He said, I won’t have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she’d fall on her face.She said, If we don’t let her have one like all the other girls she’ll feel singled...

Honestly, I’d rather be anywhere else. Even home, where my dad begins almost every conversation with, “You should lose the black clothes and wear something with color.” Puh-lease. Like I want to look like every Barbie clone in Hell High, a.k.a. Oklahoma’s insignificant Haloway High School. Ironically, Dad doesn’t appreciate the bright blue streaks in...

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

I’ll never be like a Barbie girl, that’s for sure.

I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother’sPTA and Boo’s strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina,and led right to me.”She can be anything,” Boo told me,...

My dad will win, I silently countered, even as I smiled sweetly. I couldn’t wait to spike the ball right through her block, no matter how tall she was. In health class we’d learned that if Barbie were human, she’d be six feet tall and weigh one hundred pounds, and Gisele seemed pretty close to...

I look like prep school Barbie,” Nudge complained, as she entered the kitchen. She caught sight of me in my uniform and looked mollified. “Actually, you like prep school Barbie. I’m just Barbie’s friend.

So what’s your doll’s name?” Boo asked me.”Barbie,” I said. “All their names are Barbie.””I see,” she said. “Well, I’d think that would get boring, everyone having the samename.”I thought about this, then said, “Okay, then her name is Sabrina.””Well, that’s a very nice name,” Boo said. I remember she was baking bread,kneading the doughbetween...

In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested — citing most often the offence of impossible proportions — that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike...