Yes, it has finally happened.
The Barbie flood I have been holding back like a little Dutch girl with her finger in the wall has burst through.

And my sisters and mother are delighted.


Christmas morning saw Rowan open up not one, but TWO Barbie dolls, with my relations grinning like fools and snapping pictures of my reaction.  I think I did pretty well, smiled, said thank you and enthused over the over-packaged skinny chicks. They say my eyes bugged out, but I don't believe it.

I loved Barbie as a girl, I'll admit it. My step-sister and I would play for hours, and we played with them into the double digits, age-wise, I am sure.  Beauty Secrets, Magic Curl, Gangrene Ken.  The name for Ken wasn't official from Mattel, or anything, it was owing to the fact that he had only one leg and it was gangrene green ~ but he was our only boy so he was Hot Stuff.

So my objection to Barbie isn't total.  I even read an article once about how important Barbie is because she allows young girls to be in charge of the grown up~ dress her, style her, boss her around, drive her and her corvette off a cliff (wait, that was me).  I can see that. 

My objection is to the marketing. The non-stop branding.  I don't want my daughter to never play with Barbie, but I would like her to continue to play with other toys, too.  Once she has Barbie, every birthday, every gift becomes Barbie time because it is easy and pervasive. I have been lobbying for diversity, that's all.  And a couple more years for the little girl things wouldn't hurt, either.

That said, I will make one further admission. 
If my sisters were trying to win me over to Barbie, they did a good job. 

One doll is a spunky brunette with purple hair, a dog and high heel high-tops.. cool!
 And the other is a veterinarian (my childhood dream) with kitties in her care.  Although, I must say that the 'Telltale Heart' effect of the examination table is strange, but not nearly as strange as the cupboard in the table into which you place a kitten and raise it up inside the mama cat so you can do an xray of her with a kitty in her tummy ~ lift up Mama and voila ~ a kitten is born, which then slides down the slide, into a tub of cold water which makes it change colour. Bizarre. And I have had to explain that that isn't really how kittens are born. More than once. ♥