barbie-lagerfeld

things are getting kinky at mattel!

this maybe as cool as barbie gets. but its still barbie (except now at colette), and i’m not sure how i would feel about my girls playing with such loaded toys. loaded that is, with many things, including controversy from its inception back in 1956 as ruth handler the founder of mattel, discovered its protege (a voluptuous german doll, based on a tart heroine of a tabloid comic strip named bild-lilli) in the streets of lucerne-switzerland. i mean buying a barbie these days must be like handing an M16 to your son… which is probably a normal act if you are hunter thompson or happen to live in either one of the two larger US states: texas or kabul.

now for the record barbies design was perhaps more of a little boys dream (or more accurately a demented adult by the name of jack ryan-who held the patents on the doll and its design) rather than a girls dream… I should know since i acquired one at the “innocent” age of 6 after my 2 sisters abandoned theirs and left for boarding school in england. I wasted no time in discarding all of her unnecessary clothes (they weren’t karl’s back then) and spend months studying its anatomy. it was a puzzling experience as i have yet to meet anyone, outside of an LA hospital, that remotely resembles her.

tomorrow started advice: skip the barbie and buy a chinchilla pet. long story but another one of my childhood ordeals ; ) by bb