Barbie and her Large Feet

WHAT is going on with Barbie’s feet? They are humungous. Everything else about her seems pretty much the same, maybe a little more hippy and slightly less busty, but those differences are barely perceptible. Her feet though?

I haven't purchased a new Barbie in a long time, but it was a Barbie Christmas this year at my house, which is why I am only now aware of her enlarged (albeit probably more realistic) foot size.The Barbie in the back is the one I remember from my youth.  The only real difference I can see with the new model compared with the older version is a bigger foot, more defined abs and a prettier face. You've come a long way baby: Her form and image initially inspired by a German sex doll back in 1956, then manufactured as a caricature of the female figure in 1959, to a remodel with a wider waist in 1997, to now in 2013...a girl with a large foot.

With all the feminist debate and contention in the 70s, 80s and 90s regarding Barbie’s possible negative influence on the burgeoning self-image of little girls, this is the result? Bigger, flatter feet?

Is this going to be a thing now? Girls will start stuffing their shoes to get them a size or two bigger and flop around, tripping over their own flipper-like feet in a futile attempt to be just like Barbie.

Social commentators and experts of various persuasions will blame pop culture in general and Barbie in particular for an epidemic of clumsiness seen in female preadolescents, as well as an alarming trend towards risky pedal augmentations among young women old enough to give consent for surgery.

People will reminisce with a sense of loss and nostalgia over the good old days, when girls had normal sized feet and could walk without twisting an ankle or falling flat on their face, causing an unusual number of bloody noses and ER visits. Barbie will thus be implicated in an overburdened health care system, resulting in a public outcry that Mattel resize its Barbie molds yet again.

Even more troubling, some investigative journalist might uncover a new and little known fetish spreading throughout the male population, whereby men can no longer be aroused by small to average footed females. There is growing masculine guilt as a result and 12-step support groups begin to pop up near orthotic centres and shoe stores. 

More disturbing than that, foot rape becomes a crime and girls are warned against enhancing the size of their feet, the implication being that if she makes her foot too proportionally appealing then she and her foot are probably “asking for it”.

Ah, poor Barbie and her pretty little vacant head and her pretty little, I mean pretty big, flat feet – she still has no idea the power she possesses. Imagine the impact she could have if she actually had a brain and was, you know, human.