Talking Smack About Barbie Dolls OR Wasting Time at Target Or How About Some Halloween Weirdness

I'm just going to admit it for those Barbie-o-philes out there who can't stand the criticism.  I'm going to say some bad things about Barbie.  Probably Mattel, too.  Oh, the hell with it.  I hate freakin' Barbie.  She's a skinny, big-bosomed silly invention of a demented housewife from the fifties and watching my daughter play with them is akin to fingernails scratching down a very large chalkboard.

You can't say that this isn't freaky looking.
Seriously.  She's got poodle hair on top.
There's no one out there who can say they're not
freaked out by poodle hair on top.
And sheesh, look at her flat top head.  Her parents
must have rested her on her head while she
was growing up.

But I let Cressy go to town.  Why?  I think she already knows that her waist will never be 12 inches around, except maybe when she was six months old.  She also knows that Ken and Barbie get divorced after ten years because Barbie caught him in bed with Bruce the massage therapist.  (Bet you didn't know they made that doll.)  And she knows that Barbie can't possibly be all the things those boxes say she is.  (Cressy: "Look Mommy, she's an artist, a veterinarian, a baby caregiver, and a chef.  Isn't she cool?"  Me, subdued undertone: "I'm an artist, a writer, and I've got two college degrees.  Plus I can juggle."  Hey, I'm all over this competition.)

Allow me to reveal what brought this Barbie-hate-a-thon about.  Yesterday I went shopping again.  Dragged to Target (see Walmart can relax for a change) I got what I needed and then Cressy announced her intention to peruse the toy aisles.  We headed for her favorite aisle, which is presently the Barbie Doll aisle.  While she was oohing and ahhing over Barbie in all her various incarnations, I was stuck holding the hand basket, which was getting heavier by the minute.

With nothing better to do, I looked at Barbies, too.  So here's what I saw:

This is Barbie the Baby Caregiver.

Then there was this one:

And this is Barbie the Baby Sitter.

I'd like to point out that except for the names, Baby Caregiver and Baby Sitter, the two items are almost identical.  The other significant difference is the skin color.  If I were really pissy, I would say that only Caucasians get to be caregivers while darker toned skinned Barbies get to be lowly Baby Sitters.  I suppose it's really a matter of whether one believes that caregiver is a more socially conscious name than baby sitter.  Personally I think it sends a shitty message.  Fortunately for me, Cressy wasn't really interested in this one.  (Or else I would have barfed there in the aisle at Target and the clerks tend to get ticked off when that happens.)

But wait, there were more exciting dolls to look upon.  Cressy now knows who Justin Bieber is and she was looking at his doll, too.

And hey, one of these actually sings.  So you can
be tortured on multiple levels.  (I'd have been
impressed if they had used real fake hair instead
of a plastic hard hat hair.)

Then there was this one that Cressy said was interesting.  The pirate guy's got a little fuzzy head (It is!  It looks like Velcro) and looks like he'd be right at home being a hair dresser, but maybe I'm being a bigot.

See, I'm not just ragging on Mattel.
And what kind of message is it that they put
the pirate right next to the horse riding girl?

Maybe they're trying to do a Johnny Depp kind of thing here but I got to say they're not pulling it off.  This is really supposed to be a boy.  I think this company took the cheap way out and just put a boy head on the girl body.  On second thought, I think they just changed the hair on a girl doll's head, too.

So at this time I walked by this and it scared the crap out of me:

They should call this My Little Creepy Pony.

You don't think it's creepy.  I didn't push any of its damned buttons.  I just set off some kind of motion detector and it said something really loudly, causing me to nearly lose control of my bodily functions.  This is what it said.  Really, it did say this:

And it had a creepy, little, Hannibal Lecter voice, too.

As I walked through the Barbie Doll (and closely affiliated knock-off) aisle, it's little beady eyes followed me.

Well, it might not have really said it, but it was implied.

Well, it is close to Halloween, you know.

Chucky worked better than Jason because Chucky was a doll, too.
Do you remember that they actually sold Chucky dolls?  And people
say I'm demented.  I didn't buy a Chucky doll.  But I would have
bought the Bride of Chucky doll.

Anyway, so my advice is not to buy any haunted dolls right before Halloween and stay out of the Barbie aisle.  Just saying.

Happy Halloween!