My daughter joined the Barbie Girl community about a month ago and she hasn't been back to it since. The volume of activity on the board leads to slow loading and she's nothing if not impatient. I can't say that I'm overly thrilled with the tone of any of the online communities that she's visited that are geared to girls specifically. I keep steering her back to co-ed communities like Club Penguin and TVOKids but I wouldn't mind her finding an all-girl community with more activity options than shopping and make-overs.

There have to be enough people with enough ideas and enough skills reading Feministing that we can get together and build something better than this.

Ugh, that's so sad. Sometimes, I think that the culture of consumption that Betty Friedan described has gotten worse, not better.
I played with Barbies (In the 80's, no less, when she still had torpedo-boobs and a tiny waist) and I think I turned into an ok feminist. My Barbies all ran a private investigating agency/rock band. I had a Totally Hair Ken that came with Depp hair gel & he turned out to be wicked creepy looking so I made him all scarred & he was the bad guy.
But shopping was never a part of the game. Hell, I hated shopping when I was little. I was always, "I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm bored, I have to go to the bathroom."

Yeah, why -can't- they join virtual rock bands? Hello, webmasters, Barbie is in a rock band! Barbie and the Rockers forevah!

Ugh indeed....

Some of my fondest childhood memories were of me and my sister playing with barbies in our "toy room". We transformed this small room into a home for the barbies; we did the layout of the house with boxes and other material.
For a long time in my late childhood, I wanted to be an architect.

My idea of playing with barbie was not shopping and maxing out the credit cards, but redesigning her house and creating plotlines for all the lives of the dolls (including many male dolls).

However, this structured virtual setting allows for very little imagination. It definitely reinforces socially constructed gender roles.

I think raising a generation of mass-consuming vapid patriarchy drones is precisely the intent behind things like this, unfortunately.

SamBarge - Has your daughter tried Neopets? It's not particularly productive or educational, but it offers a variety of things to do, and is designed to be a safe environment for kids.

Ann,
Despite the act of shopping not being a conscious aspect of your Barbie play, I would argue that it is still an implicit aspect of the toy's culture. I mean, where and how was Barbie supposed to have acquired all her gadgets, like the corvette, or the cool outfits? There is a sort of disregard of economics inherent in Barbie that I think you could translate to the idea of kids' disposable income that you see these days (though it is by no means the only cause).

Also, I remember from my own Barbie days the nascent consumerism that was involved in acquiring various Barbie accessories. It's like this with a lot of toys, I know, but I remember a certain sense of pride among playmates about whose parents would buy them the latest and the greatest Barbie things. We may not have been acting it out in our play, but I think that the desire for the toy as a child is not far off from the same desire for possessions as an adult.

"I mean, where and how was Barbie supposed to have acquired all her gadgets, like the corvette, or the cool outfits? "

My grandmother made all my Barbie's clothes - I never bought a single outfit for her!

Of course, sewing is a pretty much lost art these days, even among grandmas...

Oh, of course. Agreed that consumerism has always been implicit in "Barbie culture." I was just remarking on how much more pronounced it seems in its online iteration, where Mattel has explicitly created a consumerist world.

missjulied, I am a *total* proponent of learning to sew, for all sorts of feminist reasons. My sewing ability is what allows me to buy thrift store clothes and alter them to fit me really well -- which is good for my bank account, my body image, and my personal style. I wouldn't have time to make all my clothes from scratch, of course, (just a few items here and there...) but altering thrifty purchases and old clothes I already own has been so important to me.

My wife's barbies were drug addicts. Just sayin' is all. Apparently her and her friends would come up with these complicated soap-opera plots for them.

Or so she tells me now, anyway.

actually, if you look into most online kids' communities, there's a component that is training them to be consumers. this is even true for co-ed communities like neopets - there's a big emphasis on racking up points or something so that you can buy things for your pet. and i'm pretty sure different companies like mcdonalds have partnered with neopets in cobranding projects so that you can buy your pet a big mac, etc.

of course, it's even more pronounced in all girls communities. it goes beyond this for virtually all products marketed towards girls - their toys include play purses with money and credit cards, and it isn't too hard to find a shirt for an elementary school aged girl that reads 'born to shop' or something ridiculous like that.

ug. so depressing.

