March 29, 2006

• Yes yes yes yes yes - maybe finally a generation of women will no longer revere the idea of 'perfect' please tell me that this is the start of a generational shift so plastic surgeons will no longer be on the 'top earners' list. Barbie is evil - women have faults and should be loved and adored and worshipped (ok step too far maniacal laughter) for them. Younger sister adored her Barbies - never understood my glee about using the nasty things as crash barriers/crash tests and speed humps on much longed for slot car set - finally after 25 years exonerated. Ooops Barbie is babyish - must still be left behind? Um Quo Vadit? - these girl childs scare the hell out of me!
• Actually Chyren if it be me u refer to.. sorry forgot middle name was Germaine Greer - but i truly have hated Barbie since I was a child dolls were just so boring unlike meccano or playing marbles....I have always hated dolls of any kind - can tell you all about the make and model of my tonka truck tho....it was cool dug holes AND buried stupid dolls.
• Hey rather than derail this one - could someone do the 'what is misogynist' line - like really get into it? I've been accused of being anti women myself due to dislike of inappropriate displays at work, tears etc and total hatred of artifice to achieve.... Also very very critical of 'female mafia' very evident in workplace although denied - problem is to be part of the 'female mafia' you have to have 1. 'Won out over males' 2. Have children and be in a 'nurturing' situation because your life is so much more difficult and 3. Be part of the 'gossip' brigade. Lose on all counts - new thread or????
• The conversation can go nowhere without knowing your gender.
• f
• Well then you can't be anti-female, then, can you? Because you are one. If anyone accuses you of it, just laugh at them and say "I can't be anti-female, because I am one! Look! I have baps and pudendum!" There. Problem solved. Thank me later.
• Is it just me, or does anyone else find the beckycarter uber creepy?
• Yeah but i can be you wanna be better as good as your coworker - then don't use your sex to get there ie don't bring your eyeshadow. high heels and wiggling hips with you..... I am also anti female bitch fest/gossip and network! It all pisses me to tears - I get where i am going not because of my sex, religion, or where I buy my make up and sadly in the last 10 years that has been the hardest obstacle to overcome - I am sorry I do not do babies pregnancy, breast cancer or childcare gossip at work - sadly i also do not discuss cricket (AFL another matter) I can assure you that the worst bias in my day to day has been from women not from men. Problem not solved Chyren you are too too glib
• ^ beckycarter site
• Sorry age old barbie hatred/insecurity wanders out and....
• "Problem not solved Chyren you are too too glib" You gave me a smile, for which I thank you. :) I am glib. I like that. Yeah, that sums me up pretty much. I wish more people would take me as being too glib rather than, as more usual, insufferably grouchy and cynical. ahhhh.. From what you say, fly, you would probably get on well with Mrs Chy who also despises all that bullshit you mention. But because she is an attractive lady, and has this attitude, you wouldn't believe the shit she cops from other women in the workplace, usually jealousy or whathaveyou. As a matter of fact, the first comment I was going to make in this thread was that it didn't surprise me girls torturing their barbies, because when they get older they will torture each other, so they're just getting into practice. But I chickened out and put the HTML comment joke instead. Which you helped me complete. ALthough I fucked up the size & spacing of the closing tag, if I hadn't it would have been a classic. :|
• Ok walks neatly into chyren trap and bows head - actually Chy apparently i didn't need to be taught cynicism 101 when joining public service had already been assessed as passed! Barbies should still be mutilated though!! And sadly your comment that they practise on Barbie before the real world is too precise and accurate. However that nasty little piece of "plastic aspiration of womanhood" still deserves every piece of voodoo the horrid thing gets I mean at one point she was a role model! Does anybody remember the horror of "power suit and shoulder pad' Barbie in the 80's?
• Men had the same thing. We had Action Man as a role model (or GI Joe as the Yanks call him), plus we aren't allowed to cry, ever, so we are all cripplingly emotionally retarded for the rest of our lives. So suck it up.
