T O D A Y
Banned in Vermont
The littlest harlot
My Barbie, myself
The skinny on Barbie
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E++T A L K What is the truth about giving birth? Does it hurt like hell? Share your pain in Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y "Just because I'm HIV-positive, can't I bear children?
Reluctant role model
Coyote dreams
Cujo's bite is worse than his bark
Escape from parenting
Toying with us
- - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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I had no trouble passing for a conscientious parent until two years ago, when a serious Barbie gaffe occurred right in my home. A mother in the neighborhood we had just moved into stopped by to introduce herself. As her daughter and my daughter, Anna, played upstairs, we self-righteously bashed another pet evil, Disney. Never, we clucked, would we expose our children to such commercialism, such violence, such Technicolor. "Look!" my new friend's daughter suddenly burst in as she thrust forward a hot-pink plastic case that exuded Barbie. "Look what Anna has!" I cannot adequately describe the smirk that appeared on my new friend's face at that moment. I can only tell you that I felt like a hooker who had stumbled upon a PTA meeting. Thank God she didn't find the Oreos in my cupboard. From that day forward Barbie was an underlying template of tension in our friendship. All her daughter wanted to do at our house was play Barbie. Ground rules were drawn. Anna was not to bring Barbies to her friend's house. It would be best if Barbie were "put away" when the friend came over. They could play with Barbie, but they couldn't change her clothes. "No Barbies please" was scrawled across the child's sixth birthday invitation. I should note that Barbie boycotts are hardly a new concept to mothers. According to M.G. Lord's definitive book "Forever Barbie," Mattel's early marketing studies showed that disapproving mothers felt that playing with such an adult doll might give their sweet little daughters adult ideas. My mother refused to buy me a Barbie when I pined for one 30 years ago. By age 6, I was obsessed. I would devour the Sears Christmas catalog. Malibu Barbie. Barbie Camper. Barbie Dream House. At last an older brother -- who is now, tellingly, a creative art director for an advertising agency -- bought me a Barbie. He also got me the Corvette and a Barbie house and taught me the fine art of Barbie torture -- from sending her speeding into walls to using her as a shot put. We called her Barbie Astronaut. Those memories kicked in one day a year or so ago after what would be the last Barbie conversation I had with my friend. As she was serving French-roast coffee from beans picked by adequately compensated farmers in a Latin American cooperative, she suggested that perhaps it would be best if we banned even Barbie's name from the children's conversation. The seriousness on the face of this otherwise intelligent woman struck me. How had this 11-and-a-half-inch piece of hardened plastic assumed such a gigantic role in our parenting strategy, in our daily thoughts? If Barbie were a living woman, I wanted to tell her, she'd be unemployed with chronic back pain from walking on her toes all day! She'd be weak from malnutrition and so vapid that pencil sharpening would be a challenge! "Barbie Unbound" was born that day. It was time, I decided, to test Barbie's grace under pressure; time for this cultural icon of perfected femininity to endure the tougher trials of womanhood -- menopause, child rearing, rejection, sexism, weight gain -- and see how well she managed. By that afternoon I had come up with a play guide for putting Barbie into new and exciting roles. PMS Barbie. Barbie d'Arc. Overweight Adolescent Outcast Barbie. Tailhook Barbie. Barbie DeGeneres and midge d. lang. Barbie Plath. Staging her liberation in "Barbie Unbound" was no easy task, however. For Virginia Slims Barbie Dates Tobacco Lawyer Ken, my husband, Charlie, and I spent nights rolling miniature Barbie cigarettes to fit into the newer Barbie's finger ring holes (created, presumably, for her engagement to Ken). My daughter watched in horror as Charlie whipped up a tiny guillotine for Barbie Antoinette and began severing heads. I had to get up at dawn one morning to paste brown hair on the legs and armpits of Co-Op Barbie.
Now "Barbie Unbound" is out in bookstores in my town. Yet neither
that nor Mattel's recent announcement of a new line of fatter, hippier
Barbies has as yet appeased the people in Montpelier. "Ah, Mattel just
wants to sell more clothes," remarked one local resident, flipping through
the book the
other day. "She's still Barbie."
Sarah Strohmeyer is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two children.
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