OPINION: Tracking Racial Self-Worth

My plan has always been to track my daughter’s perception of racial self-worth through her barbie-play. In other words, instead of waiting for that Mamie and Kenneth Clark moment when I sit looking horrified as I find out my kid either hates herself or has some other twisted conception of race and worth, I always wanted to get out ahead of things.

That’s the point of the dolls.

The dolls one of several mediums I use to tell her how I feel about the physical manifestations of blackness. The dolls give her a way of telling me that she hears me, and so far, she agrees.

I grab Bella (an Alvin Ailey Mattel Collector Doll) and gush about how beautiful she is (she really, really is – you should see her) and Leah chooses her as the  main doll every time we play.

[Note: Bella is the doll in the video that is wearing the purple princess gown. The one Leah chooses as the doll she'd like to have the skin and hair of.]

I did a Clark-style doll test on Leah last April and was very pleased with what Leah said and did.

She had to take a bathroom break…but when she came back we continued her interview.

[Btw, I do NOT want her to be rock star when she grows up. I was just so shocked by that answer that reacted in an overly enthusiastic way! Rock Star? no. No. NO.]

We knew she could see color as early as three years old. We were sitting at the dinner table one night and out of the blue she announced, in the most self-satisfied way, “Me and Daddy are brown.”  At the time we were living in Bermuda, a predominately black country, and the message was clear, she felt sorry for her whitey-Momma.

Leah's favorite doll. This doll was released by Mattel in tribute to the Alivin Ailey Dance Troupe. It has short, natural hair, Ebony eyes and Mahogany skin.

After we returned to the States a few months later, we saw that Leah continued to be aware of color but her sense of the differences seemed age-appropriate and healthy.

Because Leah is black, I will always have to fear the moment when mainstream messages break through and begin to influence her, because the message in the United States is that black women are less attractive than white women. That message comes at us from every corner, in every medium, and it is relentless.  There are other harmful messages too. Blacks are less intelligent. Blacks are less moral.

I will use my own opinion and my own actions to let her know that while she might hear those messages from the larger society – those beliefs do not reign in our home and they do not reign in the homes of our friends (or they wouldn’t be our friends).

Society has been telling us for decades that there is a single standard for feminine beauty.

Playing barbies with my daughter tells me where she “is” in her awareness or compliance with these messages on any given day.   Her play choices tell me in the biggest things in the smallest ways.

I know she finds black women beautiful because she chooses them. Why does she love the dark skinned, natural haired doll the most?  Is it because I do?

Probably. My favorite dolls seem to become her favorite dolls seamlessly.

That’s fine with me. It means she knows exactly what I value. If she makes other choices that’s fine too. The most important things I can do at this point it make it abundantly clear that my values are different than the values that may seek to crush her later in life.

Should we be worried because the doll our daughter loves the most is significantly darker-skinned than she is? Leah’s skin is light brown, her favorite doll’s skin is mahogany. Leah has brown hair. Her favorite doll’s hair is black.

After all, we would definitely be worried sick if she fixated on a BBBBarbie. If that happened I would probably burn a pile of plastic bodies in a front yard bonfire.

Alex Wek is beautiful. From her Ebony skin and eyes to her tiny nose, high cheekbones, very-Sudanese forehead and hairline. I even love the cute little gap in her teeth.

To understand why her adoration of Bella doesn’t bother us, let’s imagine a beauty continuum. This continuum does not address weight (that would be a whole ‘nother post) – it only address skin, hair and eye color.  Mentally place Leah in the middle of that continuum. Imagine mainstream images of beauty at the far right end – so let’s say BBBBarbie or Pamela Anderson Lee. We put someone like Alec Wek on the Left end.

We consider that society’s messages are always trying to pull her further and further right, and further and further from self-acceptance. So as long as she is Left of herself, we are dancing a jig at our house. When she starts to choose dolls on the right side of herself, we will feel we are in trouble.

Mainstream images and messages tell us that being white is supposed to be BETTER than being brown. Mainstream images and messages tell us that having long, straight, light-colored hair is better than having short, curly, darker-colored hair.

So, I do a sort of doll test every single day when we sit down to play and so far, every day, I mentally dance a jig.

OPINION: Barbie-play for teaching Empathy

Empathy is the ability to say, “How does that person feel?” and later, “If I say what I am thinking, how will it make my friend feel?” and even later, “How can I convey what I am thinking in a way that will not seem ignorant or engender defensiveness and anger, but instead move our conversation forward?”

