Fuck it, I'll put you assknockers in my annotated bibliography. BARBIE TALK!

[Salty]

Yeah, I'm all tapped out. I could definitely keep going but not without sacrificing some brain cells.

[Freeky]

  Don't do that. You did a good job, anyway.

[Elder Iptuous]

so....
is there moral culpability in mattel's manufacturing of barbie dolls?

oh... and incidentally i just realized that gi joe probably isn't the best analog to barbie, since many men actually can have that physique...
but, i was a big HE-MAN fan when i was a kiddo. (another mattel product)
now there's an unattainable goal of masculinity!

[Freeky]

Back in the early 90's, Barbie saved Mattel's ASS.  They had been going broke, and the woman who invented Barbie got canned because she hid the evidence to keep stock prices high.  It became Mattel's flagship, and whatever it might have been up until then, after that point it became nothing except another product of The Machine.  Mattel has less culpability (except for the "Math is Hard!" Barbie fiasco) than the consumers do, and as Alty pointed out, those consumers are mostly the parents, because they are the ultimate buyers and it really is their job to mitigate some of the damage that being exposed to this crap can do.

Note I said "can do," not "does."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

so....
is there moral culpability in mattel's manufacturing of barbie dolls?

*uses John Stuart Mills' festering skull as a magig 8 ball*

No.

[Freeky]

so....
is there moral culpability in mattel's manufacturing of barbie dolls?

*uses John Stuart Mills' festering skull as a magig 8 ball*

No.

I disagree that they have no culpability at all.  :/  I'm not sure what you're saying, because I don't know who that guy is.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Freeky, I got that pic from an image search, and when I went to the site, it was just a big spammy craft site.

Youtube video, lots of dolls in this one. Truly creepy and a lot of them have actual human hair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uW7Ek1wxY&feature=relmfu

in light of the evidence, the defense recuses itself from the case.


maginally related...
have any of you guys checked out the 'Japanese Ball Jointed Doll' scene?  i stumbled onto it, and some of those dolls are pretty slick.  if i had a daughter, i'd get/make her one of those instead of the barbie, or bratz, or whatever.

Uhh...same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYBcMFkdfY

interesting, Freeky.
it also seems that they've changed the waist away from ridiculously impossible:

(although i'd argue that the newer one is probably more in line with contemporary idealization.  corsets aren't in fashion these days)

Uhhh
http://www.corset-story.com/

Uh, this might be where I have to confess that I kind of love corsets.

?

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Freeky, I got that pic from an image search, and when I went to the site, it was just a big spammy craft site.

Youtube video, lots of dolls in this one. Truly creepy and a lot of them have actual human hair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uW7Ek1wxY&feature=relmfu

in light of the evidence, the defense recuses itself from the case.


maginally related...
have any of you guys checked out the 'Japanese Ball Jointed Doll' scene?  i stumbled onto it, and some of those dolls are pretty slick.  if i had a daughter, i'd get/make her one of those instead of the barbie, or bratz, or whatever.

Uhh...same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYBcMFkdfY

interesting, Freeky.
it also seems that they've changed the waist away from ridiculously impossible:

(although i'd argue that the newer one is probably more in line with contemporary idealization.  corsets aren't in fashion these days)

Uhhh
http://www.corset-story.com/

Uh, this might be where I have to confess that I kind of love corsets.

They are hawt as fuck. 

For fun, though. I don't want to see it turn into a thing where people required to wear them to work.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Freeky, I got that pic from an image search, and when I went to the site, it was just a big spammy craft site.

Youtube video, lots of dolls in this one. Truly creepy and a lot of them have actual human hair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uW7Ek1wxY&feature=relmfu

in light of the evidence, the defense recuses itself from the case.


maginally related...
have any of you guys checked out the 'Japanese Ball Jointed Doll' scene?  i stumbled onto it, and some of those dolls are pretty slick.  if i had a daughter, i'd get/make her one of those instead of the barbie, or bratz, or whatever.

Uhh...same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYBcMFkdfY

interesting, Freeky.
it also seems that they've changed the waist away from ridiculously impossible:

(although i'd argue that the newer one is probably more in line with contemporary idealization.  corsets aren't in fashion these days)

Uhhh
http://www.corset-story.com/

Uh, this might be where I have to confess that I kind of love corsets.

They are hawt as fuck. 

For fun, though. I don't want to see it turn into a thing where people required to wear them to work.

FUCK NO. I LIKE THEM FOR THE VERY OPPOSITE REASON.

Oh look, I was still in allcaps mode.

No, i like them because of different reasons, probably close to the same reasons that male CEOs like to be stepped on and whipped by smart women.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Freeky, I got that pic from an image search, and when I went to the site, it was just a big spammy craft site.

Youtube video, lots of dolls in this one. Truly creepy and a lot of them have actual human hair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uW7Ek1wxY&feature=relmfu

in light of the evidence, the defense recuses itself from the case.


maginally related...
have any of you guys checked out the 'Japanese Ball Jointed Doll' scene?  i stumbled onto it, and some of those dolls are pretty slick.  if i had a daughter, i'd get/make her one of those instead of the barbie, or bratz, or whatever.

Uhh...same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYBcMFkdfY

interesting, Freeky.
it also seems that they've changed the waist away from ridiculously impossible:

(although i'd argue that the newer one is probably more in line with contemporary idealization.  corsets aren't in fashion these days)

Uhhh
http://www.corset-story.com/

Uh, this might be where I have to confess that I kind of love corsets.

They are hawt as fuck. 

For fun, though. I don't want to see it turn into a thing where people required to wear them to work.

FUCK NO. I LIKE THEM FOR THE VERY OPPOSITE REASON.

Oh look, I was still in allcaps mode.

No, i like them because of different reasons, probably close to the same reasons that male CEOs like to be stepped on and whipped by smart women.

Wouldn't that come under "fun"? 

[LMNO]

it's everywhere and every little girl has to have one to have a common frame of reference

I thought this was an important point... That the mass-production nature of a conglomerate toy company twists a common culture into a global experience rather than an individualistic one... as a thought experiement, if all toys were hand-made and produced by small, local stores, the common culture would be different from place to place, region to region. There would be no universal conception of what a girl's doll "should" look like, which would make any conformity to body type possibly occur much later in life.

However, this appears to me as an "unintended consequence" on the part of Mattel.  Their goal wasn't to twist young girls' minds into a false idea of femininity... They just wanted to corner the market on doll sales (and did, for a generation or more).  As a result, there is only a single reference point for the concept of "girl's doll", and that reference point is bad signal.

[Freeky]

What I found really interesting in a brow-furrowing sort of way was that Barbie's creator considers(ed?) boobs to be the paramount sign of femininity.  It's sort of a distressing emphasis on the body rather than just feeling it, and now that I'm thinking about it I can't tell if maybe she was trying to put that signal out there, or if she was already tricked into believing it, or what. 

[LMNO]

That's nothing new.



And with the addition of clothes, boobs are the primary visual biological gender indicator.

The 22-inch non-corseted waist, on the other hand, that varies (see above image).

[Freeky]

Why is her head a brain?

And you have a point.  Nothing new there.

[Elder Iptuous]

Why is her head a brain?

And you have a point.  Nothing new there.

perhaps cavemen realized that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.
or perhaps it is an example of extreme trepannation.
or perhaps she has ringlets for hair.