In a long email chain, my sisters were arguing over how “slutty” these new plastic dolls called Bratz are compared to the “classic” dolls of their youth… Barbie. Normally a lurker on my family’s threads, I just had to inject my own testosterone-infused perspective…

Bratz aren’t any more a whore than Barbie. In our house, we have one Brat and a couple of Barbies. They all end up naked with one leg behind their head and the other leg in the toy box in the next room. But I prefer the Bratz because their shoes stay on, and this is important because Daddies did not develop the necessary hand-eye coordination to put on a Barbie pump and have it stay on (if you haven’t seen the Bratz, the foot and the shoe are fused, so you basically exchange feet in order to change shoes … sickening if you think about it, brilliant if you don’t).

I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but the Bratz are as fashion-conscious as Barbie. My sister’s were talking about their childhood and wanting/buying a Barbie just with a particular theme or a particular outfit … same with the new ones. Sure the Bratz have a very high mini-skirt, but she never wears it either. I swear the Barbies should come with a motto, “I just gotta be nude!”

But I do find it quite funny about how the “sluts” you grew up with were role models, and it is only the singers/actresses/toys of the current generation that are sluts. I mean, my wife still thinks that Madonna was a great singer/actress/action figure and a terrific role model and doesn’t realize that she put the “u” in sluts. But mention Brittany Speared, and she’ll go ballistic on her “bad influences” on the minds of teens today.

Of course, now that we have “Smaller Rack Barbie” we should take it to the next step in Barbie’s entering a realistic puberty and give her realistic hair … you know … from the nose down. We could call it “Hairy Legs Barbie” … or even “Gorilla Back Barbie” (actually my original titles couldn’t be entered).

What goes around, comes around, eh?

Roxanne sent me the following email:

Brilliant article. I used to dislike Bratz dolls, but now that people are bickering on how “slutty“ they are, I actually grew to like them (what‘s up with judging dolls on the way they dress, anyway? When it boils down to it, all dolls are brainless, heartless little dummies.) Dolls were never meant to be realistic, and the lack of “Gorilla Back Barbie” and popularity of Bratz proves that.

Erm, that is all. CHOW! And don‘t touch the sushi.