We, as a society, should want our children to be empathetic because it makes them better people. This article in Time Magazine talks about how teaching your kids to be empathetic teaches them not to be a bully – but it also includes much more (read it).

A child is ready to begin training in empathy as soon as they have an ability to go beyond subjective thinking. For my daughter I knew she was ready as soon as she could answer questions about familial relationships like, “Who is my mother’s granddaugher?” and “Who is my sister?” because it shows she understands that “Mom”  and “Sister” like all names for relatives are relative (ha) terms.  It’s her first understanding that how you see reality depends on “where” you are.

One way I teach empathy is by modeling. I show her how to treat others in my treatment of her. When Leah hurts herself there is the most human knee-jerk reaction wherein I want to say, “Well that’s what you get for standing on a chair.” or “Didn’t I tell you not to do that?” I read once that a lecture should only come after an expression of empathy. In other words it is important to say to your child, “I am so sorry you are hurt. I am so sorry you are in pain. Where does it hurt? Oh that looks like it hurts alot.” Only after they start to calm down is it time to say, “Were you standing on the chair?”

Again, I want her to develop her skill at empathy so that she can be more sensitive to the perspectives of others and learn to anticipate how her actions might affect others. How can I do this? Especially if I want to move beyond the basic modeling exercise wherein I am sensitive to her needs?

You know where this is going…

…I can use barbies!!

Opportunities for developing empathy are all around us, even if we don’t have time to take advantage of all of them. For example, it’s not really practical to pause our shopping activities at K-Mart to point out a person in a wheelchair and say “How do you think life is different for people in wheelchairs?”

I worked for a man who was a quadriplegic when I was twenty years old. What if I want to teach her how it might feel to be a person in a wheelchair who often gets ignored? Or treated like a child?

But we can use Becky as her bavatarbie, and then will begin to practice imagining what Becky sees, thinks and feels.

In some circumstances the lesson is that Becky feels pretty much the same way as any other person, able-bodied or not. But in some circumstances, Becky feels differently, because she is treated differently. In any play session, I can focus on how Becky is different or how Becky is not so different. I can convey these messages using dialog from other characters. I can decide which scenario to use based on what I think Leah needs more of that day or week.

How does it feel to be a Muslim in a hijab?

Again, in many ways a person in a hijab will feel just like any other person. They will respond just like any other person. But they will be faced with certain reactions of others and if I model those behaviors, Leah can tell me how she thinks that might make our Fulla feel.  I can then encourage her to share Fulla’s feelings with another doll because that too is an important skill.

Leah is skinny. Me? Not so much. She once said “Look mom, that lady is fat like you,” within earshot of a woman in the grocery store. We try to teach her not to gossip and/or talk behind people’s backs. How can I tell her to say it quietly? That’s not where we want to go with our teachings. Instead we want her to learn to say things “sensitively.” I told her, “Even though momma thinks it’s funny to call herself fat, that doesn’t mean all people are comfortable being called fat.” And so on.

Given my self-deprecating humor, how do I teach her to be sensitve toward others in the use of the word “fat”?  I’m going to use my new Mimi Bobeck as an overweight teen of course.

Of course I will tame Mimi’s hair somehow and do a repaint on the makeup. The doll is much shorter than the 11.5 inch standard for Mattel Adult females and that will make her a perfect overweight teen character.

When Leah uses any of these dolls as her bavatarbies, she will be required to imagine what they see, think and feel. And that is the very definition of empathy.

The diversity of your barbies will dictate the diversity of empathetic training you are able to expose your barbeges to so be agressive in your development of a diverse set of dolls.

Spend some time thinking about the challenges of your particular life. Do you live in place where there are few Asians? If so you may need to buy more Asian dolls. We lived in Bermuda which was predominately populated by black people. Then we moved a city outside of Boston and Leah’s school had a ton of Indians and Chinese. Now we are back in Colorado where there are lots of mixed race (black and white) people, Ethiopians and Muslims. Our needs were different in all three places.

Not sure you care about developing your child’s empathy skills? Haven’t given it much thought?

For more on empathy and the importance of developing it in children, again I implore you to read that Time article I link to above. Also there are books available on the topic.

