My cousin, a tomboy, was one of my main influences in life. Because of her influence, I usually didn't care to play with Barbies, but whenever I did, I would never play with them the way most girls I used to know did.

Anyway, speaking of petite, I found an interesting news article with comparisons between a real woman and a Barbie doll.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920962.stm

In particular, I like the story about the woman who had plastic surgery to try and look like Barbie. Not only does she want to look like Barbie, but she apparently wants to be made out of the same material as Barbie. She wants to actually be Barbie.

Interestingly enough, the last few lines which speak of wanting to be "just like Barbie" are sung as the camera pans in on the bridal Barbie, bypassing the others.

@ Tanz

Barbie was the first adult doll marketed at girls, and (according to Mattel) apparently enjoys a glittering social life. So perhaps this is a subtle sop thrown to parents to reassure them about the wholesomeness of Barbie's image by implying that;

a) She'll marry within a "respectable" time frame.
b) She's *already* a "respectable" married woman.
c) The aforementioned glittering social life is considered "respectable" since it is all in aid of attaining a "respectable" matrimonial status.

Also, perhaps bridal Barbie could be considered the contemporary equivalent of today's career Barbies. That is, instead of just sitting around conforming to the beauty ideal, Barbie is also a wife (and mother). One could even argue that it would have been desirable to tailor girls' expectations to a life of domesticity.

When I was a girl, I discovered that Barbie was made of six pieces - a body, four limbs which snapped in, and a head that slipped on over a peg. (I was of the school of thought that "if you're not supposed to take it apart to see how it works, then why does it come apart?") Body parts between Barbies were interchangeable. Ken's arms would fit the leg hole on Barbie's torso, and Barbie's leg could be placed as Ken's arm. The head peg on the torsos could also be used to connect torsos together. I spent many an entertaining afternoon making Barbie-pedes. At some point, I showed a Barbie-pede to the source of the dolls (they were gifts, but not from my parents) and I never received a fashion doll as a gift again.

When I was little, I really wanted a Ken. So I shaved off Barbie's hair and attempted to saw off her boobs with a bread knife. That's some hard plastic. Then my mum drew a nice moustache on him with a marker.

If I ever get to the therapist, they're going to have a field day :)

Oh, and this is especially for Kit:
http://jonbeinart.deviantart.com/

I Can't Remember...,

That actually was the marketing pitch for Barbie. Mattel was skeptical about putting it on the market since all of the other dolls on store shelves were baby dolls. The doll creator pitched Barbie as something that could teach young girls about being a lady and a good wife.

This needs to be understood within the frame of the toys available at the time. Ruth Handler saw that all her daughter could do with dolls, which were all babies, was pretend to be their mother. But they loved playing with adult paper dolls, onto which they could project their hopes and fantasies of the future and "practice" many more adult roles. She was intended as three-dimensional blank slate for girls to use in that way. She actually had a career from the beginning, although at first it was as a model. But it was only a few years before she had become a teacher, a fashion designer, and even an astronaut decades before Sally Ride - all so that girls could imagine themselves in similar careers.

Mattel has really run the brand into the ground these days, but she was conceived as a fairly progressive toy - not exactly a feminist activist, but the most that Mattel thought mothers would be willing to buy at the time.