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anada307
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.* O . . .. ..O .. 307 09 Mar 2001 ) ( ')
.* O O* o o o o o o o ( / )
* ***O O O O O O O O O \( _)|
* O o o.*..o.*..o.*..o. .net "Sucks To Be Barbie" *
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* |,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' by X-tabai *
* '---''(_/--' `-'\_) *mE0w* o
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'Anada is cat-friendly..o*`
I think I am the only person in the universe who hesitates to blame
Barbie for the fragile self-esteem of girls around the world. I do not
think that Barbie is the devil. My parents never hinted that I should
strive to look like her. I don't WANT to look like her. I do not sit
around obsessing over the fact that my breasts aren't larger than my head
and my waist isn't the size of my neck. I also don't expect other people to
look like that, and am terribly disturbed when they even come close. Barbie
is not my standard of beauty, nor was she ever.
I had about a thousand Barbies when I was younger, plus a huge Barbie
house and Barbie cars and Barbie pets and a wardrobe that Imelda Marcos
would be jealous of. I would spend hours just dressing and undressing my
Barbies until I was satisfied for that moment. Then they would do fun
things like lounge around the house, maybe have a drama with Ken where they
confessed their undying love for each other. One of my favorite games was
"Superhero Barbie," where I would dress her in her most menacing bathing
suit and have her beat up on Ken with her super secret ninja powers. Yes, I
know this was probably not normal, but that's the point. After all, if
Barbie was so busy relieving me of my uniqueness, how could I come up with
this stuff?
To me Barbie was just another toy that I could bend to my own strange
and selfish ends. She had a much greater range of uses than my stuffed
animals or Transformers or My Little Ponies, though she did fall short of
Legos and cardboard boxes. I could make up the most elaborate scenes and
games and whatnot with my Barbies, things that I couldn't do in real life
because I didn't have enough people to play with me, or enough clothes to
mess with, or enough space to roam in. Barbie was my key to realizing all
sorts of pre-adolescent fantasies, to exercising my imagination to create
worlds and characters and stories to fill them. Oh yes, that Barbie just
sucked the creativity right out of me. Or so those anti-Barbie people would
have me think.
The problem is that people are ascribing immutable personality
characteristics to a doll. They are creating a fictional Barbie world where
only looks and popularity are important, where Barbie is some sort of
plaything for Ken and all she does is sit around obsessing over her clothes
and hair. These people lose track of the simple fact that BARBIE IS NOT A
PERSON. She is a TOY. She doesn't have her own separate Barbie plane of
existence. She has no dreams, hopes, goals, ideas--nothing. She doesn't
even move on her own. She can't tell people what to do, how to think or
feel. She can't brainwash anyone because she can't do anything but what the
person using her desires. Barbie is just a big hunk of plastic unless some
little girl picks her up and gives her a life. She can be anything that
girl wants, be it a doctor or a lawyer or a veterinarian, or even a lazy
airhead. It is up to the person playing with her; it is not up to Barbie,
because Barbie can't make any independent decisions.
People need to stop blaming Barbie for lack of creativity and loss of
uniqueness and low self-esteem and all the other ills that plague girls as
they are growing up. They need to stop blaming anyone at all, and instead
worry about how to fix the problems, if indeed there are any solutions.
Personally, I'll be more than happy to buy Barbies for my kids, as
long as they don't leave them all over the floor. Nothing more painful than
a Barbie hand jabbing into your foot at three in the morning.
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( o.o ) (c) Anada e'zine anada307 by X-tabai o
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