Tag Archives: Barbie

Creative Halloween Costumes Inspired by This Year’s Health and Fitness Trends

Halloween is next week and if you’re like many of us you haven’t gotten your costume yet. Fear not, we’ve got some great ideas for you. The world of fitness and health serves as creative inspiration for some of the most relevant and unique costumes. Check out some of our best ideas for “healthy” costumes this year.  We fully expect you to take home the costume prize with these ideas!

Weight Loss Before and After

We’ve all seen the pictures of a former overweight person standing in their old pants, pulling out the gaps in amazement at their former size. If that’s your reality too, flaunt it this year.  Show the world what you accomplished and have some fun with it. Stick some advertising bursts on your clothes stating your weight loss or even a before picture. You did the hard work, get some extra credit at your party this year. Need some inspiration to achieve your own real-life before and after? Check out our True Weight Loss Stories.

Extreme Marathoner

2024 saw a continual growth in marathoning, and the sport got some political notice as well. Dressing as a marathoner could be really fun when you go over the top with sweatbands, water bottles, a lap watch, and of course the big finishers medal. You could also take a poke at vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan in your marathoner costume. Runners may never forgive him for saying he ran a sub-3 marathon, when in fact is was over 4 hours. Maybe throw on some Romney/Ryan campaign flare in the midst of the running garb and add a bib with Ryan’s name on it. But it seems like having a clock an hour or so off might really be the clincher. (more…)

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Lacy

Health Buzz June 15: Yoga Barbie Controversy, Worst Grilled Foods, Dad’s Weekend Recipes

Yoga Teacher Barbie Bends Children’s Advocates Out of Shape

Add yoga teacher to Barbie’s list of careers. Mattel added yoga Barbie to their exclusive line “I Can Be…”,  which is supposed to inspire girls to strive for more than just the ordinary. Once again Barbie stirs up controversy and we hear from people on both sides of the argument.

A Carrot Had More Nutrients 50 Years Ago Than it Does Today

Nutrition from your fruits and veggies isn’t going away, but studies show that there were more nutrients in them years ago than today. The environment is responsible for less nutrients in your fruits and vegetables. But don’t shy away from these essentials because those guys still pack a punch when it comes to nutrition.

Zero Weights, Zero Problem: Strength Training Without Weights

Can’t get to the gym or don’t have your own weights at home? That’s no excuse to skip strength training. We show you a variety of moves that rely on your own body weight to get toned. (more…)

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Samantha

Yoga Teacher Barbie Bends Children’s Advocates Out of Shape

Does controversy exist on its own or do we wait until the media tells us that we need to get hot and bothered about something?

Either way, the latest catalyst for consumer outrage is the new Yoga Teacher Barbie. She’s part of an exclusive line of Barbies in the “I Can Be…” series from Mattel and you can only find her in Target stores. The series isn’t new. Back in 2024, the brand ran an online voting competition to choose two Barbies for the series. The winners were a news anchor and computer engineer. The whole idea, according to Barbie.com, is to “ignite a national movement to inspire girls.” Who wouldn’t want to get on board with that?

Apparently it takes a twisty-legged, spandex-dressed doll to stir up a little unnecessary controversy. Just in time for the election year and the Olympics, the “I Can Be” series also includes a president and a tennis player, track star, swimmer, and gymnast. But it’s the yoga teacher that’s got people bent out of shape.

Chelsea Roff at IntentBlog.com said “Kids are being exposed to yoga at an early age, encouraged to stay active, and taught about mind-body awareness practices before they even hit kindergarten. All good things! But something about seeing that sickly-proportioned doll’s foot behind her head just makes me cringe. As if the stereotypes of yoga weren’t bad enough already, now kids are implicitly being taught that yoga teachers look like a big-headed Pam Anderson.”

We didn’t see it that way. We, like Kathryn Budig, saw a doll. Just a toy that lets little girls’ imaginations run wild. (more…)

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Natalie K

Life Size Barbie Shows Young Girls the Dangers of Unrealistic Body Expectations

Galia Slayen has gotten a lot of attention for building a life-sized Barbie to help bring awareness for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

Her Barbie certainly looks like an exaggerated ideal, much like other cartoons and toys. Unfortunately, Galia wasn’t able to create a proportional head and used a toy to top off her life-sized Barbie, but the other proportions are dead on for what Barbie would look like if she were a real woman. While it is certainly clear that Barbie’s waistline is unrealistically thin, I would hate to see what any of Disney’s princesses would like compared to a real human body.

Barbie is just one more example of how the media favors an unrealistic ideal when it comes to body shapes and sizes. Let’s not forget He-man and G.I. Joe when we consider what toys suggest to children. There are toys and cartoons and then there are airbrushed images in magazines and movie stars. Call it unrealistic or idealism, we are surrounded from early childhood. The problem comes when we start to expect this impossibly unrealistic exaggeration from ourselves as real people. That is when we can start to see unhealthy attempts to achieve such impossible ideals and the development of eating disorders.

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Posted on May 3, 2024 by Brooke Randolph