People who match the visual profile of this archetype, are commonly assumed to posses the emotional and intellectual traits of the archetype as it appears in works of fictional entertainment media. This is a direct result of the tendency to subconsciously categorize people by their visual proximity to archetypes that are familiar to us—and The Barbie Girl, being such a prevalent trope in pop culture, is definitely familiar to people who have been raised in contemporary Western society.
As a result, real people who display characteristics of this archetype, regardless of their true internal makeup, are heavily stereotyped, and receive the kind of judgement deemed only appropriate for the woman who has become a kind of emblem in people’s minds for female oppression at the hands of beauty culture.
Children who grow up in contemporary Western society are exposed to an exorbitant amount of media images every single day. They do not choose it, it is forced upon them from birth. These images mould the consciousness of the child in a profound way--the limitations, and the strict walls which define what is the beautiful ideal and therefor worthy of value, and what is not, are imprinted subconsciously.
To scorn a woman over her aesthetic proximity to The Barbie Girl archetype, to hold her in contempt over her apparent enslavement to the regime of beauty culture, is--no matter how plastic or contrived her appearance may be--to begrudge a human being for the conditioning they were nonconsensually subjected to as a child, and to allow that hatred for the existence of a psychological war like beauty culture, to be inflicted upon one of it's wounded veterans.
As a result, real people who display characteristics of this archetype, regardless of their true internal makeup, are heavily stereotyped, and receive the kind of judgement deemed only appropriate for the woman who has become a kind of emblem in people’s minds for female oppression at the hands of beauty culture.
Children who grow up in contemporary Western society are exposed to an exorbitant amount of media images every single day. They do not choose it, it is forced upon them from birth. These images mould the consciousness of the child in a profound way--the limitations, and the strict walls which define what is the beautiful ideal and therefor worthy of value, and what is not, are imprinted subconsciously.
To scorn a woman over her aesthetic proximity to The Barbie Girl archetype, to hold her in contempt over her apparent enslavement to the regime of beauty culture, is--no matter how plastic or contrived her appearance may be--to begrudge a human being for the conditioning they were nonconsensually subjected to as a child, and to allow that hatred for the existence of a psychological war like beauty culture, to be inflicted upon one of it's wounded veterans.