Bought a Barbie Princess

One of my princesses had her fifth birthday today! We had a nice video conference by Skype with her and the the other two princesses bouncing around on the bed while Princess Papa tried to hold the camera on the laptop stable. They're going to have a party with pizza and movies and were all excited.

Since WiseWoman is not all that wise about remembering birthdays (I need a calendar application that bongs me on the head a week in advance!), there was no present from me there. I asked the Birthday Princess what she would like to have. She screamed into the microphone: A Barbie!!

A Barbie. That paragon of bad body image for girls. The horrible gender stereotypes this figure perpetuates. I would prefer to get her a drill and a hard-hat or a train set. But it's her birthday after all. And I had a lot of Barbies I loved to play with and look at me, I turned out all right, didn't I?
(Ahhh, that red satin ball gown with the fur trim I got one Christmas, that was just incredible!).

So I surfed over to Amazon to get a Barbie. Shudder. There are princess Barbies. Prince Kens. Barbie can even have a job now: Art teacher, baby photographer or pet sitter. Wow. I slogged through pages and pages of expensive clothes. There was a nice western garb for Ken, but I remember they don't fit Barbie very well.

There were sets: Barbie in the bedroom, Barbie in the kitchen, Barbie's hot tub, Barbie's convertible. At least the first two had an "African-American" Barbie option. She has black hair (don't find her very dark).

I gave up on trying to find a Barbie-as-archeologist or Barbie-as-chemist set (although there was a vintage, 1984 Barbie-graduates-from-vet-school with a dog for about 65$). I got a princess. A battery-operated one that sings an annoying song and has peacock-feathers on a cape that open and shut and fall out. Her dress is nice, though.

And then I got a nice book about animal tails to go along with it.