The Controversial World of Barbie

Thanks to a rare McDonald's Happy Meal, Maisie has been introduced to the Wonderful World of Barbie. She now has two Barbie Fairies, and they are of course, scantily clad.

If you have little girls, you can try and avoid letting Barbie into your house. You can try and keep your daughter playing with some other more, well, "wholesome" doll. I know people who swore they would ban Barbie, with her completely unattainable body type, but all it takes is one birthday party where other kids are invited, and she's in. It could be worse...it could be Bratz dolls. Those girls are dirty whores.

I don't think I have a problem with Barbie. I LOVED playing with Barbies when I was a little girl. I had Malibu Barbie (she was my first one that I got when I was 4, and someone stepped on her and dented in her boob!), Peaches 'N Cream Barbie, Barbie & The Rockers, Pink & Pretty Barbie (that I thought was called "Prank & Pretty). We also had some Barbie with super long hair, a Skipper and her friend Courtney, a couple of Ken dolls, a Jordan doll from the New Kids on the Block and the Heart Family (Google them if you don't know who they are...they were wicked. Supposedly, they were Barbie's neighbours). We had hours of fun with those dolls...we had lots of clothes and shoes and a pretty canopy bed. And of course, Barbie paper dolls! Do they still make paper dolls? Those were so fun.

Sure, she has super long legs unlike any human...boobs that are too big for her teeny, tiny waist, and features on her face that are perfect.
(I found this on Wikipedia: One of the most common criticisms of Barbie is that she promotes an unrealistic idea of body image for a young woman, leading to a risk that girls who attempt to emulate her will become anorexic. A standard Barbie doll is 11.5 inches tall, giving a height of 5 feet 9 inches at 1/6 scale. Barbie's vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, she would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate.^[14] In 1963 the outfit "Barbie Baby-Sits" came with a book entitled How to Lose Weight which advised: "Don't eat."^[15] The same book was included in another ensemble called "Slumber Party" in 1965 along with a pink bathroom scale reading 110 lbs.,^[16] which would be around 35 lbs. underweight for a woman 5 feet 9 inches tall.^[17] In 1997 Barbie's body mold was redesigned and given a wider waist, with Mattel saying that this would make the doll better suited to contemporary fashion designs)
But I know it never caused me any kind of body issues. I loved "being" her. It was fun to pretend to be a glamourous, beautiful adult with pretty clothes, shoes and purses, a marriage and kids.

Maybe some girls wound up with body image issues because of it, but I think those would be the girls that were destined to have problems with that anyway! Maybe it came from something else. Can you really blame a DOLL?
So we now have exposure, with a couple of Barbies in our house, and I'm sure they are just the beginning of many to come!

As a side note, we took Maisie to the pediatric surgeon today to look at her belly button, and he said that it is slightly herniated, but doesn't look bad, and any fix he would do on it would be strictly cosmetic. It also could fix itself completely by the time she's 3, so he wants to see her again in a year. So far, so good!