At the Age of maybe eight or nine I wanted to look like a Barbie doll. I wanted the perfect body size, cute red cheeks, long straight hair, and colored eyes. Every year that past I wanted to look like someone else, but as I reflect on my childhood I realize that everyone I once wanted to be had some similar characteristics to a Barbie doll. I was grown in a fairly stable household, I was always told I was beautiful and there was never a instant in which I was told that I was an ugly child but for some reason I felt that I was not beautiful because I did not look like the cheetah girls. I did not have nice straight hair or a straight nose, nor was I white. I admired white girls because I wanted to have their features because that’s what I associated beauty with. As I got older I started accepting myself for who I was but there was that Barbie doll mentality still lingering. I have thick hair and my mom use to braid it in various styles, but I hated it because it did not make me look beautiful I taught at the time .I found all the excuses I could just to convince my mother that I needed a perm so my hair could resemble these beauties I idolized. I don’t think my mother knew I wanted to change my body to resemble these Disney channel stars; I think she taught she was supporting a cartoon phase children often go through. I didn’t just want to meet these stars or dress like them; I wanted to literally look like them because I taught I was lacking something. As I got older I realized that I was perfect the way I was, it took a lot of confidence building because for the longest time I just wanted to look like the typical white or mix star on television. Today I love myself however I sometimes have that moment where I see a person and I wish I had their features, I am not sure if this is normal or am I still not fully confident. Society makes it even more complicated because it promotes the idea of loving oneself for what we are but most media sources portray the Barbie doll look as ideal beauty. I do not look anything like a Barbie doll and I’m ok with that but I often wonder if society thinks I’m ugly because I don’t fit in this category? What is beauty in your eyes?
Unruly Bodies 
When I was little I loved playing Barbie with my friends, but I never really thought of actually looking like her. She was beautiful in my eyes too, but I knew that there are other types of beauty too. And how creepy would it be that everyone looked the same?
This is very interesting… as someone who played with Barbies all the time as a little kid and now still collects 1960s Barbies, I’ve given Barbie a lot of thought. I guess my opinion has always been that playing with Barbies as a kid didn’t warp my self-image because while my friends and I were technically holding dolls, we were really just imagining ourselves as adults – Barbie’s looks were irrelevant. And yet, you bring up a racial dimension that I, as a white person, never had to face. Barbies tend to have “white” features even if they’re supposed to be Latina, African-American, etc. (in other words, they’re still always “white” but with darker skin) which I can see as being problematic for non-white girls’ self-image.