I live in D100, the first floor of the honors residence halls. Although I sleep there, I am usually found spending time with my friends in D200. Due to the fact that I am always in D200, I am involved when they have their floor programs. These programs are ran by the RA, the resident assistant, of the floor and is meant to boost morale and raise the sense of community. Julie Eller, the D200 RA, had a floor program that was meant to boost self-esteem. This program took place on Tuesday and was very successful.
The point of the program was to draw yourself as a Barbie doll. This meant drawing your imperfections and your favorite characteristics. Some people colored their dolls in with crayons or colored pencils while others cut paper and pasted it to the naked Barbie. My doll included larger hips, a larger waist, darker skin, and a thicker bone structure and had construction paper apparel. Julie then made us take pictures with these drawings and posted them on the board outside of the bathroom.
Around March 6th, 2015, Julie will send the pictures of us with our dolls to the Barbie headquarters or at dosomething.org. As part of a “realistic Barbie” movement, she hopes the head of Barbie will finally get the hint and make realistic dolls. The date is very important, it will be Barbie’s 56th birthday. There are many other organizations and volunteers doing similar projects. The unrealistic nature of Barbie has become a worldwide concern in recent years. The public see the perfect plastic mini-me as a catalyst for self-esteem issues. I could not agree more.
Pre-teenage girls are the main Barbie doll consumers. During those years, girls are going through a lot of different changes. The onset of puberty causes her to question her motives, her friends, her decisions, and her body. She begins to compare herself to those around her. Her perfections are inflated and her successes are deflated. Having the image of this perfect, yet unattainable, woman’s body is unfair to the girls. It will only exacerbate her feelings toward her own body.
I think it was such a great program idea because in college, there are still recurring feelings of doubt and unhappiness regarding body image. Freshmen can experience the weight gain, the comparison of themselves to older or more beautiful women, and the stress of new prettier friends. Boosting self-esteem is a great way to increase the morale of the floor and the general happiness of the resident; this is the main job of an RA. Julie is the best RA on this campus. She cares about her girls and is always available for help to listen and talk.
This is just one of her many programs this semester, but it is my favorite. She read us the life-sized proportions of Barbie and it is ridiculous that the makers of Barbie thought this was a good idea in the first place. I saw how other people drew their dolls, and although we are not all art majors, our rendition of Barbie looked better than the original. With the addition of witty captions like, “Strong is the new skinny” there was a unanimous realization that we do not need to look like Barbie to be pretty. In fact, if we did look like her, we would be unhealthy and look very emaciated. I am very pleased with the way the program went and if I ever become and RA, I will think about doing something very similar.