March 08, 2004

The Anti-Barbie Club
posted by forksclovetofu 20 years ago
  • Good message, LOUSY site. Frames everywhere, and the pink gives me a headache. But, I reiterate, good message. Barbie! Yata! *chop*
  • This thread is made for Dizzy... (Where is Dizzy, by the way - he hasn't left us all alone now, has he?)
  • Dizzy said he'd be away for 2 weeks, I think I recall, dng. Barbie seems to evoke great irritation in some quarters, though little girls like her. I must say Barbie's less ugly to my eyes than the raggedy Ann dolls or the (non-PC) gollywogs one still saw when I was a kid.
  • Oh, yeah, now I remember. Hey, Dizzy, I hope your move went okay...
  • And anyone else remember the Cabbage Patch kids? I thought they were really ugly. And googly-eyed.
  • Cabbage patch kids were and still are beautiful! I still have mine from 1983, *sigh*. Their eyes aren't googly, but recessed a little and painted on, at least the cheap Matel kind. They smelled like baby powder and plastic. There is good nostalgia on this site - including ballerina Sindy and the Jem dolls. I had never known who made that ballerina Sindy - I had one before I was allowed to have an expensive Barbie, and I think I may have trashed it (I was 5), but it definately had good play value. It was also easy to find as a brunette, which is always appealing. Best solution for being annoyed at Barbieness? Just don't let your daughter go crazy. Let her have a Barbie when she's old enough, but not the lunchbox and definately no talking Barbie (unless it's talking Malibu Stacy, sorry, Lisa Lionheart, of course.) And watch more Buffy. (You too will learn Californiaese!)
  • Well... I can understand the point about Barbie's drawbacks. But I think that actually watching the way little girls play with Barbies eases those worries. The glitzy outfits soon become tatty and it becomes about sending Barbie off on adventures. Little girls also don't emulate dolls - they mother them. One paragraph on the site says something about how Barbies foster consumption and an obsessive regard for appearance, and then makes some comment about Michael Jackson and Imelda Marcos. I doubt either of those two ever played with Barbies. And even if they had their problems, like our society's over-emphasis on appearance, are way too complex to be traced back to an 11.5" hunk of plastic. The site has some good points to make, but they make them in such an amateurish, hyperbolic way.
  • Wow, what a fantastic site! Not sure if they upgraded since March but I had no frames and very little pink and the site looks very professional and easy to navigate to me! Great message too for parents and collectors, let's face it we've all met the kind they are talking about. Absolutely hilarious!