People come in a variety of shapes and sizes and now Barbie will too (it only took about 70 years).

For decades, Barbie has influenced young girls to believe that there is only one way to look beautiful. Not only that, but many girls have felt the need to mimic her unrealistically thin and “perfectly” proportioned body, though this process is unhealthy in both mind and body.

Barbie will no longer be limited to a seemingly perfectly proportioned, skinny Caucasian girl with blue eyes. Now, there are many different ethnicities represented along with many different body types. This allows children to see that beauty has variety, and comes in all shapes and sizes.

According to Mattel there will be four different body types (tall, petite, curvy, and original), seven skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 different hairstyles. To sum it up, there will be 33 new dolls.

Junior Rianne Hunter believes that this will be beneficial to children everywhere.

“[Kids] are going to realize that everyone’s not perfect. That everyone’s beautiful,” junior Rianne Hunter said.

The original Barbie, in real life, would be 5’9” and 110 lbs. The BMI of a woman with this height and weight is 16.2 and the weight is 35 lbs. below a healthy average for a woman of that height. The original Barbie essentially prompted girls to model their bodies off of the statistics of a severely underweight person.

In fact, in the 1960’s, Mattel released “Slumber Party Barbie” which came with a dieting book for Barbie titled “How to Lose Weight” with the phrase “Don’t Eat” on the back cover. This encouraged young girls about the age of 10 and even younger to worry about their weight and body image, and even resort to eating disorders like bulimia.

This is undeniably wrong, but it is also not surprising seeing as how today, girls are constantly bombarded with images of what beauty looks like: skinny. From magazines such as Seventeen, to movies where 25 year olds are playing 16 year olds, it’s generally the same.

However, girls are held to a certain standard of “skinny.” According to society’s standards of beauty, hey can’t be too skinny, and they also need side profiles that would resemble an “S”, and they also can’t be too short or too tall.

However, these new barbies may help to “boost self-image” within young women, which will in turn reduce the amount of eating disorders in girls of the teenage age group.

For once, young women of all ethnicity and size will share physical features with Barbie, and they’ll recognize that as “beautiful.”

The new generations of young girls will come to know that beauty isn’t something they have to work for. They’ll realize that they’re fine just as they are.

The company is planning to make changes to the Ken doll as well, modeling him off of the “modern man.”

The company analyzed fashion sales of men’s clothing to determine how they should dress their new and “modern” Ken. Each of these new Ken’s will be dressed to match the new Barbies and will be more accurate to the male demographic.

Only a few of the new Barbies are up for sale on their online store, but they plan to start selling in stores on March 1.