Who can't remember the days of elementary school when the bus would drop off students at their front doors - not half a mile away - and mom would be waiting at the door with lemonade and popsicles, and Barbies or GI Joes were strewn across the house.
According to www.mattel.com, Barbie is the No. 1 selling girl's brand in the world. Mattel advertises Barbie as "from urban teen to fantasy queen, she's every girl."
But is she?
According to www.absoluteastronomy.com, if Barbie were a life-sized woman, she would be extremely disproportioned. The five-foot-nine-inch woman would have a 36-inch bust, an 18-inch waist, 33-inch hips and would weigh 101 pounds.
She would be so thin she would lack the required amount of body fat to menstruate each month and would need help walking because of how top heavy she would be, according to the Web site. The odds of meeting someone with these measurements are one in 100,000.
Melissa Boone, a senior advertising major from Austin, said women today are a good size.
"Barbie would be like a walking skeleton," she said. "That's not very attractive. If I was a guy, I wouldn't like that."
The average American woman does not even compare, in a good way, to these measurements, according to the Web site. In the U.S., a woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall, has a 35-inch bust, a 29-inch waist, 37-inch hips and weighs 145 pounds.
Andy Krenz, a senior management information systems major from San Antonio, said women today are a good size.
"I like females just the way they are," he said. "I like them with some meat on their bones. Being too skinny is a big turn-off."
He also said Barbie's proportions, if she was real, would be a turn-off.
But young girls are not the only ones subjected to these types of dolls. GI Joe, labeled as the "real American hero," has implications on young boys as well. While GI Joe's measurements are not as exaggerated as Barbie's, he is still overly buff.
According to www.pipeline.com, GI Joe's waist, if he were a real man, would be 32 inches, and the average American man's waist is 34 inches. His chest would be 44 inches, compared to 40 inches on an American man. His biceps were 12 inches, but a recent change to his stature put his biceps at a whopping 27 inches; the average American man has 13-inch biceps. GI Joe's measurements are ideal for bodybuilders, according to www.bodybuilding.about.com.
As western culture continues to stress physical beauty, there will be more cases of eating disorders for both men and women, according to Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders Inc.
Charlotte Dunham, director of women's studies at Texas Tech, said the media has an impact on the way people perceive themselves.
"When people watch TV shows of pencil-thin women it becomes the standard," she said. "When in actuality, we come in all different shapes and sizes."
A study done by Exeter University in England in 1998 examined 37,500 girls between the ages of 12 and 15. More than half of these girls said appearance was the most important concern in their lives.
The same study concluded more than half of teenage girls are or think they should be a diet. Researchers link this to the average of 40 pounds girls gain between the ages of 8 and 14.
Dunham said eating healthy is one of the most important things young women can do.
"Young women need to feel good physically so they can go out in the world and teach in classrooms and run corporations," she said. "People think that in order to have it all you have to be thin, but that is so unrealistic."
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