Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

~ Connie Willis

Connie Willis Barbie Bellwether Fads Humour Independence

Honestly, I'd rather be anywhere else. Even home, where my dad begins almost every conversation with, You should lose the black clothes and wear something with color. Puh-lease. Like I want to look like every Barbie clone in Hell High, a.k.a. Oklahoma's insignificant Haloway High School. Ironically, Dad doesn't appreciate the bright blue streaks in my originally blond/now-dyed-black hair. Go figure. That's color, right?

~ Gena Showalter

Gena Showalter Barbie Bitch Blue Bully Clone Color Dad Emo Goth Gothic Hair Dye Hell High High School Hypocrite Inner Thoughts Lost Melodrama Morbid Oklahoma Rude Scary Sheeple Vampire Weird

In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested -- citing most often the offence of impossible proportions -- that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike for their Barbie dolls, with no other toy or brand name inspiring such a negative response from the children. The dolls provoked rejection, hatred, and violence and many girls preferred Barbie torture -- by cutting, burning, decapitating, or microwaving -- over other ways of playing with the doll. Reasons that the girls hated their Barbies included, somewhat poetically, the fact that they were 'plastic.' The researchers also noted that the girls never spoke of one single, special Barbie, but tended to talk about having a box full of anonymous Barbies. 'On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate,' one of the researchers remarked. 'She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture.

~ Eula Biss

Eula Biss 78 Barbie Dolls Girls Play Toys

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face.She said, If we don't let her have one like all the other girls she'll feel singled out. It'll become an issue. She'll long for one and she'll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that. He said, It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on.She said, Better to get it over with when she's young. He said, All right but don't let me see it.She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she'd been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.He said, I guess we're safe.

~ Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Barbie Beauty Feminine Femininity Gender Gender Roles Gender Stereotypes Girls Humor Role Models Women

I think they should have a Barbie with a buzz cut.

~ Ellen Degeneres

Ellen Degeneres Think Barbie Cut