Schenectady Synecdoche

Guilty as charged. I've purchased Barbie for my girls, all colors, not just the white one. But I really think that Barbie sucks!

Yes, not only is she is ignorant, but she is also an indelible figure that sickens me. I once read a license plate cover that read, "When I grow up, I want to be just like Barbie. That B-t-h has everything!" The car was a BMW. In the town where I saw this, if you were driving a BMW, you were placed in the category of the one who had everything. I thought to myself, what more could that person want?

Then I thought about the Barbie collection--Barbie is apparently an orphaned daughter who has estranged sisters, brothers, and cousins. She's a career woman who's been married, and apparently divorced. She owns lots of material things, and she even has friends who kiss up to her. What's more important is the fact that she can't hold a relationship with Ken, no matter what color he is. There's no real love in her life aside from the relationship she has with material things. How sad. Who want's to lead that kind of life?

I think if Mattel and Golden Books really want to do something useful to help educate young girls, the first thing they should do is get that girl's figure reshaped into something that could actually exist in real life. Let's make her a size 12 or 14 (the current average women's size in America). Let's give her a waist to hip to bust ratio that wouldn't have her falling on her face. Let's make Barbie's friend come not only is a variety of colors, but a variety of shapes, to show little girls that their bodies are okay just the way they are.

I had an extensive Barbie collection as a girl. In fact, I kept most of it until after I was married, thinking I might have a child to give it to someday. I did end up giving it to a little girl, but if I had a child now, I'd really resist buying them at all until or unless this very important and basic change is made.

The defense of Barbie is that she teaches that "we girls can do anything". Too bad she never asks what "we girls" SHOULD do!
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