There are so many things they could do beyond shopping. I thought they did a career series of Barbies in the 90's. What ever happened to those?
The one Barbie game my daughter has played is one that was a horse riding game. I did find her a gameboy game that actually had nothing to do with shopping. It was pet resort or something like that. You take care of progressively more complex pets and you get paid to successfully do so and use that money to build your business.

On the same trip I bought her a magazine for the car trip. It was labeled "discovery girls" so I assumed it was more science for girls. Wrong, the bulk of it was about clothes and shopping.

I agree with the previous comment. There needs to be some more interesting sites for girls.

"On the same trip I bought her a magazine for the car trip. It was labeled "discovery girls" so I assumed it was more science for girls. Wrong, the bulk of it was about clothes and shopping."

Get her The Economist next time. If you don't get her started early, she may never be interested in 6 page special inserts about interest rates in China.

No sex?! all my Barbies had a lot of sex. I think for most of my childhood friends laying naked barbie and ken dolls on top of each other was a major part of learning about sexuality...seriously. It was also something we weren't supposed to do with them at all.
That's why I don't like letting any young kid (boy or girl) play too much of any computer game. Everything is monitored, controlled and pre designed. Games like this are only healthy in extreme moderation, no matter what the theme.

"Get her The Economist next time. If you don't get her started early, she may never be interested in 6 page special inserts about interest rates in China."

Did anyone else here take the SAT at 12 (my middle school guidance counsellor recommended it to a whole bunch of us) and then get free trial subscription offers from The Economist, Mademoiselle, etc.? I didn't understand the longer Economist articles at the time but the one-pagers and the shorter stuff was interesting. :) Now I wonder what 12-year-old rap fans who took the SAT and accepted the magazine offer thought of the "Bubbles and Bling" article.

I actually played Barbies with a friend's niece recently and was really weirded out by her Barbies' obsession with shopping. She had "mom" and "kid" Barbies, and the moms would leave the kids at home and go shopping, promising to bring the kids something back if they behaved. I realized her Barbies shop a lot because thats what she imagines HER parents do when they leave her alone for long periods of time. (Apparently they did a lot of drugs and drank heavily, which is one of the reasons she ended up in the custody of her aunt.) She didn't have a way to visualize a Barbie that was really grown up. To her, grown-ups were just kids with more money; which isn't a bad observation if your parents are neglecting you to hang out with their friends.

All that was heartbreaking and tragic to see, so it really burns me that Mattel would actually be marketing that worldview to girls who have lived otherwise healthy lives.

No sex?! all my Barbies had a lot of sex. I think for most of my childhood friends laying naked barbie and ken dolls on top of each other was a major part of learning about sexuality...seriously. It was also something we weren't supposed to do with them at all.
OmG, I thought I was the only one who did that! My friends & I made our Barbies & Kens (& some Barbies & Barbies) have sex. Well that and date He-Man and build armies with She-Ra, despite being considerably taller.

My Barbies had a massive amount of sex too. And my cousin and I only had one Ken, so there was a fair amount of lesbian Barbie action. My mom also used to help my sister and I give Barbie "make-overs" where we would cut off all off her hair so it was all spiky, or color it in green and then give her serious eye-liner and tatoos.

Does anybody remember the Jem dolls? I remember preferring my Jem doll because she had a thicker waist and a belly button.

Hey Mattel!
I am a future mom! I would be a lot more likely to let my daughter visit your "barbie" website if you had an idea like the one presented in this blog. If my daughter could roll play being an athlete, an inventor, a writer, a president, a teacher, a doctor...etc. I would encourage her to visit the site. Why not link education to favorite characters? I know that the website is typically for market research. So use it for beneficial research. Remember the fact that kids think it is FUN to LEARN!

Does anybody remember the Jem dolls?
OmG, I wanted a Jem doll so badly! Actually, I really wanted one of the Misfits dolls b/c some of them had funky-colored hair and I tired of using magic markers. I think the Jem dolls came with cassettes too.
My fave doll was actually my Ariel doll from The Little Mermaid. She was at least an inch shorter than Skipper but she came with a detachable fin and ahd the wildest, bright-red hair.

My Barbies had tons of sex, and some of it was weirdly kinky, even though there was no way I would even know that particular sex existed. Its mainly what I remember about my Barbies, even though I had a ton of them and a ton of accessories too.

My barbies were always having sex too! Me and my best friend were lucky enough to have a Jem doll, as well as one of the New Kids on the Block dolls between us, so Joey Macintyre got a lot of action back then...

