There is a scene from the film “Barbie” from 2023 in which curved feet steps from high heels on the floor. And stay bent. It cost the actress Margot Robbie Eight Takes To perfect the trick and it left A razory on social media Almost related to a collective sigh.
For a group of podiatrists in Melbourne, Australia, that scene was feeding for a group chat – the corner of that arch, the weight on the balls of her feet. When Barbie’s chopping eventually hit the ground, those podiatrists saw the start of a research paper.
“We were talking about how nice it was to finally see Barbie in flat shoes and to see Barbie make all these different shoe choices based on what to do in her time,” said Cylie Williams, an academic podiatrist at Monash University, in a telephone interview.
It seemed like the group of researchers that Barbie’s empowerment was bound by the structure of her feet, in the same way as everything about Barbie – her body shape, her skin color, her lifestyle choices – are bound to the Everywoman.
“We went,” do you think that’s actually something? “Said Dr. Williams. “And we are researchers – we are curious – so we went a bit:” Let’s take a look, this can be fun. “
“Just so we are clear,” she added, “we are serious researchers.”
Their curiosity played in a new peer-reviewed study, Published on WednesdayThis is investigating the correlation between Barbie’s foot attitude and its social status. It also investigates, amusing enough, the reputation of high heels in society.
Dr. Williams and two other podologists, including a male colleague, Ian Griffiths, who refers to himself as the “diversity rental” of the group, worked with their friend – an occupational therapist, Suzanne Wakefield, who happens to be a lifelong Barbie collector with a personal collection of about 800 dolls.
Together they investigated the feet of 2,750 dolls produced from 1959 to 2024. They measured each doll against a metric they had come up with: foot attitude (flat or bent?), Equity (diversity of the doll), employment (is she a fashion girl or a working girl?) And time (the release year). Yes, the metric spells feet
“I would like to say something very smart about that, but you know, it was Friday evening, we text each other by the hand:” We have to come up with something that we can check, “said Dr. Williams. When they came up with feet,” we couldn’t have each other harder if I tried it. “
The researchers discovered that Barbie’s feet indeed had a revolution over time. In the early decades of Barbie’s life, 100 percent of the dolls had bent feet. In the past four years it only did 40 percent. “Worked” dolls were much more likely to have flat feet, while fashion -oriented that more had the extreme arc.
The researchers repeated, in the interview and in their article, that this evidence has not determined the cause and effect and to maintain scientific independence, they did not contact Mattel to find out whether the draft decision had been deliberately.
In a statement e -mailed to the New York Times, Mattel confirmed that foot design was indeed an intentional part of Barbie’s evolution “with again conceived shoe options to support Barbie’s bold steps forward.”
“The leisure choices of Barbie are extensive,” said Mrs. Wakefield, sitting in front of her Barbie calendar and grabbed her Barbie -Mok. “She was originally designed as a fashion doll and so, if you look at many of her choices of free time, it went to the opera, or it was tea parties or going to a ball. Now we see Barbie going skiing. I have Scuba Diving Barbie-Ze does many other things that are not at all high.”
When women entered the paid workforce, high heels landed in the center of “continuous, never -resolved questions about feminism,” said Andi Zeisler, the author of “We Were Feminists once: Van Riot Grrrl to cover the girl, buy and sell a political movement.” At the same time, they have been observed as objects that women sexualized, especially in men dominated by men, and as symbols of power that ‘a feeling of goal and control’. They have been in recent decades, abandoned by feministsThan recoveredSubsequently, scenebok by health workers such as the root of all the joint pain that women, a shine of science borrow from the rejection of the shoes.
Although high heels can be painful, they can also be fun and joyful expressions of personality that in the eyes of Dr. Williams do not earn the negative medical attention. There is no convincing evidence that shows that these shoes cause the common pain and pain with it, Dr. Williams, and women must be free to choose in which footwear with every situation they find themselves, such as Barbie. “Healthcare professionals should keep a little more mouth shut,” she said.
And she gave some advice: “If you want to wear high heels, wear high heels.”
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