Madame Pickwick

Our childhoods hold numerous happy memories, for most. Memories of frolicking with our play-buddies playing with our hot wheels and our Gi-Joe’s and our Barbies and our Easy-Bake Ovens. Summer days outside where your little sister would play with her dolls and annoy you, or where your brother would steal your barbie and rip its head off in your face. Good times. Let’s narrow it down to barbie, the blonde girl with impossible proportions that gave young girls false hopes about the future and young boys something to dismember and torture. Created in 1959 by Mattel toy company. Since it’s beginning, it has been subject to numerous controversies. The first Black Barbie, The Oreo Barbie, even Barbie in a wheelchair. And not surprisingly we have yet another shocking Barbie enter our world. The Burka Barbie.

Burka Barbie

The Burka Barbie, is part of a collection of around 500 black barbies, clothed my italian designer Eliana Lorena, for the doll’s 50th anniversary. The dolls are meant to be sold at an auction for the Save The Children Charity organization. I can’t help but smirk at the irony. Barbie is supposed to be the evil little blonde doll that makes our daughters and sisters anorexic in hopes of looking just like her.

Sarah Palin Barbie? Why not.

The same barbie that wore an all-leather suit with fishnet stockings, the same blonde stereotypical, college girl with a provocative tattoo on her lower back. With a well-known symbol of female oppression right in the box? I’m not amused. Some say it’s ” a great opportunity for girls, wherever they’re from, to play with a Barbie they can relate to.” So now the oppressed girls of the middle-east can have just as much fun as the shallow blonde american girls with future eating disorders. It’s very ironic, but I can’t say I find it particularly funny. not funny at all in fact. And I doubt I’m the only one. What’s next? Jihad Ken with war sound effects and suicide bomber action! The day that goes on the market, I’ll be rolling on the floor, laughing my intestines out. It would be sad though, to see our society get that low.