Rhetorical Barbie

Stalking my Facebook News Feed often leaves me with many things to ponder; normally it ends with disgust for my generation, or at the very least the people I went to high school with. That being said, from time to time, Facebook provides links to inspiration and enlightening things in the world today. Recently, a Facebook friend linked to an image of what Barbie, the popular children’s doll, would look like in real life, given her over-exaggerated proportions. 

The image was shocking to say the least, with Barbie’s waistline being unseeingly skinny and her weight under 100 pounds. Needless to say her body is literally unattainable for the real person.

To me this brought up ideas about rhetoric. What are we convincing our children of? What are we telling our children the definition of beauty is? The consumerist world plays a heavy part in convincing children that “too skinny” is good. Most dolls today are not proportionate and they work to convince children that that is what you should look like when you are older. Thus the toys we buy children are part of a larger spectrum and definately a mark of rhetoric.

That being said, the image I saw was an example of kairos as it came out in time when the “skinny” epidemic is on the rise. Eating disorders today are more prevalent than ever before and this image helps to combat that ideology of young girls.

It’s crucial to pay more attention to everything that is being sold, in terms of rhetoric. Marketing, in the end, is one big mechanism to convince the masses of purchasing a product. In the simplest of terms, it is an rhetorical argument.