Aesthetic Obsession.

We all go through that Barbie phase,you know that at some point in your life, you have admired her, every girl wants to be a Barbie Girl. You've read those fashion magazines, flipped through the glossy pages looking at the beautiful models in their beautiful clothes. We all have wished maybe at least once that we could be more like them. Taller, thinner, tanner, beautiful. This is exactly what Susan Jane Gilman, and Anastasia Higginbotham write against in their articles. As children, teenagers, and even as adults we are forced to accept a fixed definition of beautiful. Do girls who don't meet this "definition" not count as beautiful? This seems to be the general idea that the media gives off.

 Gilman tells us how Barbie gave her the idea that she wasn't good enough, she wasn't pretty enough as a child. Barbie's characteristics are extremely fake, and her body shape is impossible to obtain, with completely wrong proportions. Yet this doll is seen as the epitome of beauty for young girls. Every girl plays with this doll, every girl admires her, loves her, wants to look just like her. Gilman tells us how this was definitely not healthy, girls of different races, beautiful in their own way, want to be blonde with bright blue eyes because thats what beauty is. "If you didn't look like Barbie you didn't fit in. Your status was diminished. You were less beautiful, less valuable, less worthy. If you didn't look like Barbie, companies would discontinue you,". As Gilman says, dolls, or really any toy, often give children an idea of what is considered important and valuable in society, it also determines for children what is "pretty" or beautiful, sadly Barbie is what determines this for young girls.

Higginbotham does almost the same thing only focusing on more of a adolescent fad, replacing Barbie dolls with teen fashion magazines. All of these magazines have photos and advertisements with breathtakingly gorgeous models, all tall and skinny. This is what will be considered beautiful by teenagers. This is what every girl wishes she looked like. Sadly, many of these models are photoshopped  or have loads of make up slathered onto them. Higginbotham discusses these fashion magazines and how they convince teenage girls that there is only one kind of pretty, everyone can strive to achieve this prettiness.

This regulation of what is beautiful or what is perfect is done by the media. In The Handmaid's Tale , it was done by the school at which the handmaids were taught. Aunt Lydia, repeatedly mentioned throughout the novel, can be considered the equivalent of the media in our society, teaching what is wrong and right, good and bad, like pretty and ugly.