# Die Barbie Die **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 19, 2005, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329 "2005-12-19T19:18:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/61 "2005-12-21T04:08:42Z")
My brother once stole all my Barbies and sent them back to me a piece at a time with ransom notes, complete with words cut from the newspaper. “If you want to see the rest of this Malibu Barbie alive, you will leave 50 cents in your brother’s piggy bank by the end of the day.” An arm was taped to the top of the note. In all fairness, it was retailation for my stealing his GI Joes and then clothing them in my barbies’ dresses and arranging them on his bed when his best friend came over to play. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/62 "2005-12-21T04:41:11Z")
> [@Maureen](#): > > In all fairness, it was retailation for my stealing his GI Joes and then clothing them in my barbies’ dresses and arranging them on his bed when his best friend came over to play. I bet that played hell with their Precious Bodily Fluids. ---
**Author:** ![AThingWithFeathers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@AThingWithFeathers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AThingWithFeathers)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/63 "2005-12-21T05:23:52Z")
I’m jealous. My Mermaid Barbie didn’t sing. My little sister used to chew (and swallow) Barbie shoes and gnawed at their legs. Most of _my_ Barbie dolls ended up decapitated because of her. She could rip and spit Barbie heads like they were grenades. The only thing I ever did to my Barbie was cut all their hair off, rap “ammunition” around them and have them tear each other’s legs off. Those were only my blonde Barbies. I kept the ones that looked like what I wanted my future family to be in perfect condition until we had a garage sale and I found them all naked in a box because my sister decided to sell their clothes. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/64 "2005-12-21T13:32:56Z")
It’s a damn shame Barbie wasn’t around while Sigemund Freud was working. ---
**Author:** ![swampbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampbear/32/467_2.png) [@swampbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampbear)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/65 "2005-12-21T13:42:21Z")
> [@Maureen](#): > > In all fairness, it was retailation for my stealing his GI Joes and then clothing them in my barbies’ dresses and arranging them on his bed when his best friend came over to play. How diabolical! How dastardly! How purely evil this is! I think I’m in love with **Maureen**. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/66 "2005-12-21T15:58:15Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Google “barbie potato cannon”. 🙂 Band Name! ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRamenMonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@FlyingRamenMonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRamenMonster)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/67 "2005-12-21T17:17:52Z")
> [@Maureen](#): > > In all fairness, it was retailation for my stealing his GI Joes and then clothing them in my barbies’ dresses and arranging them on his bed when his best friend came over to play. Brilliant! I’m wishing I had a brother now just so I could do that in _my_ childhood. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/68 "2005-12-22T04:26:12Z")
Am I the only one who had the giant Barbie Head of Death? Okay, so I don’t think that is exactly what she was called, but it was just her head an shoulders, and it was really big and if you used hot or cold water it would add make-up or whatever to her face? I never liked the colors that it caused, so I would add normal make up and then I brushed her hair up into a rat’s nest and couldn’t get it to be normal again. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/69 "2005-12-22T04:26:29Z")
Am I the only one who had the giant Barbie Head of Death? Okay, so I don’t think that is exactly what she was called, but it was just her head and shoulders, and it was really big and if you used hot or cold water it would add make-up or whatever to her face? I never liked the colors that it caused, so I would add normal make up and then I brushed her hair up into a rat’s nest and couldn’t get it to be normal again. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/70 "2005-12-22T04:28:34Z")
☹ Damned accidental double posts! ---
**Author:** ![Amaranta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Amaranta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amaranta)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/71 "2005-12-22T07:46:49Z")
A friend of mine is still traumatized by a childhood incident with Barbie. Her parents were very, very strict Jehovah’s Witnesses, and K and her sister weren’t allowed dolls. So, one afternoon, she goes to a friend’s house for a playdate, and the Barbies are brought out. When K’s mom comes to pick her up, the Barbies are tossed on a couch and K runs to see her mom. K’s mom and friend’s mom then walk into the living room, where K’s mom sees a naked Barbie lying next to a Ken doll (he was fully clothed, in K’s memory), assumes the girls were making the dolls do the nasty, and drags K out of the house that minute, later banishing her from ever going to her friend’s house again. You know, it’s really no wonder K turned out how she did. pbbth, we had the GIANT BARBIE HEAD of Doom. It wasn’t all that exciting. But what I really wanted was the Barbie remote controlled mini-Jeep. “Math class is hard!” ---
**Author:** ![roshia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6bbea6/32.png) [@roshia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roshia)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/72 "2005-12-22T13:56:25Z")
> [@5que](#): > > Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me? It’s just you.😉 😃 > [@amaranta](#): > > What about Water Babies? And they smelled like baby powder?! Awesome. I loved mine, then my sister broke it, so I got a new one. > > (They were basically baby-shaped hot water bottle). And they had those commercials where they went on about how incredibly _lifelike_ the babies were? And how they move when you touch them, JUST LIKE A REAL BABY? Yeah, I always wanted one of those, but I never got it. Well, one Christmas my sister and I did get some tiny knockoff version of the water baby–they were about half a foot tall and you filled them with water so they could do amazing baby-like things. Mine cried. My sister’s peed. Unfortunately, the only way to make my baby “cry” was to hold it upside down and let the water leak from its eyes. Which I guess makes sense in a way, because, well, what baby _wouldn’t_ cry when it’s being held upside down and shaken? My sister’s was way cooler. You just filled it with water and the water drained out of a hole in the general peepee area. I could never convince her to give her baby yellow food coloring, though. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/73 "2005-12-22T14:57:53Z")
My Barbie, other than their in-box wardrobe, had a collection of vests and skirts made from cloth samples. I don’t particularly remember abusing them (I was more of a book person than a doll person), but I think she did spend an inordinate amount of time naked, and I’m almost dead certain my baby brother teethed on her (the Barbie was eventually tossed or given away before he hit puberty, thank Og). I didn’t even learn about the world of Barbie abuse until college, when I read a story about a guy masterbated to one. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329/74 "2005-12-31T22:35:46Z")
The _Skeptical Inquirer_ weighs in on this issue. [Voice of Reason: Research Debunks ‘Barbie Ideal’](http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051230/sc_space/voiceofreasonresearchdebunksbarbieideal) > [@](#): > > In her feminist best-seller The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf bashes Barbie, and views the doll as an imaginary “ideal” woman. Boston College sociology professor Sharlene Hesse-Biber also believes that Barbie “is the perfect figure presented to little girls as ‘ideal.’” The claim is echoed in hundreds of books, Web sites, magazine articles, and television programs. > > Yet recent evidence, including the University of Bath study, suggests that the “Barbie ideal” may be a myth. Just because a girl plays with a Barbie doll does not mean she idolizes it or views it as a physical role model. Critics cite statistics such as that if Barbie were real, she couldn’t walk upright, or bear children. > > But of course Barbie is not real, and was never intended to represent a healthy body or physical ideal. While Barbie has long been badgered about her “unhealthy” shape, no one complains that Mr. Potato Head’s tubby physique is even less healthy. Girls are far more intelligent than Barbie critics give them credit for; they know their dolls are just that: dolls. This author takes the University of Bath study and uses it to argue that girls’ self-images are not harmed by Barbie’s unreal physique presented as some sort of ideal of womanhood. His argument is weak. He may or may not be right, I don’t know, but he fails to make his case. (Oh, sorry, I forgot this isn’t Great Debates—I was all set to show how his conclusion failed to follow from his premise.) Let’s just leave it at saying that I regard the claims of the Skeptical Inquirer with a healthy dose of skepticism. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/die-barbie-die/336329.md?page=3)