Thursday, March 05, 2009

Ban Barbie?






This is a trivial story. Nobody is going to ban the Barbie doll. Neither is anyone going to make a doll that has hot flashes, even though Barbie is now fifty years old. And yes, I'm writing about it so that I make all you comment. It's lonely here, you know.

I remember my Barbies, by the way. They weren't real ones because we didn't have enough money for real ones, and that meant I couldn't actually show them to someone else, without being told that I actually had no Barbies.

One of my not-Barbies had no hair because I cut it off. Instead of hair it had tattoos on its face and earrings made out of pins. You stuck the pin straight through the head! I don't remember actually playing with the dolls, but I do remember being annoyed with the tiny feet permanently extended in some kind of a doll orgasm.

And of course the Barbie is not a reflection of real women. It's a reflection of American beauty standards for women. But it was revolutionary in one sense: It was not a doll intended to be treated maternally.