UPDATE (October of 2011): My five year-old daughter is making me proud with her empathy skills already. When I ask her how she is, she replies and then says, “How are you?” I continue to be surprised by this because I have never been asked that by a five-year old before. Also, when I recently coughed on the phone she said, “Are you feeling okay?” – in both these instances it might have been a learned response, but she appeared to be truly interested in my well-being and health. This is just the beginning, I feel, of her blossoming into a caring, empathetic person.

OPINION: Someone Needs to create an Anti-Barbie

You know instead of just complaining about how anorexic or plastic-ly surgery-ied BBBBarbie is, someone should just develop a full-figured or at least reasonably figured “barbie” and unseat BBBBarbie forever.

I wonder how often this thought has been thunk.

Based on my research, the answer is: Often.

Several times people have actually followed through on this thought and developed a business plan, sought financing, developed prototypes, sought further financing, gone to production, marketed and distributed these anti-barbies.

Remember the Get Real Girls? The ones with sporty bodies who loved to travel and go on adventures?

Remember the three full figured playscale dolls? Brown-skinned Daisa, blonde Dawn and brunette Dena?  The Plus-Sized Ladies who rocked Ken’s world?

Let me jog your memory about these and a few other attempts…

Between 1989 and 1993, Cathy Meredig introduced the “Happy to Be Me” dolls. They were intended to come in a variety of  body shapes. They would be accompanied by books that helped convey fuller personalities and impart values. Two dolls – Jessica Lyn and Ali Marie were released. Then, It failed.

In 1999, Jenny Baker created a company called “The Get Set Club” and set out to manufacture the G5 set of teen friends. The dolls had realistic proportions, ethnic diversity and career paths built into their playsets. It failed. (read more here, here,  here and here)

In 2000, Jana Machin and Julz Chavez created a company called Get Real Girl, Inc. and that company created the Get Real Girls. Six gals known as “action  figures” who were fully articulated and played basketball and soccer? You remember – they surfed and went on safari? It failed. (read more here , here , here , here and here and check out some remaining examples of the website that once existed but doesnt anymore by clicking here and here)

In 2006, Audrey Bell and Georgette Taylor pushed things even further – they weren’t offering “realistic average-sized bodies” they were offering a plus-sized line of dolls called Big Beautiful dolls. It failed. Check out the BB dolls at this archived copy of their website. (or read more here)

So why did they fail? There are a few ideas that get thrown around. Here are the potential explanations I hear most often:

1) Little girls prefer idealized images like BBBBarbie. They want glamour and glitz. Big eyes, heavy makeup, short skirts, high heels.  They want the dream. They want Pamela Anderson, not Mommy.

2) Mattel systematically ensures that any competitor dolls fail. They control distribution channels and have the funds to step up
competitive marketing efforts when necessary. They lodge patent disputes that cripple startup companies. The startups are forced to cover legal fees instead of re-investing funds in continued product development or marketing.

3) Dolls that have high quality articulated bodies and high quality accessories are too expensive to manufacture for the price that they
command. With such small profit margins, the items cannot survive market fluctuations.

4) Women who don’t want their daughters to play with BBBBarbie avoid playscale dolls altogether thereby making the market for a
BBBBarbie alternative too small to support continued mass production. In other words, Mom’s who might like an Anti-barbie on it’s own merit are so blinded by their rage about BBBBarbie that they can’t see the value in any doll of that scale.

5) When the dolls are introduced by parents into existing playscale doll collections, the dolls are ostracized as “tomboys” or  ”fat girls” by children playing out real world situations as they have seen them, therefore freaking out parents completely.

There is some mystery around when and how these companies failed — the above theories are just theories. The women themselves are certainly go-getters to be admired  (they are Barbie “I Can Be…” a Feminist Pioneer Entrepreneurial Toy Maker!!)

Part of me wants to find them and interview them about what went wrong. But part of me thinks they may not want to discuss their journey because it is painful to see something you believe in, and put so much passion, money and time into, fail.

In lieu of interviewing the Amazing Ladies of the Anti-Barbies, I’d like to answer each of the possibilities from my own perspective.

1) Do girls prefer Pam over Mommy?  I don’t buy that. And that’s what this blog is all about. My mantra is: You can use playscale dolls to teach your barbégé what you value in people and in life. Do I wish those companies had survived so I that I would have more purchasing options? Absolutely. I saw one blonde “Happy to be Me” doll in a thrift store and left her there but I have purchased four Get Real Girls on eBay and their bodies and accessories are completely excellent. G5 I have never seen. As for the Big Beautiful ladies, I understand from my Barbie-friend Lola that they can be quite expensive and are rare.

