one of mine being $10. You could also get a knock-off Barbie at the 99 Cent store, so if your parents had to work to buy one for you, the only reason I can think of is that they were trying to purchase a limited time or collection type Barbie. I’m glad you appreciate all that effort on your family’s part, but mine was on the lower-end of middle-class and had one income… pretty sure my body issues didn’t come from being rich. Literally has nothing do with the topic of body love.
- She’s assuming that I’m not intelligent enough to separate my identity from the doll. I also understand that it was simply a toy that provided innocent enjoyment and prepared my young mind for social interactions as well as nurturing others via pretend scenarios. But when you’re prepped for life with pretend humans that all look the same, it’s a bit of a shock to find out you look nothing like them. And neither does the majority of the world, yet the few that do are held higher in value than those who don’t. While you had pretended everyone was equal, life was just, and individual worth was based off of valid merits, you grew up to find out physical features and painted paper play the largest roles in humanity.
- It’s extremely hard to take anyone seriously when they don’t use proper grammar or spelling or punctuation. If you’re going to take time out of my day to comment on, and contradict, my personal opinion on a topic make sure you at least take the time to reread what you’ve written and confirm it makes sense, both logically and grammatically. Neither of which hers does. And that annoys me more than her opinion does; way too distracted picking apart her comment to pay attention to what she’s actually saying.
So after that delightful little comment, this user name “Valentino” decided to follow ladylove’s comment up with a one-two punch to both my self-control and lack of motivation.
“Body issues girl just hit the gym and don’t eat the donuts is not that hard Jesus people are becoming so weak.”
Apparently mentioning God’s son gives your statement credit, I was unaware of this…I would also like to point out that I work out three times a week AND hate donuts, so thank you Valentino for your (un)inspiring suggestion, but that’s not the problem. I also don’t believe that “hitting the gym” will magically solve body issues. Plenty of skinny young people are anorexic because they think they’re still too fat despite their bones poking through their taunt skin. 80% of a body issue is mental.
Basically my point is this: Lammily needs to get popular and stop getting bashed on because it’ll be healthy for non-skinny little girls, like me as a child. Did I absolutely love my Barbies and get obsessed with them and not give them up until I was 19? Yes. Did I learn to exercise my imagination and become an awesome fiction writer because of playing with them? Yes. I just wish they had been bigger. I learned from an early age that Barbie’s pretty things weren’t able to be worn by a thick woman like me because of my hips and thighs.
While I’m working on changing my attitude and trying to fall in love with my coke-bottle shape I wish I didn’t have to work so hard for it. Overcoming nurturing with nature’s gift is difficult, to say the least.
Just Me 