A few days ago, I was browsing Tumblr in search of the latest and greatest comedy bloggers when I serendipitously stumbled upon a blog that really inspired me. At this point, I know Tumblr well enough to expect the occasional self-reflection-inducing post, but what left me so dumbfounded was the fact that the blog was about dolls.
Hear me out: these aren’t just any dolls. These dolls are the new and improved versions of the dolls we (well, at least I) so enjoyed playing with growing up. The only difference is that they have been refurbished and made over to look like… wait for it… real girls! Writing about it isn’t enough. In order to truly understand how absurdly made-up and somewhat offensive the dolls once were, you need to see the transformations for yourself…
Personally, I never realized just how ridiculous these dolls’ faces were until seeing these comparisons. At such a young age, these figures, which I valued so much, were ingraining a warped and unfortunately commonplace perception of beauty and “perfection” in my growing mind. The big lips, the exaggerated eyes, the heavy layers of make up, the perfectly trimmed eyebrows – these dolls shaped my beliefs and taught me to covet the infamous standards of beauty we, as a society, have imposed upon women. Of course, seeing what a difference a change in make-up and clothing made, I began wondering if we could take it further.
What about dolls that mimic the multitude of shapes and sizes real women behold? You might not see figure flaws as such if you’d grown up loving dolls that boasted those same “flaws.” What else we could do to save future generations from the beauty trap we’ve gotten ourselves into? Imagine fuller figured Disney princesses or princesses with boyish figures. Small changes like this could lead to a greater variety in the shapes of famous models and actresses or an end to photoshopped faces in magazines and advertisements.
This is where college students come in. Pretty soon, it will be us out there, establishing companies and making our marks on industries. Instead of giving into the norm that those before us have imposed, we have the opportunity to change our standards for the better. So I challenge anyone reading this to take a risk and try to change the way society thinks about beauty. The creator of Tree Change Girls did it without even meaning to!
See her full story by following this link: https://youtu.be/lG-7e1vaB18