Descriptive Essay Barbie

For decades, Barbie has remained torpedo-titted, open-mouthed, tippy-toed and vagina-less in her cellophane coffin—and, ever since I was little, she has threatened me.
Most women I know are nostalgic for Barbie. “Oh,” they coo wistfully, “I used to looove my Barbies. My girlfriends would come over, and we’d play for hours …”
Not me. As a child, I disliked the doll on impulse; as an adult, my feelings have actually fermented into a heady, full-blown hatred.
My friends and I never owned Barbies. When I was young, little girls in my New York City neighbourhood collected “Dawns.” Only seven inches high, Dawns were, in retrospect, the underdog of fashion dolls. There were four in the collection: Dawn, dirty-blond and appropriately smug; Angie, whose name and black hair allowed her to pass for Italian or Hispanic; Gloria, a redhead with bangs and green eyes (Irish, perhaps, or a Russian Jew?); and Dale, a black doll with a real afro.
Oh, they had their share of glitzy frocks—the tiny wedding dress, the gold lame ball gown that shredded at the hem. And they had holes punctured in the bottoms of their feet so you could impale them on the model’s stand of the “Dawn Fashion Stage” (sold separately), press a

I twirled. I skipped. I actually wore a tutu to school. (I am not kidding). For a year, I refused to wear blue. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I dressed up in my grandmother’s pink chiffon nightgowns and rhinestone necklaces and paraded around the apartment like the princess of the universe. I dressed like my Dawn dolls- and dressed my Dawn dolls like me. It was a silly, fabulous narcissism – but one that sprang from a crucial self-love. These dolls were part of my fantasy life and an extension of my ambitions. Tellingly, my favourite doll was Angie, who had dark brown hair, like