This Friday, a man whom I haven't met before came by work and bought cake for our entire department, as he felt we had done a massive job for him and those around him. Sitting down and talking at ease, he revealed that he was a parent for two teenage girls. Whoa, some said; that ought to mean trouble. Yes, he said, indeed; he added that he'd recently told one of them that she dressed like "a hooker". I couldn't keep what I felt inside of me, so I asked him whether he thought his communication with his daughter would improve or deteriorate because of what he'd said. He laughed. I don't even think he was listening to my reply, but rather laughed as he'd assumed that I would be with him, on his side, laughing. I started wondering, if he'd been talking about a son instead, would he have spoken about him dressing like "a john"?

I started thinking about Susan Faludi's seminal book about oppression against women in America, "Backlash". I also thought about how women are fought from an early age in a variety of ways. Here's one.

Bratz made Barbie lose 15% of Mattel's income in 2007. In case you don't know, Bratz is the brand-name of the extremely popular line of dolls that was launched by MGA in 2001. Bratz quickly caught the interest of young girls everywhere due to commercials hammering while The American Psychological Association noted the dolls "come dressed in sexualised clothing such as miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and feather boas ... it is worrisome when dolls designed specifically for four- to eight-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality." ((As culled from here.))

Besides, something that makes me happy that Bratz are going out of business:

A NSPCC report to a Scottish parliamentary committee on Wednesday criticised the way dolls were dressed and said they were sexualising young girls. MGA responded, saying: "The only people who have sexual images of them are adults, who have their own thoughts about these things."

I'm not saying that Mattel, Barbie and the rest of the plastic children are completely innocent. Miniskirt, schminiskirt; in Barbieworld, the girls are inferior to men. Full stop. And if you're saying "come ooon!" just think how you'd react if you were limited to being nothing but "cute", limited to wearing most clothes mini, if not all of them. For instance ((From this Wikipedia article.)):

In July 1992 Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie, which spoke a number of phrases including "Will we ever have enough clothes?", "I love shopping!", and "Wanna have a pizza party?" Each doll was programmed to say four out of 270 possible phrases, so that no two dolls were likely to be the same. One of these 270 phrases was "Math class is tough!" Although only about 1.5% of all the dolls sold said the phrase, it led to criticism from the American Association of University Women.

Limited? Hell no. 270 phrases should be enough for anybody; if anybody's an amoeba. Of course sexism does not solely exist because of the Barbie-brand, but as it is so popular and ham-fists the message in (using stereotypical girly-girl talk), it's like criticising the nazi party during the 40s for not bringing more than one side of the story while discussing racism.

To further punctuate that what's said by talking Barbies, I have to show what The Yes Men did using Barbies and G.I. Joes:

In 1993 a group in the United States calling itself the "Barbie Liberation Organization" modified Barbie dolls by giving them the voice box of a talking G.I. Joe doll, and secretly returned the dolls to the shelves of toy stores. Parents and children were surprised when they purchased Barbie dolls that uttered phrases such as "Eat lead, Cobra!" and "Vengeance is mine."

270 phrases OK, but not angry ones. Those are reserved to boys only. Like the colour blue - not pink. Pink is gay and Evil. Oh, or girly. Like ying and yang. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, edited by Noah Porter, published by G & C. Merriam Co., 1913 ((As found here.)):

(Chinese philosophy) the two fundamental principles, one negative, dark, passive, cold, wet, and feminine (yin) and the other (yang) positive, bright, active, dry, hot and masculine.

Another thing apart from thought, semantics and philosophy regarding male/female in the world of how plastic dolls control little girls and boys, check out the physics ((As found here.)):

A standard Barbie doll is 11.5 inches tall, giving a height of 5 feet 9 inches at 1/6 scale. Barbie's vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, she would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate. In 1965 Slumber Party Barbie came with a book entitled How to Lose Weight which advised: "Don't eat." The doll also came with pink bathroom scales reading 110lb, which would be around 35lbs underweight for a woman 5 feet 9 inches tall.

I can't stop thinking about how limited the developers at Mattel must feel. Imagine you're one of them, trying to create something that children will play with, use to fantasize and will most definitely affect their thinking along with a string of social variables that all serve to demean women by casting them into a big, old stereotypical chasm of crap. Their palette can merely contain a few colours - boy blue obviously not being an option - so viva choice, you bastards.

So, how can one change this? Change what's being sold, change the way people think, change the debasers. It's pretentious but true: you can only start with yourself, then reach outwards. Treat others like you want to be treated by them, simple, but true. "Be true to yourself and you will never fall." And, like Stanley Kubrick once said, "I don't know what I want, but I know what I don't want."