Transgendered Barbie

I have a love/hate affair with the whole Barbie empire. While the girls love playing with them, the Barbie clothes available now are kind of trashy. And I keep stepping on tiny pairs of shoes, purses, cell phones, handbags, etc. around the house. Oh yes, and a Barbie latte cup. What's next, Starbucks Barbie? She'll be dressed in Prada, talking loud on her cell phone, while jittering and jumping on a caffeine high.

I used to love playing with Barbies. Erin and I would spend HOURS making up elaborate story lines. We made a house out of old orange boxes that we would put wrapping paper on for wall paper and cut pictures out of "Farm and Ranch" magazine for the windows. Kleenex box beds and Sunday shoes for cars. The only thing we didn't have was Ken Barbie because (I suspect) our mom thought our story lines would become more "graphic" and there would be little, unexplained Barbies forthcoming from the pair. Hard to get more graphic when both Ken and Barbie have plastic, welded on underwear.

Erin and I were determined to have a male lead for the story, though, so we took one of the oldest Barbie (the one whose arms didn't bend and only had sparse, straight blond hair), cut off all the hair, and put it under the weights on the weight set until the boobs were smashed into a concave shape. So we ended up having a butch-looking, "transgendered" Barbie/Ken. I think that scared Mom more because at Erin's next birthday, we finally had surfer dude Ken. He didn't have as many clothing options, though, so most of our stories had to revolve around the pool or the beach.

So we'll see how long the Barbies stay around our house. S & K's story lines revolve around "buying hair at the salon" and dancing like mad to "High School Musical". So far no requests for a Ken doll have been made but if I see Barbie hair on the floor and a doll with a double mastectomy, we are heading to Walmart fast!