The Reason You Shouldn’t Let Girls Play With Unrealistically Skinny Dolls
For years Barbie has been spreading the wrong kind of message to little girls across the country.
If you’re wondering how real the link is between Barbie and the rise of body issues among young girls, consider this: A Dutch study of 6-to-10-year-old girls attempted to establish a correlation between the types of dolls they played with and their body image perceptions. Some of the girls played with skinny dolls and some played with average-sized dolls. The researchers didn’t find any difference between the two groups when testing their body image perceptions; the difference they did find related to food intake: the girls with the thin dolls eat significantly less than their peers with the average-sized dolls. So, if you want to encourage healthy eating habits in your daughter, pay attention to the dolls she plays with.
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