NICKOLAY LAMM
LOSING
HER EDGE
Tina Fey, whose humor and wit
have won her acclaim. While
many Barbies, including an Angela Merkel doll and a president
doll, are modeled after powerful women, most associate the
doll more with aspiring to own a
Malibu dream house than becoming president. To some, giving a
young girl a doll like that seems
more out of touch than ever.
Karissa Taylor is one of those
moms concerned about the message that Barbie could send to her
girls. The 40-year-old Seattle attorney and mother of two said she
knew from the day she had her
first daughter that Barbies weren’t
welcome in her home. Taylor does
what she can in the battle to draw
some of her daughters’ attention
away from Barbies.
She brings her 5-year-old along
with her to the gym and to watch
women’s sports, but images of
“princess culture” have still managed to seep into her home, Taylor said. One recent afternoon,
her 5-year-old came home from
school complaining that she
didn’t want to wear a pair of pants
because they made her look fat,
and she wanted to look pretty like
a princess, Taylor said.
“It’s just everywhere,” she said.
“I caved in on the Disney princess
stuff and kind of wish I hadn’t.
At least Disney has some kind of
HUFFINGTON
03.02.14
A 3-D model of what
Barbie would look like if she
had the proportions of an
average 19-year-old girl.
An attempt to imagine
how a human with Barbie’s
same measurements
would function in real life
found she’d have to walk
on all-fours, couldn’t lift
anything with her wrists,
and would only have room
for half a liver.