2) Does Mattel systematically crush their competition? I hope not. But I leave open the possibility that this has happened.  There is some evidence that the anti-barbies actually created the pressure that brought about improvements at Mattel. Did anti-barbies lead to the creation of the Generation Girls? The Belly Button body? Maybe the articulation offered by the Get Real Girls led to Fashionista articulation? Then again, maybe Fashion Royalty articulation led to Fashionistas? One could certainly say that while the competitive dolls failed as toys in their own right, they suceeded in changing what our  barbégé’s dolls look like today. In that respect, they were a success.

3) Can Better Quality items be priced to sell? Spinmaster’s LIV seems to be able to do it. But I’ve heard rumors that Mattel expects a very high profit margin from their doll designers and that this expectation limits quality. Why is LIV able to give us full articulation and great accessories and clothes, but Mattel is not?

4) Are realistic dolls ostracized just like their human counterparts? This is actually a perfect scenario for my blog – it’s a teachable moment for a parent to convey values to a child. It’s exactly why such dolls are needed- so we can disabuse our barbégés of their biases at home and encourage them to take their enlightened views out into the world. Chubby girl dolls will be teased?  Bring it on.

While it feels at times like Mattel does their thing and doesn’t bow to criticism, that is not always clearly the case. Mattel has improved their diversity with various ethnic representations and great face molds over the years – largely due to criticism. With SIS they have embraced the need for more than one brown girl at a time.  But they also seem to go through cycles. They had more articulation for a while during the 90′s then they abandoned it for a decade or so only to return to it with the release of Fashionistas.

Mattel has also given us a few larger bodies of note. Rosie O’Donnell and Happy Family Grandma (seen here with SIS Grace Belly Button Body in between for comparison).

Additionally, Mattel  A company called Jakks Pacific has given us two truly Plus-sized dolls in the the form of the Hairspray Movie collection. Tracy and Edna Turnblad.

So, is there a need for an anti-barbie at all anymore? Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe there is only the need for rumors of anti-barbies.

We still don’t have the option of all three in one: articulation + the range of skin tones + the choice of some thicker body types.

So maybe I will start one here and now:

Did you hear that there is a company with a crazy amount of start-up capital that is designing dolls in a range of skin tones, with a “pick your body style” that includes “Average” and “Plus Sized”  options? These body styles have articulated knees and elbows (and maybe even wrists and ankles). This company is going to blow the socks off Mattel!! Spread the word!

OPINION: Why barbies are better than a $200/hr therapist

There is a class of therapeutic techniques that psychologists and counselors refer to as “play therapy”.

The basic idea is that children’s language skills and meta-cognitive abilities are not developed enough for them to talk about experiences that are troubling them or that they are otherwise still attempting to process.

Like, I guess I could just ask my daughter:

 ”Honey, did anything happen to you today at school that you are still processing?
Did you do a good job avoiding co-dependent behaviors with your friends?
Did you ask them to respect your boundaries?”

I could ask that…but I’m sure I would be met with a blank stare.

So what are my options? I can ask her Pre-school teachers about her day. I could ask her about her day. Those are good ideas. I already do that. Honestly, they don’t yield that much information. Not the information that I REALLY want to know.

 The teachers tend to focus first and foremost on their authoritarian relationship with her. In other words, they tell me whether she is “minding” them or not. If I ask about her relationship with other children, they will tell me whether or not she cooperates. They’ve told me she likes to lead and when things don’t go her way, she gets frustrated and refuses to play. That’s helpful, and we are working on that. But what I know deeply is that the teachers will never have the time to really study Leah on an ongoing basis and make sure she is on track psychologically.

That’s my job.

And so I do “Play Therapy” with Leah. Just like the Psychologists who are members of the Association for Play Therapy, I give her some toys and I observe. If I see an area of concern I can either drop character and talk about it with her – human-to-human – or I can try to do my “Play Counseling” using the dolls.

Here’s an example of how we recently used a combination of Human-to-Human counseling as well as Play Counseling to help Leah with a problem at school:

Leah was at recess at her pre-school when her two best friends decided to play with each other and leave Leah out.

