Here's one from the fruityfantastica archives:
This Christmas, we finally faced the dilemma that has become a rite of passage for thinking parents everywhere: to Barbie or not to Barbie. Our girl is not a true Girly-girl, and so we've had a pretty easy job of it these last eight years.
at soul-sucking department store:
"Hey mommy, what's down the next aisle?"
(telltale pink glow searing my peripheral vision)
"Wow, look at this! Over here! Pretend bacon!"
at home:
"Did you know that Amber has 27 Barbies?"
"Whoa, that's a lot of Barbies. It must be a big job for her to clean them up all the time. So if there was a fight between a Bengal tiger and a Komodo dragon, who would win?"
Our girl is both easily distracted and a good sport, and that has served us well for many years. But we are also not unreasonable parents, so when she recently started trying to make Barbies out of toilet paper rolls and dressing them in Kleenex, we decided that the time had come to end our unspoken boycott. What's the harm, really? She's eight and a half - surely past the most impressionable stage, and likely to outgrow the whole thing soon enough.
So we got the least skanky Barbies we could find, and a little house setup that I have to grudgingly admit is kind of cool (a foldup toilet!). And we held our breath.
I guess my objections to Ms. B follow the usual lines - unrealistic body issues, limited gender roles, the way plastic crap begets more plastic crap. But it's also more general than that. I think it's the way that toys like this somehow pasteurize natural kid weirdness:
It's Saturday morning, and Barbie has the
whole day to do whatever she wants! Should she...
- join her friends at the mall for a shopping spree
- surf the 'net, then have some friends over for pizza and a movie
- star in a rock video
- start a goat farm with Eggy and Roundy, then save a zebra that fell in the collapsible toilet
We just keep on praying that our girl will keep on choosing option #4, or some reasonable facsimile, over and over for the rest of her life.
So the other day she came up to me with Semi-Skanky Barbie (not that we call her that out loud! no!) and a little stuffed bear she has had for most of her life. His attire resembles the A&W Root Bear but he has no known corporate affiliation. And she said this:
"Mom, I've decided that these two aren't married anymore. Now they're in high school. But they still love each other."
I love this unpasteurized girl.
