Barbie vs He-Man

AlphaWookie · 2014-01-09T00:25:10+00:00

My favorite re-post here! Still makes me chuckle "This is He-Man"

railmaniac · 2014-01-09T04:22:15+00:00

With all due respect, I don't think the equivalence is that simple.

When I was a boy, He-Man was never about how he looks; it was always about who he is and what he does. The most important thing about He-Man was always his character - that of a classic hero, who always does the right thing. He-Man had a TV show, and whenever I watched an episode I never felt that the message was I had to look like He-Man. I always felt the message was be like He-man, do like He-Man. Be a hero, do the right thing and all that jazz.

(You can argue that that in itself an unfair pressure on a boy, but I would argue that we could all use a little bit more pressure of that kind.)

In contrast, Barbie had no character. There was no TV show, there were no stories of Barbie thriving against adversity on the strength of her character. An optimistic interpretation of this is that Barbie is whoever a child's mind wants her to be... but a more pessimistic interpretation is that all Barbie has is her looks.

A child playing with a Barbie doll can invent all sorts of stories about what sort of a person Barbie is. Barbie will obviously be a beautiful, intelligent, smart and witty, confident, an absolutely winning personality for the child. But the child can't say for sure she knows who Barbie is.

What she can be sure about, is how Barbie looks. And that is why Barbie is a problem.

The Princess dolls from Disney are marginally better, since they have character. But then Disney shits all over that by marketing them as if their appearance is the most important thing about them.

As an aside, every man in He-Man's universe has a body like He-Man (except Orko), and every woman has the body of - and even more or less the same face as - Teela. Even He-Man's mom has the same bangin' body :D

Digressions aside, at some point He-Man's body becomes irrelevant since everyone pretty much looks the same.

razamataza · 2014-01-09T05:30:27+00:00

The whole point of He-Man is that he is brave and courageous though. It's not about men aspiring to grow up looking like He-Man.

The comparison doesn't really make sense.

silentflamez · 2014-01-09T04:18:32+00:00

"You could grade meat off those"

Joshthathipsterkid · 2014-01-09T04:54:39+00:00

Get your male power fantasy out of here!

SporkTornado · 2014-01-09T05:38:42+00:00

When I was a kid way back in elementary school, I noticed how media constantly tells us that we always have to have positive roll models for girls and women[. We must do everything we can to promote the self esteem of girl, and anything, no matter how small a chance that it could possible, maybe lower the self esteem of a girl was to be shunned. There was this constant demand that we spend so much time and energy improving the self esteem of girls. Because the unrealistic body image of a barbie doll could shatter the self esteem of some girl and make her loss all self of worth. But on the other side male heroes in action movies, video games, and action figures, could have ripped muscles like a Greek god and strength that makes most professional body builders look like pussies. and no boy was ever affect by that. I started to feel we had to focus so much resources on improving the self esteem of girls and not boys, because girls were emotionally fragile butterflies who could have there sense of self worth destroyed by a barbie doll. While boys were emotionally tough, and no amount of unrealistic male super heroes in the media could ever damage a boys self esteem of make him question his self worth.

Title	Barbie vs He-Man
Author	alexpotv
Upvotes	35
Comments	18
Date	January 9, 2014 12:03 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/1ur5fv/barbie-vs-he-man/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/barbie-vs-he-man.1613627 https://theredarchive.com/post/1613627

Comments