Image: Cultures Idolizing the Female Form
A Comparison and Contrast of the Barbie Doll and Venus de Willendorf

Image: Cultures Idolizing the Female Form

A Comparison and Contrast of the Barbie Doll and Venus de Willendorf

The fact that cultures have idolized the female form in our modern era is not a new concept. Beauty in modern times has been held to the highest standard, but where and why did we get our ideal of beauty? Culture plays a large in role in how beauty is defined, and this is very clear when it pertains to the culture behind both the Venus de Willendorf and the more modern Barbie doll. Clearly, idolizing the female form is an ideal that has existed since the very first centuries that humans walked the earth. Taking a look at the two different cultures that idolize the female form may give us a little bit of insight into the similarities and differences there were between two different society’s composed of very similar beings.
The statuette Venus de Willendorf was first discovered in Austria in 1908 by the archaeologist Josef Szombathy. This is the earliest image of a human being known to exist, thought to have been created during the Paleolithic era some 25,000 years ago (Witcombe)! The climate in the region that the statuette was discovered was probably an ice covered land, and therefore, her voluptuous image probably portrays a desire for food and to survive.
Humans will always have one thing in common: survival. Whether it is a work of art portraying the importance of survival, or a toy idolized by people who are celebrating their survical; we have always focused on self-perpetuation. This commonality makes it a little easier for us, hundreds of years into the future, to understand and empathize with what the artist is portraying with the Venus de Willendorf.
As we established before, the statuette Venus de Willendorf was presumably from the Paleolithic era. Venus de Willendorf was probably worshipped as a fertility idol. During this time, it was believed that there was not a lot of food to sustain life, and therefore, a woman of obese nature would have been extremely rare, and someone of great wealth or importance (Dixson). We see this in the great detail that went into the genital area of the Venus. It is also believed that the genital area showed red ocher pigment, which could have represented menstrual blood, symbolizing her fertility (Seshadri). These are tell-tale signs of the importance that reproduction had on this particular society during this period in history. After all, one of the most important elements of survival is having children. So, while it would be more feasible for us to believe art would be about something deemed “beautiful”, beauty was in human relationships, and the ability to create a family.

What the ideal image of women and what their best attributes are began to evolve over the centuries. A post-war America would put an entirely new spin on the ideal of womanhood that would change the generations to follow. As feminism was on the rise following WW2, the creation of the Barbie doll piqued the interest of little girls everywhere in the late 1950’s. Women now had a renewed sense of pride and confidence in their own abilities.
Barbie has quite the history herself. Barbie was created by a businesswoman named Ruth Handler, and released by Mattel in 1959. This new doll would take the world by storm as never before had anyone seen such a doll. Suddenly, a generation of little girls would go from nurturing their little baby dolls, to dreaming of a world of opportunities with their very own Barbie. The whole interpretation of what a woman should look like, how she should act and who she should aspire to be would soon start to change.
Suddenly, being blonde and having a physique with unrealistic measurements would become the pride and joy of American girls everywhere. Nearly every little girl would soon own a Barbie of her own. Barbie was the first “grown up” doll available, and little girls everywhere would soon recognize Barbie as her favorite toy (Forman-Brunell). Women working during WW2 would create a new confidence in their abilities that had never been experienced in human history (Forman-Brunell). Barbie was beautiful, smart and talented all while having various careers, dream cars and the handsome Ken doll. Females everywhere no longer wanted to be just the child bearers; they wanted to experience life on a whole new level. The world was just different in the Paleolithic era. Every day may have very well been a fight for food, shelter and territory. A man during these times blessed with a woman would have likely been very grateful for the ability to carry on with his own offspring. Perhaps, having an abundance of children would have been an indicator of his position and power (Witcombe). Right away modern society’s opinion of what is attractive becomes irrelevant when we put things into the survival perspective. In all actuality, studies have proven that men do not prefer women with smaller midriffs and breasts, and actually preferred the statuette of the Venus de Willendorf over other statuettes of seemingly more attractive Venus figures (Dixson). Even to go a step further, one should realize that the “perfect” size “0” is a relatively new desire. In many of today’s societies, skinny means starving, and that is not viewed as a beautiful thing. The Barbie doll probably had a much greater influence on these perceptions than we even realize. Many standards portray that the perfect female image would be one that is a Caucasian, blonde, skinny female with large breasts and a tiny waste to be the ideal woman. Venus de Willendorf is a sort of “back to the basics” image portraying a beauty to what the female body is actually capable of. What is more beautiful? A woman whose body defies all aspects of what a woman is created to look like, or a woman who has carried and nurtured another human disregarding her own body image to create life for another person? Fortunately for us, we do not struggle for mere survival from day to day for the most part. When we compare the Barbie doll era to the Venus de Willendorf era we can clearly see that our survival expectations and needs have progressed dramatically. In these days that our basic needs are met people focus more on issues of vanity and greed. Interestingly enough, Barbie portrays an unrealistic image for today’s women, while the image of Venus de Willendorf also likely portrayed a somewhat unrealistic image for women of the Paleolithic era.
Image has always held some form of importance to every culture stretched out over every period in our history. Obsession with image has become more prominent throughout time, and in today’s culture vanity is a bigger issue than ever before. In the time that the Venus de Willendorf was created the ancients had survival in mind, and part of that survival was being able to reproduce the species (Witcombe). Today, the female form is idolized with similar wants and desires in mind, but our idea of who we prefer to reproduce with has changed throughout the years. Women are often more critical of their body image then men. I do believe men’s instinct of choosing who to reproduce with is still as natural of an instinct as it was centuries ago. The use of one’s eyes and hands to convey what we perceive to be beautiful has been utilized since the existence of the very first human. It is truly amazing how works of art have survived for centuries to bring us insight into the lives of the ancients. The one thing that we know for certain from works of art such as Venus de Willendorf is that human beings are all fundamentally the same. Whether it is portraying what we worship or just what we desire to obtain or look like, we can find a way to take our thoughts and make them into works of art to be revered by the generations to come.

References
Dixson, A. &. (n.d.). Venus Figurines of the European Paleolithic: Symbols of Fertility or Attractiveness. )Journal of Anthropology.
Forman-Brunell, M. (n.d.). What Barbie Dolls Have To Say About Post-War American Culture. Retrieved from Artifact and Analysis: http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/idealabs/ap/essays/barbie.htm
Seshadri, K. (n.d.). Obesity: A Venusian story of Paleolithic proportions. . Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 134-144.
Witcombe, C. (n.d.). The "Venus" of Willendorf. Retrieved from Women in Prehistory: https://www.asu.edu/cfa/wwwcourses/art/SOACore/Willendorf_portfolio.htm