An image of a naked plus-sized model with Barbie’s proportions drawn onto her body has gone viral on social media.
The picture of Katie Halchishick — co-founder of body image blog Healthy is the New Skinny — was shot for the November 2011 issue of O magazine.
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It made headlines in the US at the time, but has now gone global after being shared by thousands of women.
The image — shot by fashion photographer Matthew Rolston — features a naked Katie with a plastic surgeon’s dotted lines all over her body to show what would need to be cut away to give Katie the body of a Barbie doll.
Viewers have commented that the image is so powerful because it drives home the fact that even a gorgeous woman like Katie still falls so far short of so-called “perfection”.
The picture has also revived the debate about Barbie, and her suitability as a role model for millions of young girls worldwide.
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While this is not the first time people have criticised the blonde doll and her impossible proportions, it is interesting to see them drawn onto a real person.
Her neck is strangely long and thin, eyes creepily large, waist impossibly thin and breasts ridiculously large.
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