I vaguley remember hearing that someone once got surgery with the intent of altering her porportions to match those of a Barbie doll. Is this true? From what I’ve heard about Barbie’s porportions, I’m not sure if that’s possible.
A Lycos search for “human barbie doll” yielded The Woman Who Would Be Barbie
The thing about Barbie ™ having such an out of proportion figure is just a myth. I have helped make/design some of those little 25mm figs you use for D&D, etc. In order to show ANY figure, you must overexaggerate. same with Barbie. It’s no evil plot to make women unhappy for God’s sake, it’s just a law of perspective. sheeesh.
Some time ago, I read an interview with one of the orginal Barbie designers. They asked about the proportions.
It seems that they made the dolls thin so that they would have fairly normal proportions when they were clothed. Doll clothing has more relative bulk than human clothing because they can’t reduce the thickness of the cloth as much as they can the other proportions.
An interesting factoid from the interview was that the first batch of dolls had nipples painted on them by the Korean workers. They had to sand them off before they could sell them.
I also remember something abt the Barbie-doll twins. Apparently they were models who had bodies like barbies and, if i remember correctly, put dirt on their food everytime so they ate as little as possible.
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- I think she doesn’t look that great, for the money and agony she’s likely put up with.
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- When I think of plastic surgery I usually think of people like-
The Catwoman:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/7438/cat.html
- When I think of plastic surgery I usually think of people like-
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- MC
I remember seeing that “I want to be Barbie” woman on TV once. She doesn’t look anything like a Barbie doll (either the old ones or the newer models), she just looks like a skanky, aging hooker.
I really think some plastic surgeons should be jailed for malpractice. I mean, someone DID that to Michael Jackson! Someone keeps snipping off more and more of Cher and Joan Rivers!
All plastic surgery is a gamble. I’ve had women who had breast implants tell me that the ended up nothing like the “after” picture the doctor had on his “computer simulator”. Said that was almost a toy or videogame image. The results were the right size, but still not really as round as natural naked. They were still happy, though, because they looked right in a bra.
RoboDude wrote:
What have you heard about Barbie’s proportions? Barbie’s measurements would supposedly be 39 - 23 - 33 if she were life size. I got that fact from an e-mail that also told me that a ducks quack won’t echo, so it may not be that accurate. I’ll try to check this using an actual Barbie the next time my girlfriend’s niece comes over if I can figure out a way to do it with out looking like a total perv. For now I’ll assume 39 - 23 - 33 is correct.
I’ve often heard that a real woman couldn’t have these measurements for this reason or that. One theory being that she wouldn’t have room for internal organs or some nonesense. Let’s assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that pre-implant removal Pam Anderson is a real woman. (I know her breasts weren’t real) Her measurements were something like 40+ - 22 - 34. In the Barb Wire leather corset her measurements were 40+ - 17! - 34. While Pam may not be the healthiest (mentally or physically) woman in the world, she was more freakishly proportioned than Barbie and she survived.
If she were real she would fall over. But waists can be small: The smallest recorded waist among women of normal stature in the 20th century is a reputed 33 cm 13 in for
the French actress Mlle Polaire (real name Emile Marie Bouchand) (1881-1939). Queen Catherine de Medici
(1519-89) decreed a waist measurement of 35 cm 13.77 in for ladies of the French court, but this was at a
time when females were more diminutive. Mrs. Ethel Granger (1905-82) of Peterborough, Great Britain,
reduced from a natural 56 cm 22 in to 33 cm 13 in over the period 1929-39.
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- Well, you now what they say, “waist not, want not” - MC
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OK, I got my hands on Barbie and did a little measuring. My figures, which are by no means super-duper accurate, were:
Bust = 5"
Waist = 2.75"
Hips = 4.75"
Height = 11.5"
Feel free to check these for yourself and report back here.
Scaling this up to a 5’8" woman we get:
Bust = 30
Waist = 16
Hips = 28
The waist is certainly very small, but from Handy’s post we know there have been smaller. I see nothing to indicate that a life-sized Barbie would fall over.
Of course, I don’t believe that Barbie is the standard of beauty that all women should aspire to. The vast majority of women will never look anything like Barbie and that is fine with me (as it should be for them.) However, the idea that it would be impossible for a real woman to be built like Barbie doesn’t seem logical to me.
Lance Turbo, Im quoting some fashion magazine quote that she would fall over.
I saw that human Barbie & I’d date her. Shes kinda old though, 44 or so now. She said she did it just to tease men.
MC, my company’s firewall blocks all Geocities sites. Could you perhaps describe that page to me, or email me a sample image? Thanks.
- Five, I just tried to mail the images. It took a while to upload, so I think the pictures went. Say if it didn’t work; my MS Access is screwed up somehow. - MC
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- Doh! I mean outlook Express is screwed up. Due to a combination of a OEM system recovery CD that I can’t selectively reinstall stuff from, and a (likely pirated and also defective) Office 97 CD, Outlook is dysfunctional on several counts, and I can’t “fix” it. (-And Express is screwed up also, FWIW) Eudora, here I come. - MC
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Lance Turbo:
Just to give you some context for whether your measurements could fit a real woman here are the stats for Twiggy, the icon of emaciated fashion models.
Height: 5’ 6"
Bust: 31"
Waist: 22"
Hips: 32"
So a real Barbie would have to be two inches taller with a waist 6 inches smaller by your measurements. The problem is not that a real woman couldn’t be manipulated into those proportions, it’s that the look is not found in nature. It requires surgery, corsets, and starvation.
Actually cher3, they have a nasty thing called a waist trainer. Its a big leather thing & a woman wears it tighter & tigher. There was such a woman on tv not to long back & she got her waist down to something like 12". It looked really weird.
I’m not saying that a healthy woman could be built like Barbie. I am saying that it is not impossible.
Also, I did not use a standard Barbie for these measurements. The one I used was something like Olympic Gymnast Barbie, or Dancin’ Barbie, or Do the Funky Chicken Barbie. My point being that this one had a flexible waist. The waist measurement I used was at the narrow point where the piece of plastic that was Barbie’s pelvis fit into the piece of plastic that was her thorax(?). This could be why the waist measurement was so small. I’ll try to get my hands on a standard Barbie and update my figures.
More to come.
GUYS: again, you can’t just blow up Barbies measurements & come up with what she would “measure”. Due to perspective, ALL features must be exageratted to look “right”, especially after “doll clothes” are put on. By the “blow up” system a 25mm pewter female figure would “measure” about 80-16-75. Barbie does not have an “unrealistic” figure if you figure in perspective (not bad, tho, maybe the old classic 36-22-34) Even tho Barbie looks like she has a “snub” nose, if you blow it up it is 'roman", her eyes & mouth are too big also.
as for “falling over” I’ve seen some stripper with 60"HH measurements, who could walk quite nicely, thank you, especially in 6" heels. Barbie is built a lot like one of the 50’s “sweater girls”.