in a barbie world, life in plastic, its fantastic...
okay, you can STOP singing now.
you have to know how much i hate barbie.
i feel a soap box coming on...
i know some of you have some plastic parts, and i still love you, but today someone told me to act like a barbie. yeah, not a good thing to say to me.
didn't she know i grew up playing with
the "Sunshine Family"
and the marketing of barbie puts me over the edge. secret marketing lingo like KGOY (kids getting older younger) which was coined by marketers is the new trend of getting children to grow up faster. if you want to learn more click these two links to read great articles from USA Today & Albert Mohler. They worry that age compression is robbing our kids of their childhood. They talk about how kids are being shaped by the three "m's": movies, music and the microchip. USA Today Article
another great article
Revhan Harmanci of the San Francisco Chronicle provides background:
Barbie was created by Ruth Handler in 1959 and modeled on a German doll originally created as a sexual toy for men. Barbie's physiologically impossible figure (which underwent a slight redesign in 1997) would not be able to stand if made human-size. Mattel has never strayed too far from the original concept. But something has changed about Barbie's audience: It is collectively younger. When it debuted, the most popular kind of doll for girls were baby dolls -- drink-and-wet dolls with names like Tiny Tears and Baby Toodles, according to doll-collecting Web sites.
Handler's great insight was to see that from the way girls played with paper dolls, there was a market for a doll that looked more like a grown-up, one who was pretty and fashionable. Barbie's original target audience was 9- to 12-year-olds.
Today, the idea of 12-year-olds playing with Barbie dolls seems ridiculous. The "tween" market has exploded in recent years -- to the point where designer Marc Jacobs is taking 12-year-old actress Dakota Fanning as the face of his spring 2007 clothing line. Chuck Scothon, president of Mattel's Barbie division, emphasizes the multiple incarnations of the brand -- "I always say, there's a Barbie girl for every age" -- but says that "Barbie toy strength is cornerstone for ages 3 to 7."
Get that? Barbie is now targeted to a market of girls ages 3 to 7. Her overt sexuality is now for the preschool set. Keep all this in mind as you think of the toys we give our kids. "KGOY" -- a truly frightening concept, but one that helps to explain the world around us. What we need urgently is "PDDN" --- "Parents Developing Discernment Now."
back to me, forget about barbies...so i started a pilates class today with the Baconater and our teacher told us that we need to act like barbies where our arms move and nothing else. this will help our posture and make pilates more effective.
she had lots of great information. i'll share more later.
at 5:30 i did 30 minutes on the stairmaster and 15 minutes on the bicycle. at 10:30 I did pilates for an hour and then 20 more minutes on the stairmaster.
1 banana
2 pieces of goetta
1 popover
1 green chili chicken salad a bajio, no cheese, dressing or tortilla
110 ounces of water
2 comments:
Thanks for that insight. We're a Barbie free house because I think dolls are supposed to be babies/ girls not women. I didn't know there was much discussion about it though.
Interesting stuff B. Everyone I know hates barbie. Personally, I don't think certain barbies are a big deal. I loved playing with them as a child.
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