Yes to naked kinky Barbie sex. I didn't have Barbies, but my friends did... and I remember being very annoyed that one of them had her panties sort of glued on so you couldn't take them off.

And you know what this is reminding me of for some reason? Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. They way they would take some guy with a serious life situation (he wants his girlfriend to move in with him, he wants to start dating again after getting divorced, etc.), and "make over" his life in completely consumerist terms -- fix his problems by buying him furniture, clothes, appliances, accessories, hair and grooming products, gourmet food. Ick.

And yes, the ick factor goes up a lot when the consumerist propaganda gets dumped on kids.

"No sex?! all my Barbies had a lot of sex. I think for most of my childhood friends laying naked barbie and ken dolls on top of each other was a major part of learning about sexuality...seriously. It was also something we weren't supposed to do with them at all."

Oh yeah! My sister and I used to have Barbie put out in her pink lambroghini (sp?) with Ken. They used to get tied up and tie up each other. My mom was shocked once when she happened to wander into our room and found Ken naked, and tied up.

Oh thank goodness. I thought I was the only wacko whose Barbies had lots of kinky (and girl-on-girl) sex. See, I only had one Ken, too, and he only had one leg (tragic pants removal accident). So he didn't see near as much action as the girls did.

Of course, my method for "fixing" Barbie's hair was also fairly odd. I had five or six of them, and they all came with different hairstyles. So I just swapped the heads around if I wanted to change something. It was faster and easier than fixing their existing hair or changing their outfit.

And, for the record, I did have the combo apartment/office playset (the only one I had), so my Barbies were business women. Or, occasionally, ghost hunters or UFO fighters. Those Mr. Potato Head kids they used to have made handy aliens.

I have an 8 year old daughter and for her, Barbies were a 4-5 year old thing and now she's grown out of them. That's what bothers me about Barbies--we were older when we played with them (which is why they had sex so much) and now they are replaced with other dolls like Brats or no dolls at all.

This just means that Barbie is teaching girls about consumerism and the like earlier--which is the most worrisome part.

My kids stick with TVOkids which isn't about buying junk.

Kimmy, your one-legged Ken doll due to "tragic pants removal accident" is too funny. My cousin had a quadruple-amputee Ken due to her ripping off both legs and arms one day and throwing them out the window. We only had a half dozen Kens between us so we just keep using him in his disabled state.

While my Barbies had a lot of things (and a lot of play sex - too much All My Children watching with my mom I think), I don't remember ever having them go shopping. Shopping was always a game playing with other friends, requiring elaborate set design of the store and cashier register area. It was much more about the set-up for me then the actual shopping.

OK, so maybe I'm the only one who didn't play with Barbies, but my niece had a huge Barbie phase and asked for only Barbie things for Christmas for several years. Thinking maybe the Barbie laptop would be ok, I picked it up and read the box. It came with 3 CDs: Shopping, Music, and Parties. I found her a board game instead.
My 3-yr-old stepdaughter is only mildly interested in the Bratz and Barbies when we see them in the toy aisle. So far I've convinced her that "Barbies, Bratz, and Princesses are kinda dumb" (which she does repeat to her friends, much to our delight). So here's the question we're pondering now: would it be inappropriate to tell her that we don't really like the Bratz because they dress like whores (Colbert's phrasing)? What will happen when she tells her grandma that she doesn't want a Bratz doll because they dress like whores? Will this make us bad parents? I just don't feel like we can forbid them, and thus make them more desireable, so making them seem kind of ridiculous and undesireable is the method we're pursuing right now. Any thoughts?

I don't know that I'd use the expression 'whores'. But I think it would certainly be okay to point out to her that Bratz don't look like real kids and don't dress like real kids and that's kind of weird.

But, they're making a Bratz movie with real kids (really really really, I swear, I saw the preview yesterday), so that argument may not last very long. Maybe "lollipop heads are scary!"?

Honestly, lots of parents don't let their kids play with Bratz. I work at a girls' birthday party place and it's rare to have girls get Bratz-anything for their birthday. Many parents have mentioned that they think they're inappropriate.

I guess I'm a little odd. My Barbie shopped. A lot. In all fairness, I had the whole store set-up and Barbie did own the store.
My Barbies also had lots of sex with other Barbies, Ken, and most of all my Wrangler Man. Wrangler (Jeans) Man was the same size as Ken, with decidely smaller feet. He had hair you could brush and a horse..I think he even had removable underwear, sans genitals of course. Much more fun than Ken.
I also vividly remember things like, my Barbie would get up in the morning, kiss Wrangler Man goodbye, jump into her corvette, and speed off to work (whatever career interested me that day). I have no idea what Wrangler Man did all day. I guess he rode his horse on the beach in front of the Malibu House.
And, on a trivial note, I had one of the first (if not the first) Barbies with short hair.

