B is for ...
If regicide means killing the king and fratricide means killing your brother, what would you call killing Barbie? (a: barbicide!)
Sorry, couldn't resist. I know for a fact there are barbershop jars with suspended Barbies in them, but couldn't find a pict. But I did find this!
Actually, we never really played much with Barbie- I was not much of a doll person, kittens were much more interesting, and Barbie wasn't really on the wish list- more of a curiosity, than anything else. One of us did get a Barbie, which was promptly mishandled, mis-combed, and pretty much turned into an urchin. Post modernism had not quite raised its head at that point - or maybe I wasn't that aware of it at 10- or else Barbie would have made a stunning baglady or a model for consciousness raising tattoos and practice conversations that I have uttered since (like what? oh, like iron your own shirt, what do you think I am, genetically programmed to do housework? I don't see you fixing the car!) (for the record, I have no tattoos...in case you were wondering).
A very funny doc: I, Doll (read more at Women Make Movies and check out RtMark and the Barbie LIberation Organization here
And as for resuscitating Barbie? Patt Morrison has other, more nefarious plans. Oooooh, can I help? Can I? Can I?
Sorry, couldn't resist. I know for a fact there are barbershop jars with suspended Barbies in them, but couldn't find a pict. But I did find this!
The nail in Barbie's grotesquely proportioned coffin is last winter's study by a British university about how ferociously little girls mutilate their Barbies, just for fun. They scalp them and dismember them and burn them and microwave them. Frankly, Barbie had it coming. She's just too unreal. How do you bond with something that looks like a taffy pull with a face? Stuffed animals are more flesh and blood than Barbie.Wow! I am not alone...
The study flooded me with endorphins. Around my house, Barbie was fair game. We used her as swords, for duels. But the best was Marie Antoinette Barbie. On a scaffold built of encyclopedias, we whacked off her head but good, tiara and all, over and over again. The last couple of times, after the game got old, we got out the ketchup for a good, gory, splashy finish.
Actually, we never really played much with Barbie- I was not much of a doll person, kittens were much more interesting, and Barbie wasn't really on the wish list- more of a curiosity, than anything else. One of us did get a Barbie, which was promptly mishandled, mis-combed, and pretty much turned into an urchin. Post modernism had not quite raised its head at that point - or maybe I wasn't that aware of it at 10- or else Barbie would have made a stunning baglady or a model for consciousness raising tattoos and practice conversations that I have uttered since (like what? oh, like iron your own shirt, what do you think I am, genetically programmed to do housework? I don't see you fixing the car!) (for the record, I have no tattoos...in case you were wondering).
A very funny doc: I, Doll (read more at Women Make Movies and check out RtMark and the Barbie LIberation Organization here
And as for resuscitating Barbie? Patt Morrison has other, more nefarious plans. Oooooh, can I help? Can I? Can I?
