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Summer/Fall 1999

GI JOE EXTREME and BARBIE: SENDING TWISTED MESSAGES

What do GI Joe Extreme and Barbie have in common? Both send a "twisted picture of perfection" to children, according to Harvard University psychiatrist Harrison Pope.

"Since the 1960s, male action figures appear to have been on a steady diet of steroids, beefing up to inhuman proportions and giving boys a skewed definition of masculinity," according to one news report of Pope’s study, which appeared in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

 When researchers measured the circumference of GI Joe’s waist, chest and biceps, they found that the original 1960s action figure was scaled to human dimensions. By 1997, however, GI Joe Extreme had a biceps circumference of more than 26 inches. In comparison, Mark McGwire’s biceps measure about 20 inches.

"It seems perfectly reasonable that just as women who are anorexic have been influenced by the images of thin models, boys could be influenced by muscular men," said Tufts University psychology professor Martlin Zelin.


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