The Problem with Barbie

My friend Steph's daughter Annika just turned three and we gave her a Barbie for her birthday. A little background on the Barbie purchase.

Some of you may have been surprised that I bought a Barbie, what with the inherent problematic body image baggage involved in foisting this doll on a little girl. First of all, I would rather my child turn into a goody goody Barbie cheerleader any day over deciding to go the Bratz route; Have you seen those little hussy dolls? They might as well have named those dolls Slutz!

Secondly, I debated it while on the toy aisle with two screaming children in tow, and decided that three year olds don't really HAVE a body image yet, and they just want to brush the doll's hair and dress her up and make her have fun jobs. And when they do get around to having a body image, I know that Annika (and her sister, Dagny) will be kickass girls with a healthy body image and will just use Barbie to turn unrealistic standards of beauty on their ear by making Barbie a Nobel-prize-winning Physicist, punk rock drummer, or something fun like that. I speak from experience here. Just ask Malibu Barbie, who had the fireplace hearth breast reduction (scrape Barbie's chest back and forth over bricks on hearth until desired breast flatness is achieved), and then shaved her head, wore Ken's tuxedo, and decided to be the Dream House butler.