There are a couple of things wrong with this news story. The first is that any time I hear women complain that media is responsible for creating unrealistic perceptions of the female form, I have to mention that most of the fashion media is directed by women. In fact, the most influential fashion media, women’s magazines, are all directed (at least editorially) by women. So, I think it would be much more truthful to say that women are responsible for creating an unrealistic perception of the female form.
Secondly, I find the research that young girls mutilating a Barbie doll and claiming that they regarded it as an unwelcome reminder of their childhood just the biggest crock of shit ever. Barbie is a fucking doll and if you’re a big enough idiot to believe that she is the "ideal" then you’ve got way more problems than can be singled out by some research team in the UK. If this leap of logic by the researchers (ie, children mutilating their toys is equal to children despising their childhood) is true, what does that say about every single child to ever walk god’s green earth? I blew up most of my toys with explosives, but not because I despised my childhood… it was because I liked blowing shit up. It was cool to blow shit up when I was a kid. In fact, I don’t know any kids that cruised through childhood without destroying a majority of their toys… only anal retentive, obessive compulsives still have the toys they played with as children once they reach adulthood… I would go out on a limb and say that if you still have childhood toys in relatively good shape, you didn’t play with them much.
On a similar note, can I just say that I am aghast at the number of seemingly intelligent adults who blame the media for their problems? I don’t mean to belittle you if you’re one of the tens of millions of people who blame the media for: your obesity, your anorexia, your lack of emotions, your overly aggressive tendencies, your lack of education, your sexual proclivities, your inability to reason like a FUCKING FUNCTIONING ADULT… or whatever the "cry-me-a-river" flaw de jour might be. Fucking take responsibility for your own failures and inadequacies! You’re a loser because for one of two reasons: it is either genetics or somewhere along the way you got lazy and then you couldn’t even be bothered to come up with an original excuse for your ineptitude and you picked the media! It wasn’t TV or magazines that made you that way… no matter how many fucktards in white coats with government grants say that it was.