I used to play with my Barbie doll a lot as a kid.
But she annoyed me.
Not because most of the playsets you could buy had her doing stereotypically feminine things (cooking, riding ponies, being a flight attendant, being a princess, etc.), and the few you could find ready to do man things absolutely HAD to wear pink while doing so.
Not because I realised that if she were real, she would literally snap at the waist. Little did I know that she was completely disproportionate and I would never grow up to look like that. I'm not sure I would have cared if I did know.
I wasn't a Jr. Feminist. In fact, I was probably the furthest thing from a Feminist imaginable. I dreamed of becoming a ballerina or a figure skater and marrying a prince (or a hockey player if I couldn't find a prince). My favorite color was pink and the EasyBake oven was the coolest thing ever invented.
It was because she was so prone to wardrobe malfunctions.
Her wildly exaggerated curves made changing Barbie's outfit nearly impossible for my tiny 5-year-old hands. This was magnified by the fact that most of the clothing you could buy for Barbie was made of cheap polyester and had almost zero stretch to it. I would spend what felt like hours tugging at Barbie in one hand, and minature pants, skirts, dresses and shirts in the other, trying to get her ensemble in place without accidentally beheading Barbie in the process.
And when I finally finished, her plastic high heels would fall off as I played with her! Of course, this was assuming that I could find two shoes that matched in the first place, since there seemed to be a mouse with a tiny shoe fetish living in our house at the time and stealing them.
At any rate, I grew up with a healthy self image, despite having played with Barbie. In fact, the difficulties Barbie experienced in living her day-to-day plastic life illustrated to me that she wasn't a good role model, appearance wise.
So anyway, Barbie: Unfun toy? Definitely. Self esteem destroyer? ...I didn't think so.
There's some good Canadian standards -- a prince or a hockey player. ;-)
ReplyDeleteMy sister and I eventually resorted to shoving the heads back on the Barbies when they came off. Sure, their necks were basically nonexistent after that, but at least we didn't have to throw out the dolls. Most of the time, though, our dolls either never changed clothes or didn't wear any clothes at all.
And what a crazy coincidence... the shoe-eating mouse had relatives at our house!