• > anyone else find the beckycarter uber creepy? yes. it took me a little time to figure out these are people in the photos.
• Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!
• We couldn't cry, but we could listen to the Smiths. Same thing, right?
• The beckycarter thing is singly the most frightening thing I have ever seen or would hope to see. Now, pardon me, but I have to go murder JonBenét again.
• Mmmmmm . . . pudendum
• fly, I think you and I would get on well, except for that whole, you know, punctuation thing. I have to focus extra hard on your comments, but maybe that's the intent? AHA, I'm on to you lady!! Girls have always done awful things to their dolls and each other. Girls are jerks, and no fooling. They get better at it as they get older. The pretty ones are the worst.
• "Girls have always done awful things to their dolls and each other." And thats why guys love the internet.
• ...girls subject their Barbie dolls to torture, maiming and decapitation as a way of expressing their changing feelings about the doll. I can't speak for the kids of today, but that's not why we mutilated our Barbie dolls. We just did it because it was fun! We didn't hate them or reject their vision of womankind or anything like that, I tell you. It was just messy fun! I'd have done the same with a G.I. Joe if you'd given me one. I also crammed rocks down the throat of my Baby Alive doll.
• People create grotesques -- as if we need to have them, for whatever reason. Gargoyles. Zombies. Frankenstein. Transformers. Barbies. Klingons. What disturbs me is not the way kids react to Barbies, but I simply can't grasp why some grown women want to 'collect' these ugly wee things.
• I'm with Lara. I lavished loving attention on my Barbies and tried to destroy them in equal measure. Barbies are different from china dolls. You know a china doll will break, so you treat it carefully. Barbie's made of plastic, so you can use her as a sword in a pinch, or throw her at someone's head, or whatever. My friends with G.I. Joes did the same thing. Kids are great at improptu stress-tests of their toys: how much can this take? fly: I also had lots of Tonka trucks. (Cool feminist parents who gave me one boy toy for every girl toy I had) My Barbies were in charge of driving the Tonkas around.
• My Action Man fucked Barbie up the arse. Or he would have done, had I known about anal sex back when I were a wee laddie.
• I used to place Barbies and Thundercats in inappropriate poses. My grade school counselor had awesome candy in her office.
• hmmmm...my sisters and I played with barbies, but we also had other toys and games, many of which did not in any way manipulate our images of our selves as female (I defy any of you to find misogynist messages in playdoh barbershop!!) yes, the message is pervasive and damaging, but lets keep a sense of perspective here, its still just a toy. I NEVER thought of barbie as an icon/role model/projection of myself or my future etc., I thought of barbie as a toy, and not a fav either, as dolls are less fun than say, playdoh barbershop... awesome! I just totally discovered the sexist subtext of playdoh barbershop!!! its now called fuzzy pumper crazy cuts, obviously one of those 'unisex' salons the kids are all on about these days!
• I played with my Barbie the way girls were supposed to, you know, using the doll as a way to practise being a grownup: going to the pub, getting drunk, picking up random men (usually my sister's knitted soldier doll) and hooking up. When I went to visit my friend whose parents bought her every feminine accessory imaginable, my Barbie would get into bar fights with her Barbie and she would cry and send me home. True story.
• I'm with Medusa on this. I think these researchers are gleaning too much information with regards to the Barbie doll in this study. They recount how the little girls view Barbie as "babyish" and "unfashionable" but then the researchers themselves add in "because she is a feminine icon." That's not a direct quote from the little girls but their own surmising. They then go on to say that the girls don't like the Barbie because it represents a younger childhood that they have grown out of. They would probably say the same thing with any toy they had outgrown! As much as I hate Barbie and what it stands for, I'm not going to pretend that Barbie in particular is a specific target of hatred for little girls based on the adult iconography we see as adults.