Leah told me about the incident in the car on the way home that day. I suggested a strategy for how she could handle things if it happened again.  I told her that Daddy and I have always believed that when it comes to play time, “The more the merrier.”

A few hours later we were playing barbies and I decided to see if she remembered what we had discussed. I am almost always tasked with playing a multitude of characters and on that day I had two girls and Leah had her favorite doll Bella.

We were playing along when I decided to have my two characters conspire to leave Leah’s Bella out of the fun.

“Let’s not play with Bella today. We should just play me and you.” Leah’s face immediately looked strained but then her eyes met mine and she understood that we were practicing. Leah acted out the plan we’d discussed by having Bella find someone else to play with. I then followed suit by having Keyonce and Kayla show interest in Bella’s new activity and ask Bella if they too could join in her new game. Leah looked pleased. I was impressed.

Then, it occured to me that Leah had another quick lesson to learn. I had Keyonce approach Bella and suggest that they conspire to leave Kayla out. This would test whether Leah understood that it was wrong to leave people out, even if she wasn’t the one being ostracized.

 ”Let’s me and you play alone.” I had Keyonce whisper to Leah’s Bella,  ”Let’s tell Kayla we don’t want to play with her!” There was a dramatic pause while I waited to see if Leah had inherited my compassion and empathy.

“Okay!” Leah had Bella say.

I dropped character, “Leah!?!” 

 Leah looked at me, unabashed.

“Okay,” I said with a hint of vengeance in my voice, and re-entered my Kayla character.  I had Kayla sit at the edge of the playground and begin to sob. Then I whispered to Leah, “Bella should tell Keyonce that she doesn’t like to leave people out because it hurts their feelings and there is no reason why three people can’t play together just as easy as two can.”

We repeated the scenario three or four times, with different characters suggesting the conspiracy, rejecting the conspiracy, having their feelings hurt, choosing not to be hurt, etc until I was confident that Leah knew what I expected of her in such a situation.

A week later, I checked back in with Leah. How are things going? Are X and Y still leaving you out?

“I don’t play with them anymore,” Leah said, “They always do that thing where they try to leave girls out so I just play with Cherise and Maggie now.”

“And do Cherise and Maggie leave people out?” I asked.

“No,” Leah said, “We play more Marys”

OPINION: Why barbies turn out to be a good choice for environmentalists

Barbie play could be judged more sustainable than many other kinds of play.

If one measure of sustainability is the degree to which it is Reduced, Re-used and Recycled, then barbie stuff is a real winner.

 

FIRST: REDUCE

Barbie items are much smaller than other Role-Playing and Imaginative Play toys. Especially the play kitchens, play stores, play schools, banks etc. that are popular buys for pre-K and early elementary school children.

Due to the smaller size of barbie items, they have less environmental impact during manufacture, shipping, stocking, and storage. Also, because they can be played with over many years instead of as temporary, age-appropriate toys they create less consumerist churn.

Barbies can be played with in age-appropriate ways from age three forward, through middle-school and into adulthood. Cataloging the many age-appropriate ways to play with barbies is the very reason this blog was created.

Based on the “it’s little” logic one might counter that traditional dollhouses are even smaller (1:12 scale) and therefore, even better. This is a valid arguement based on the principle of physical size. We, however, did not choose dollhouse scale because it has different problems for us - namely that of being hard for adult-sized hands to play along and having almost no clothing options, few building options (just houses, no movie theaters, etc).

 

SECOND: REUSE

Gothic Hotel pic courtesy of Eclipse Accessories for Dolls Shop on eBay. Click on photo for link to eBay shop.

When barbie plastic fades, older barbie players paint them over creating new, exciting, one-of-a-kind (ooak) designs. They keep these OOAKs for their own collections or sell them at a premium on eBay. The photos above show a Barbie Grand Hotel as originally manufactured next to a Barbie Grand Hotel that has been painted over so that it can be used as a Haunted Hotel for Halloween displays or other creative uses. If you troll on eBay enough you will see this sort of customization all the time and hopefully be inspired by it.

When barbie furniture breaks, polymer clay is used to recreate parts and they are glued whole again.

Barbie dolls are restored by professional restorers as well as hobbyists. Their hair replaced, their makeup repainted and broken limbs replaced.

When barbie sets appear at garage sales with missing parts, barbie players need only go onto ebay to find other incomplete sets offered as replacement parts.