I have a video game to recomend to the parents here for Nintendo DS. It's called Animal Planet & you basiclaly create a character and move to a town and build a life. There's stuff to buy but you have to work for your things--you can fish, plant and collect fruit, sell and trade things including plants and seashells, design clothes, hats, and umbrellas, and run errands to earn bells (the form of money).

Haha, I second Animal Crossing!

It's also out for the Game Cube and might be out for other Nintendo systems?

It is a very family-friendly game that is focused on activities rather than sex or violence (ie: doing errands for neighbors, decorating your house, creating clothing, fishing, bug catching, etc) and it doesn't have the kiddie-feel that might turn off older players.

I started playing when I was 17 and my brother and his girlfriend played too - they were 18. I still like it at 21 and my 13 year old male cousin loves it as well.

There is a wee bit of sexism though. There are a lot of animal characters that could potential live in your village, but they only come from a few personality 'types'. There is a 'workout' type, where the character is constantly talking about working out, and those are always guys (or always have been guys in my experience). And there is a gossipy character that loves pink, and naturally she is a 'girl'. There is also a visiting character who is a female and is mean to you about your outfits. There are, however, characters that are gender ambiguous whose name, clothing, and housing decorations (a major part of the game) don't give it away.

I don't remember my Barbies ever going shopping. My sisters and I had complicated soap opera plots for them, they were frequently attacked by Transformers, and they had tons of weird sex, but no shopping.

I never had a Ken doll, though. My sisters each had one...but I never asked for one. I'm not sure why. I always cut off one of my older Barbies' hair, stripped her naked (neither of the Kens ever had clothing...I don't know why), and then she was "Ken." I think there may have even been an incident where I tried to saw Barbie's boobs off with child safety scissors to make her look more like Ken. The operation was unsuccessful.

Anyway, I'm babbling. Bleugh at that site. It's not only gross to shove such blatant consumerism/gender stereotypes down girls' throats, it also takes away the one thing that made playing Barbies with my sisters so great. Imagination. We decided what they liked and what they did all day. I'm not sure that playing at having our Barbies shop would have had the same appeal as things we made up ourselves.

My Barbies were waifs and strays donated to me from various older neighbours and so already had a variety of hair'styles' and defining characteristics when they became mine. I also had two brunette Sindys which my dad sent off for from some breakfast ceral giveaway thing.
All Barbies and Sindys lived an an all-female collective (an old bookcase, remodelled) and regularly dressed in my brother's Action Man's (stolen) combats. Unfortunately, the utopian society was brought to an abrubt halt when the Barbies and Sindys were kidnapped by my bro, taken to the garden, and shot for target practice.
I retaliated by putting all his Action Men in dresses.
Ah, happy days...

My Barbies were waifs and strays donated to me from various older neighbours and so already had a variety of hair'styles' and defining characteristics when they became mine. I also had two brunette Sindys which my dad sent off for from some breakfast ceral giveaway thing.
All Barbies and Sindys lived an an all-female collective (an old bookcase, remodelled) and regularly dressed in my brother's Action Man's (stolen) combats. Unfortunately, the utopian society was brought to an abrubt halt when the Barbies and Sindys were kidnapped by my bro, taken to the garden, and shot for target practice.
I retaliated by putting all his Action Men in dresses.
Ah, happy days...

I went on the site myself, and one huge problem I had with it was how it failed to represent all races--needless to say ignorance to various body types... But seriously, the range of skin tones halted at basically a hispanic skin tone of warm, light brown; however, they, of course, managed to include every light skin tone possible included a pasty white that didn't appear to suggest any amount of health...

I'm personally of the opinion that Barbie dolls were a POSITIVE thing (which it sounds like you are as well, Ann). I've heard it all about the body image thing, but what I see in Barbie is all the professions she had. I can't remember another doll from my childhood that was a female doctor. I think that's a good thing for young girls. So why can't they make a website that encourages that side of her?

Granted, even at age 8 I thought it was weird that her boyfriend had plastic hair and no genitalia, but I still think it was a pretty good role model.