part of Emily Prager's "Our Barbies, Ourselves"

“On the other hand, you could say that Barbie, in feminist terms, is definitely her own person. With her condos and fashion plazas and pools and beauty salons, she is definitely a liberated woman, a gal on the move. And she has always been sexual, even totemic. Before Barbie, American dolls were flat-footed and breastless, and ineffably dignified. They were created in the image of little girls or babies. Madame Alexander was the queen of doll makers in the ‘50s, and her dollies looked like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. They represented the kind of girls who looked perfect in jodhpurs, whose hair was never out of place, who grew up to be Jackie Kennedy- before she married Onassis. Her dolls’ boyfriends were figments of the imagination, figments with large portfolios and three-piece suits and presidential aspirations, figments who could keep dolly in the style to which little girls of the ‘50s were programmed to become accustomed, a style that spasmed with the ‘60s, and the appearance of Barbie. And perhaps what accounts for Barbie’s vast popularity is that she was also a ‘60s woman: into free love and fun colors, anti-class, and possessed of a real, molded boyfriend. Ken, with whom she could chant a mantra.

But there were problems with Ken. I always felt weird about him. He had no genitals, and even at age ten, I found that ominous. I mean, here was Barbie with these humongous breasts, and that was O.K. with the toy company. And then, there was Ken with that truncated, unidentifiable lump at his groin. I sensed injustice at work. Why, I wondered, was Barbie designed with such obvious sexual equipment and Ken not? Why was his treated as if it were more mysterious than hers? Did the fact that it was treated as such indicate that somehow his equipment, his essential maleness, was considered more powerful than hers, more worthy of concealment? And if the issue in the mind of the toy company was obscenity and its possible damage to children, I still object. How do they think I felt, knowing that no matter how many water beds they slept in, or hot tubs they romped in, or swimming pools they lounged by under the stars, Barbie and Ken could never make love? No matter how much sexuality Barbie possessed, she would never turn Ken on. He would be forever withholding, forever detached. There was a loneliness about Barbie’s situation that was always disturbing. And twenty-five years later, movies and videos are still filled with topless women and covered men. As if we’re all trapped in Barbie’s world and can never escape.”

found in 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology p128-130