 

THIRD: RECYCLE

Over 160K barbie items for sale on any given day. That doesn't even begin to cover Craigslist and Yard Sales

Barbie stuff does not end up in land-fills or recycling machines unless a series of ignorant and accidental moves take place. Instead barbies, their clothes, cars, houses, and other accoutrements end up on eBay where they are clamored over by collectors, adult players and young girls starting new collections.

Leah’s collection is about 75% used and about 25% new. Her new stuff will never be thrown in a trash can. It will be sold or passed down.  Her used stuff ranges in age from weeks old to decades old.

Barbie houses manufactured and sold in the 60’s fetch a nice price on ebay everyday. Stuff from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s on up to the present does too!!

 

Wood Trends and Plastic Passions

So while plastic gets a bad rap these days and wooden toys seem to be the material of choice among trendy parents, keep in mind that barbies are sustainable and have been handed down time and again for fifty years.

OPINION: Why barbies turn out to be a feminist choice

I am a feminist. I am raising my daughter to be a feminist.

For some, feminism is about choices. The choice to work or stay home. The choice to have kids or remain child free. The choice to wear red lipstick or lip balm. The choice to pursue any hobby or career and not be discouraged or hindered because you are not a man.

For me feminism is about choice, but it is also about empowerment. It’s about becoming a full person in every way and not being sidetracked spending time, money and energy trying to meet standards imposed on me strictly because I am a woman. As part of our empowerment I strongly believe that we should not bow to pressure that would have us spend excessive amounts of  energy, money and time on our hair, nails, makeup, tan, and weight loss programs.

I was raised in Texas, by a mother who believed strongly in “packaging”. I spent my teens, twenties and about half of my thirties passionately focused on said “packaging.” Yes – I had long, bleach-blond hair and fake nails. I dieted constantly. I wore heels and miniskirts. I tanned (sun, tanning bed, lotion – you name it).

Those fifteen years of ”packaging” were a complete waste of time as it only attracted superficial, dishonest, easily distracted, insincere men.

In my late thirties I had an awakening of sorts. Because of all the time, money and energy I recognize as wasted,  I want to raise my daughter not to fritter away so much of her life on those things and focus instead on the things that are more permanent and contribute in a real way to her self-esteem and her ability to build genuine relationships with genuine people.

That means I want her to avoid all the “packaging” efforts that are exhausting to maintain and serve no other purpose than to impress all the wrong men.

Those things are the whalebone corsets and foot bindings of the modern era.

A lot of women who consider themselves feminists would disagree with me on this. They love getting manicures they tell me. They like wearing heels. Push up bras and Spanx make them feel sexy.

That’s them.

I think they have a degree of delusion. I secretly judge them a little. But I am not about to try to change their mind.

But of course the one person’s mind I do try to influence is that of my daughter.  I’d rather she have great skin than great skill at putting on makeup. I’d rather her feet never ache in her entire life because of a pair of shoes that someone convinced her ”look sexy.” I’d rather she keep her nails short and clean for piano, basketball and martial arts.

I want her to be fit and strong — not tan and skinny. I want her to think of her boobs as a nuisance to be tolerated until she gives birth, when they will miraculously become little milk machines that nurture her children. Months later I want her to think of them once again as a nuisance to be tolerated, if with a small bit of nostalgia for the bonding that took place upon them.

[As has been pointed out to me, some women actually enjoy their nipples quite a bit. I never have, so for me the whole area is a waste of space, but for those who enjoy yours on a regular basis, more power to you.]

I know, I’m pretty far out there in my particular brand of feminism. Sometimes I grow out my underarm hair as a way of saying F-You to anyone who thinks it’s gross and unacceptable. Men have a choice whether they shave their underarms. We should too.

So how did someone like me, all super-opinionated-super-feminist, decide that I would build my daughter a barbie collection of insane proportion and thereby encourage her to play barbies nearly every day of her life for the next ten years?

Well, it sort of snuck up on me. First I decided it was the most economical choice. Then I decided it was a laudable environmental choice.  And finally I felt comfortable that I could make it work as a feminist choice.

All I had to do was find ways to make that BBBBarbie less of a bimbo. I figured I could dye her hair, give her a nice bob or Rachel cut and find more modest clothing for her.

I was delighted to learn that Mattel had changed barbie’s body in 2000. She gained wider hips, a belly button and became much less buxom. You can see a comparison of different body types on this wonderful blog post.