• I swear, that is one of the most awesomest Barbie stories I ever heard, tracicle! I usually just yanked the heads off of 'em when my Obi-wan Kenobi or Darth Vader would decapitate them with a lightsaber. I often wonder how many dollars worth of Star Wars figures are buried in the yard of my parents' old house... after battles, I buried the "dead" ones in the yard (not counting the Barbies, as my sister wouldn't let me bury them), and occasionally later forgot where I'd put them.
• I used to think that my G.I. Joe was a tool of the oppressors of big, corrupt governemnt. But then 9/11 happened, and everything changed.
• Yes. That's what I meant. After 9/11, I learned how to spell "government" fuck
• Um... dolls can't be tortured because they are just pieces of plastic. Would that people could write about reality without inserting words that don't mean anything in the context they are being used. Should read "subject barbie to mock torture" or similar.
• Barbie was never tortured deliberately - but she did meet with several accidents. There was the Day the Dog Got Barbie and Chewed Half Her Head Off, The Day of Hairdressing, and Blowdrying Barbie's Hair which Then Melted and Had To Be Cut Off and so on... I never saw Barbie as an ideal or role model though. She was just a toy.
• I am totally going to go torture a martini by slowly sipping it to death.
• Mord, I am presently brutally torturing a bottle of very nice caberet to death...and I am enjoying every sadistic sip!
• I hope you're enjoying the dancing girls.
• Um Medusa sorry, however, Koko inspired improvement of punctuation; hope Liza Minelli enjoys your torturing - me i'm luving the cabernet. Gotta hate a smart A* dontchya?
• Barbie in my world was never deliberately tortured, she was hated and buried by tonka cos of parents insisting that older child be involved in younger childs play. That involved hours of torture of 'judging' barbie dressups and subsequent useless parades (gee wonder why I'm not employed by,and paid a fortune by VOGUE?) I mean how much more mindless and boring can you get - besides they interrupted my reading! Always so much better when I could get sent to my room because I had made sibling and friends cry! Yeah Report card...... Does not play well with others! (Actually think I just eternally jealous because I was only ever given a Cindi doll)
• "Um... dolls can't be tortured because they are just pieces of plastic."
• Um Medusa sorry, however, Koko inspired improvement of punctuation; hope Liza Minelli enjoys your torturing - me i'm luving the cabernet. Gotta hate a smart A* dontchya? *gurgle*
• For the record, fly, I enjoy your writing style, wacky syntax and all. I was just "taking the piss", as the Brits like to say. No offense intended. I never "tortured" Barbie, but I did have a big, floppy purple rabbit. I cut holes in its head and back, into which I inserted rocks. Then I would beat it against a wall until the "brain" and "heart" flew out. My brother and I would take turns making it tumble down the stairs. True story. I loved that rabbit.
• The heart? Too much Indiana Jones as a kid?
• Yeah, I dunno where that came from. I was a weird little kid. imagine!
• I had a SixMillionDollarMan action figure as a kid, the one with the 'bionic eye', a hole in the back of the head to peep thru. Piece of crap. Could jump buildings and lift cars but one round with a neighbours' dog and he was torn to shreds.
• Ooo! I cut my Stretch Armstrong open and he had pink goo inside!
• Yeah. Wasn't it delicious?
• Stretch Armstrong rocked!
• you see, petebest this is why I'm not supposed to post drunk. I tell details much too personal and intimate about my weirdass life, and I make the funny typos...and now I would like to do my Zacarias Moussaoui imitation and testify against myself. ak!
• Daquirias Messowwie? I had a banana daquiri recently. Bleah. Rum is just wrong Now make with the drunken posting! *clap!* *clap!*
• Who, me? *hic*
• Pipe down, rub-a-dub!
• can't get drunk until AFTER the Jeopardy! try-out, but then I am going to the 'release' party for my friend's new porn website, so I probably won't drink-n-post tonight....
• this is why I'm not supposed to post drunk. What, isn't everybody here posting drunk? I"ve always done it that waydj kde9kfl dl./4,
• *refills Flaggy's drink*
• today I will start a new (har) tradition and post hungover!