missworld:

lipstick-feminists:

embraceyourbody:

novazembla:

thepoliticalpartygirl:

misterhippity:

Judging from this photo — which accompanies this (overlong and remarkably uncritical) New York Times piece on Mattel’s upcoming “Mad Men Barbie” collection — Joan has undergone a fairly major body-proportion overhaul at the hands of Mattel’s doll designers.

It’s nice to see that Mattel is looking out for young girls’ best interests by turning Joan into a more-appropriate body-image role model before marketing her as a plaything, huh?

It’s liposuction Barbie!

We wouldn’t want our children playing with anatomically proportioned dolls, now, would we?  Gotta set those impossible beauty standards early.

I don’t know that they particularly decided Joan’s figure needed censoring; I think it’s more that they couldn’t be assed to set a new mold (ha). Which is absurd, and I’m kind of surprised no one said, “…Let’s just do Peggy instead.” Because making Joan the same size as Betty is a travesty, not to mention a huge missed opportunity for children to have even marginally larger sex dolls.

At $75 a pop, most of these dolls will probably go to adult Mad Men/Barbie fans, but Barbies is Barbies.

GETTHISOFFMYCOMPUTERSCREEN

i have to agree with embraceyourbody. i do think it was less censoring and more unwillingness to create a new model to make the doll. i find it pretty infuriating myself. although i have never even seen Man Men, i am an undying fan of Christina Hendricks glorious curves, and feel they should be celebrated and worshiped at every available moment.
it seems sort of pointless to even create this doll, being that Hendricks (and i imagine her character to some extent) is pretty recognizable for her ridiculously gorgeous and period accurate figure! why even bother if you had no intention of at least trying to match her proportions.
and also, i just remembered something that might give Mattel an out. when i got my X-Files Barbies after the release of the first movie, the box and such billed them as “Barbie & Ken as Agents Scully and Mulder”. so if this is marketed as Barbie as Joan Holloway, they’re totally off the hook.