I'm A Barbie Girl ...

*written as an email respose to a friend. *

In my family Barbie is on her third generation. My mother played with them, I played with them and now my daughter is an avid fan.

In spite of Feminists rants against the blonde icon, my Great Grandmother loved the thing. She bought them for my mother because she thought Barbie defied the you have to be a mother and a housewife ideas that were perpetuated.

See before Barbie the only dolls were baby dolls. My Great Grandmother hated the idea of giving her granddaughter a baby doll. She was a Feminist, she wanted more for her granddaughters.

Now when I was a kid Barbie was the bane of all Feminists. An icon of sluttiness. I remember my Mother ranting that a human woman couldn't walk with Barbie's proportions. I remember the "Math is hard " fiasco (there was a Barbie put out that said Math is hard, big drama) .

Due to this Feminist insanity at the time, my mother said no to Barbie. But my Great Grandmother was a different story. She bought me one for Christmas when I was six. She told me her view on Barbie.

See there's a "Career line " that they produce. Barbie has been a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Scientist, in every branch of the military, an astronaut, a School Teacher, worked at McDonald's, the list is endless.

I remember the rants, I remember the hot pink toy aisle. I remember my father giving in to my Great Grandmother, to me and my sister's joy.

I look at my daughters Barbies and I see the Feminists won. Her waist is larger, her feet are larger, her breasts are smaller, her face isn't as pretty.

However, girls have lost big time. Barbie has been replaced. By Bratz dolls, which don't have careers and dress sluttier than any Barbie I ever had. Or Goth Dolls. Or Monster High (they're the daughters of characters like Frankenstein. ).

Barbie has been ripped off, tossed aside and forgotten. The failure to see that Barbie was revolutionary. Her roots are in a sex doll. She was the first not a baby doll, doll. She was used by the company to promote a Feminist agenda, only to be cannibalized by them. The whole idea was to show that girls could be more than just Mothers.

The Feminists of today can rant and rave about the portrayal of women in the media all they want. All of us are forgetting something. We had CHOICE, while women before us didn't. We had ICONS showing us we could be more than our predecessors. We were blessed to live in the post feminist revolution era.

I am of the firm opinion that a recognition of icons like Barbie is necessary. Hasn't the time come to get the hidden message Barbie contained? That a woman can be sexual, even beautiful and have a career, a brain in her head. That there is nothing wrong with being feminine and a Feminist.

Barbie isn't the enemy, the media isn't the enemy, men aren't the enemy, we are. Tearing down each other for how we look, being catty, and continuing to perpetuate the very stereotypes we as women claim to hate or wish to defy.