Pester power: my 4 yo really wants Barbie, what to do?

Dittany - name change? I doubt it really. She has a very 'obvious' posting style... so if she's name changed and is posting it must be killing her to be being so restrained!!

Well - I'm glad you got what you wanted out of the thread.

Weapons - I don't mind the obviously extremely fake silver guns you get with cowboy type suits/cap guns/water pistols, hate the very real looking ones that look like modern guns. I wouldn't mind if they were given the former but would 'rehome' the latter to the bin they make your heart stop in a way the crappy silver cowboy ones don't and I'm very much of the opinion that they'll make a 'gun' our of fresh air anyway if they want one.

I don't think Butterfly is suggesting Barbie is the only factor.

My Sindy was a Keep Fit Sindy and she wore trainers.

I remembered her as having similar feet to Barbie and yet having flat shoes but looking at the pics they can't have been as extremely pointy as Barbie's.

(My Barbie only had a swimsuit and the clothes knitted for her by my granny.)

Oh Butterfly - do be serious. I'm sure grown women are not getting their toes cut off simply because of Barbie - for goodness sake.

I agree with flapperghasted. Buy it or don't buy it. You don't need Dittany or anyone else to get outraged to justify your decision.

Frankly I find Sylvanians far more disturbing.

DD was given various Barbies by others as presents. She was never really "into" them aand once said she thought they looked wierd. She hated those other ones - Bratz - even more!

What would you think about a Sindy instead?

Does Barbie still have feet made for high heals only?

I must go now and play chess with DS,so will vanish again...

No,they didn't,it was just lazy word choice on my part.
Though you could perhaps argue that OP wants to ban Barbie from her home??
To me Barbie's body shape is so unreal that her shape is "doll" not "woman"
and that alters the effect she will have on body image.In the same way that Bratz dolls are "doll" shaped.
The whole "of course girls want to play with pretty dolls with fashionable clothes" is the issue I've noticed more.

I don't think the problem is with Barbie herself - I know that her body shape is entirely ridiculous,but I don't think the message little girls get from that is that that is what they should be aspiring to.It is too far separated fron reality for that. All the Barbies DD and her friends owned as little children ended up with cut hair,painted faces,and often with missing limbs,not as pristine role models.
The problem is still with society and I don't think banning Barbie afects that.
(I have a bigger problem with toy animals which you can bathe,feed ,take for walks - and the more realistic kind of baby doll - why have real when plastic does the job so well? Not that that is a feminist issue...)

So what your op really meant was, my dd wants a Barbie. Give me lots of good reasons why I can feel good about not buying her one. You're a woman. You get to make so many choices in your life. You don't need to justify this one. If you want everyone to agree with you because you think you're right, it's not likely to happen. Most people accept that buying a Barbie these days is not the issue it used to be. And I love somme's playful parenting idea that toys can be used to challenge conventions. If I had a son and he wanted a Barbie, I'd buy it him...crap role model or not. It's only a representation of something more sinister if you allow it to be. Your child will not see the allusions that you as an adult will make.

And body disorder is not down to the dolls you did, or did not, play with as a child as an earlier poster implied. They are much more to do with our insane society and the ridiculous pictures of perfection they present to us, often wrapped in an unhealthy dose of anorexia and a compulsion to be vacuous. And that's bloody everywhere! I have to say to my daugther, when lollipop headed women appear on tv, that this is NOT normal! That's a much harder battle to fight than the stereotype a 1950s doll represents.

Is there a SAHM Barbie? There bloody well should be. Thats also a full time, worthwhile career.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread but we have let DD have one. I like the idea from the book 'Playful Parenting' about challenging the stereotypes through play. So when I play Barbies with DD we ditch the heels and short tight dresses and Barbie goes on adventures where she needs to explore, run, jump, kick etc. Barbie gets into fights too, to be honest I haven't really thought that through but it means DS will join in too so I can slip away when I've had my dose of imaginative play.

My dd was indulged in the pink stuff when she was young. She knew her mum didn't like dolls much (I loathe them...always have) but she had a couple from grandparents etc.

When she got into Barbie, I went with it. Bought the movies and the dolls when she was into them. She was little and I wanted her to have the things she wanted (within reason) as I was very poor as a child. They all ended up gathering dust on her shelves eventually. She had one of the shortest lived Disney/Barbie phases of her friends and once over it, she turned into grunge girl.

She would rather play with Dr Who toys and Lego than dolls or pink stuff now. She's 10, loves being 10, has no desire to be grown up yet...takes everything as it comes and is just a lovely young girl. She has no body issues and we often talk about the ludicrosity of the perfect image of women in the press, in children's toys, etc. She sneers at boob jobs on telly and doesn't even want her ears pierced. Definitely not a girly girl any more!

I understand the underlying fears that Barbie subverts the natural vision of what a woman should be, representing a poor role model for our girls, but really...there are far more insidious things dangled in front of our faces on tv, in magazines and pretty much everywhere. Don't get me started on the non-celebs all over the place these days and bloody half naked women gyrating to every single cd in the charts.

The doll is a bit of plastic that will be forgotten before it's broken.

Also, give her a little credit. Most 4 year olds will say something like 'she doesn't look like a real lady ' She will give you ample opportunity to redress the balance too - when you are changing barbies clothes for the millionth time because it's too fiddly for her, it's easy to slip in comments like 'this would be much easier if she was a normal shape'.

Buy the kid a barbie. They're fun - they can do and be anything you want them to be. It really doesn't matter which one you buy, she'll be naked and look like she's crawled through a bush backwards in no time

She will see lots of bodies while growing up and frankly there are far worse influences out there than a barbie doll.

I was babysitting tonight and the kids Dad switched the TV to a kids channel for them, he was sitting watching it with us while their Mum got ready. There was some weird animated thing on and the girls were incredible - legs up to their armpits, very ample, pert boobs, very flat tummies, waspish waists and generous hips (there were a lot of fairies flying around??) and the things they were saying - I'd be far more concerned about kids watching that, than playing with Barbie. [two girls, one 5 and one 6, one thought it was good the other thought it was crap]

i actually don't think barbie is a tool of the patriarchy. i think she's a tool of the toy industry. the patriarchy has decided we must all be scrawny with big tits, and so that's what the toy industry has produced. bit chicken and egg. i don't know enough about consumer behaviour around the barbie invention period though. wasn't it something to do with the designs of the dresses she had to wear as to why her body had to be so weirdly shaped or some such nonsense?

tbh i'm more of the opinion that it's about a developmental stage that requires conformity between 4 and 8ish tbh. if the marketers for a gender free product were as hard nosed, rich, and into mainstream advertising as mattel, they would all be wanting the something completely different

yy i suppose if you don't have parents who are looking critically around them and pointing stuff out to dcs, then barbie could be seen as a tool of the patriarchy. but the way barbie is used in this house, and (i susoect in most of the others on this thread) it is no such thing - rather a tool of equality.

embrace your barbies and point out their flaws, and use them wisely. (those zip lines and luge runs are an ideal start.)