A great blog post outlining the various body types Mattel has used over the years.

The photos shown in the blog don’t really show the degree to which barbie’s bustline was reduced because a lot the old body’s bustiness came from the shape of her torso. The real significance of the change is easily seen when clothes made for the old body are put on a belly-button-bodied doll.

So learning about the body change took care of the drama around the topic of “what barbie’s measurements would be if she was a real woman” because the belly button body, in my opinion, looks very much like your average teenage girl.

Now I had a plan. I would purchase belly-button-body dolls, then I would cut and dye their hair until I had a  little doll posse I could tolerate looking at and feel comfortable having my daughter playing with on a daily basis.

I took a trip to Toy’s R Us and was delighted to find a line of brown-skinned dolls called the So In Style girls. These girls had long hair (I could fix that) but they actually had much more practical and often more modest clothing. The characters of the SIS line are Chandra, Trichelle, Grace and Kara and I bought them up during that first visit.

I bought boxes of used goods off Craigslist, cherry-picked the better dolls, took the BBBBarbies to Goodwill and kept all the clothes. I soon had gingers, brunettes, raven-haired beauties and old school Christy and Nikki gals.

I had diversity!!

I had a lovely set of barbies that looked more like the girls of the world. Our barbie brigade looked like the girls at the mall. Shoulder length hair or shorter. More brunettes then blondes. Tennis shoes, jeans and t-shirts.

I had created for Leah, with Mattel’s unwittiing and somewhat reluctant help, a world of possibilities.

Leah could use her barbies to pretend to be anything she wanted from a pilot, to a princess, to the president. By extension, these toys would provide me with endless interactions for conveying my feminist views to her and for peering into her developing psyche.

This barbie doll world has become my platform. It’s my chance to lecture Leah, without ever giving a lecture.

When I tell my daughter I don’t wear high heels because they are uncomfortable, she’s not impressed. After all, I’m just a fat old lady. But when Bella or Grace says it, it really means something to her. When Trichelle tells Kayla she wants to be the star of her high school basketball team instead of a cheerleader, this too makes an impression.

I have Chandra telling Darren that she won’t marry until after she finishes college. Darren tells Chandra he could never love a girl that wasn’t independent, smart and genuine. Leah absorbs everything the dolls say with a twinkle in her eye. I know that Leah is impressionable enough to believe that the coolest two teenagers in the history of the world are letting her in on their secrets and I exploit that to the fullest.

So, in short, when the slutty clothes and ridiculous platinum blonde hair is gone, what a feminist mom and her impressionable daughter are left with is whatever they want to be left with. The world of barbies becomes a clean slate again. Empty of values until you introduce your own.

My Long Lull in Barbie Playing

So I haven’t blogged in months. The plan was to start the blog, build up a respectable number of posts and then start inviting barbie enthusiasts to let me interview them.

I actually stopped blogging because I wondered if I had made the right choice by introducing barbie-play to my daughter at such a young age. My daughter was 4 when I bought her first doll (Trichelle). By the time she was 4 1/2 we had 4 houses, over 50 dolls, three cars, five horses, a Pet Shop, a Bakery, a Pizza Parlor, a Grocery Store, a Shopping Mall Food Court, several schools, a McDonalds…well, you get the idea.

The running joke with my husband and sister became a good-natured ribbing:  it wasn’t really “Leah’s barbie collection” but was actually “Mommy’s barbie collection.”

I was happy to acknowledge that I was driving the high-speed ramp up of Barbieworld much more than Leah was, but I was more than capable of catalogueing the long list of reasons why the collection would ultimately benefit Leah. For a long list of reasons, see: This Blog.  

I am a traveling computer consultant and as of the Summer of 2010, my daughter was living with me in a hotel in Boston.  Daddy came to visit us and we went back to Colorado to visit him about once a month. Leah was going to a Boston-area pre-school during the day so she was experiencing a wide range of social and developmental activities.  On the weekends we drove out on day trips to see all that New England that had to offer.

It was weekday evenings that were the hardest. I don’t oppose a few hours of cartoons every day and Leah could have watched the wide range of animated movies I had loaded onto a hard-drive for her viewing. She wasn’t interested. “Mommy, let’s play” was her constant mantra.

What does ”play” mean in a hotel room night after night after night? I had to come up with activities that would not ruin the carpets (painting: out) or put holes in the walls (breakdancing, karate, basketball:out).

