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Tahoe Family Guy vs. Barbie |
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Written by Andrew Cristancho/Tahoe World - View Profile
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Monday, 31 March 2008 |
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It happened, just the other day, my 5-year-old daughter got her first Barbie doll.
For me this is wrong on so many different levels.
The doll she saw advertised on television was made in China. Cheap child labor, human rights violations, environmental concerns... Lead paint for goodness sake.
This is not to say the makers of Barbie or their agents engage or promote such problems — I haven't done the research, so I don't know, but I'm a parent, so I worry.
Another problem I, being a born-in-the-1960s dad, have with this American icon of hard plastic, is that it symbolizes everything bad about consumerism: Cheaply made goods sold at a huge markup, while Barbie herself personifies the apparent archetypal American woman — blond, tan, skinny, scantily clad and with lots of makeup.
 For some elitist reason, I was proud that my daughter didn't want the doll because it was Barbie; she wanted it because the manufacturers added something new to this series. Nope, not larger plastic molded breasts — umm... they are big enough for a child's doll.
This series comes with a family of dogs and puppies for lil' Barb to take care of; the smallest puppy drinks from a gilded pink squeeze bottle and when you squeeze it — it pees. Well, the water runs out the hole manufactured into its rear end.
Perhaps one of the strategies of Barbie's marketing team that my wife and I unwittingly fell for was, they knew pseudo-environmentalist-liberal parents like us would not have bought the doll were it not for the family of dogs including piddle puppy.
Because of my daughter's fascination with the incontinent rubber pooch, Barbie stayed in her box for the first couple of hours she arrived. I was actually the first one in the house that picked her up; I wanted to look at Barbie to see why she is so loved and so reviled in our culture.
 I intrinsically knew there was something bad about the doll — because of a mother with a feminist bent. I looked at the female doll and I saw a model of one type and shape of woman.
"Honey, you know that is not how mommy is shaped right?" my wife asked our daughter. "That is not how all women are shaped, you know that right?"
My daughter just murmured "uhh-huhh" as she continued to make the little rubber puppy relieve itself on the purple Barbie newspaper provided in the box. At least this series of America's darling promotes print news media — even if it is just to pretend-urinate on.
Tahoe Family Guy Andrew Cristancho has lived and worked in Tahoe since 1994. He has a 5 year-old daughter and enjoys being “Mr. Mom” in his freetime.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 31 March 2008 )
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