Barbies, because of their small scale became a no-brainer. If Leah was a boy maybe it would have been trains or Legos. Instead the room became Barbieland.

After a long day at work/pre-school we came home to the Residence Inn, ate a bit at the hotel “light dinner” buffet, stopped by the front desk to see if any ebay packages had arrived, then went up to the room to play barbies. USPS and ebay being the prime enablers of my new obsession.

We started playing twice a day: before and after work/preschool. I started trolling ebay after Leah fell asleep each night, frantically adding items to my wishlist and reviewing them strategically.  We also learned the locations of every Target and Toys R Us in a 100 mile radius.

After three months of this, things began to change. As winter set in and our room became more and more crowded with toys, our Barbieland started feeling more and more oppressive. I began to feel guilty and self-indulgent. I became certain that I’d spent too much on Barbieland, trying to make it work for a daughter who was too young to enjoy it.  Maybe it was just standard cabin fever. Maybe we were just homesick. But whatever the root cause,  Barbieland started to bug me.

We packed up our belongings and moved to different hotel. One that had an indoor pool. Leah started focusing on swimming in the evenings instead. Occaisionally Chandra or Trichelle were invited along but for the most part, swimming replaced barbies for several months.

My Boston project started winding down. We shipped Barbieland home to Colorado. We shipped ourselves home to Colorado. Barbieland was a stack of boxes in the basement playroom. Christmas came and went. Kwanzaa came and went.

Daddy asked about Barbieland. Mommy felt guilty about the hundreds of dollars sitting downstairs in boxes. Daddy asked if he should drop it at Goodwill. Mommy shrieked in horror.

Mommy decided…wait, I. I decided, after a week of foot dragging, that I had to unpack the Barbieland boxes. Ohhhh! Look!!! Our Pet Shop! Ohhhh! Look!!! Jacob from Twlight!! Oh!! Look!! Our Dentist Barbie!!!

And what I learned? Don’t build Barbieland.

Now I didn’t say don’t gather up a Barbieland’s worth of dolls, furniture, vehicles and clothes…what I said was “don’t build it.” By this I mean, don’t set it all up and try to live within it.

Choose three to four “sets” to have out at a time, and pack the others away. Choose a sub-set of dolls. Choose a sub-set of clothes. That way, your collection will always be new and exciting, and it won’t feel overwhelming.

When we started playing again, after two months off, I noticed a new maturity level in Leah’s play. She was growing in her ability to play, just as I had hoped. She was more willing to be the pet shop owner. To suggest that a new pet owner needed food and pet toys in addition to their pet purchase. She was becoming a leader, not just following me. That renewed my resolve.  She started asking to play everyday again. I was excited to play, too.

My ebay wishlist climbed to over forty items. Uh oh. Well, with the good comes the bad.

OPINION: BBBBarbie’s omnipresence made less nauseating by the OOAKers

A few months ago I started this blog to chronicle my journey as I teach my four-year-old daughter and some other barbégés how to play barbies. At that time I thought I knew a lot about the world of barbies but I have come to understand that I knew very little. One thing I didn’t know about back then was the world of OOAKers.

OOAKers are people who take barbies and create One-Of-A-Kind dolls, or OOAKs.  Some of these people do it for fun. Some of them do it for profit. Some of them do Celebrity Look-a-likes.   I have included a screen shot from a site called www.thebarbiecanvas.com

And what I realized from peeking into their sites and reading their tips on how to OOAK-out your dolls is that there is no better canvas than long, light hair and light eyes. Simply because light can be made dark. Blonde hair can be dyed nearly any color from strawberry blonde, through the range of browns all the way to blue-black. Long hair can be cut short.  Straight hair can be made wavy.

In fact, as Leah and I have gone out in search of used barbie items on Craigslist and eBay we often find that we get a lot of  BBBBarbies thrown in for free. We used to dump them in the Goodwill box but now we keep them. We’ve got them in a plastic bag, tucked away for when we get brave enough to try out some of the OOAK techniques we’ve been reading about.

We’re looking forward to the creative experience of OOAKing out all the BBBBarbies in our bag.

 Ed Note: What’s not possible with BBBBarbies however, is a super-curly hair and darker skin. Which is why I continue to value these dolls so highly and search for them so fervently on eBay. But that’s a topic for another post…