Barbie turns fifty with nary a wrinkle or dimple of cellulite

Happy 50th birthday, Barbie! I wonder if Mattel will be releasing a celebratory "Hot Flash Barbie" complete with a plastic AARP card and miniature-sized Spanx to cover up her burgeoning muffin top belly. We can only hope, right? Should that happen, I will be among the first in line to make peace with our plastic friend (nemesis?). We will become best friends, drink Starbucks nonfat vanilla lattes together and discuss the woes of spider veins and those ever-increasing pesky sunspots that are popping up as a result of one-too-many poolside tanning sessions in the years of our youth. I can't imagine why we would have sun spots after slathering our bodies with a homemade tanning concoction of baby oil and iodine and lying on a silvery-looking tanning mat that sizzled us to perfection like bacon in a skillet of hot oil, can you? (Wow, after typing that last sentence, I kind of want to take a break here and call my Dermatologist and schedule a check-up.)

I was made aware of Barbie's 50th birthday while reading an article this morning on washingtonpost.com in the "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column. The author included the above image (created by an anti-obesity group, adsoftheworld.com) as a representation of what Barbie might look like if she dined on the standard junk food diet of the average American.

As someone who has poked fun over the years at Barb, I've questioned at times, whether or not playing with Barbie has actually contributed to poor body image issues among our young women. I confessed in one of my books that as a little girl, I never longed for her unrealistic figure. I struggled more with an intense jealousy over her closet full of cool clothes, zillion-quadrillion pairs of stilettos, the ornate Barbie mansion, and that racy pink Corvette. The girl had it going on. Then you add that plastic hottie, Ken to the mix and yeah, who wouldn't want to be her? Amazingly, the article above supports my hypothesis that most girls are able to separate Barbie's unrealistic body proportions from reality. Below is an excerpt of the article with an interesting (and humbling) finding about what (and who) contributes to the influence on a girl's body image issues.

While gobs of copy have been written about Barbie's pernicious influence on women's body images and sense of self-worth, an entirely unscientific poll in the Checkup blog last week put Barbie and her vaunted influence in their place. Of nearly 700 readers responding to the question "Who has most influenced your feelings about your body?" 33 percent cited "images in the media" and 32 percent cited "my mother's comments about my weight and figure." While 14 percent said their mother's comments about her own body exerted the most influence, nary a soul pointed to Barbie. (Click here to read the entire article.)

Yet another reason to pick up a copy of 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter and begin having the necessary conversations with our daughters pertaining to body image issues. Let's break the chain of dysfunction and tell our daughters the truth about aging, cellulite, and the importance of maintaining a reasonable and healthy weight range. Let's quit pointing the finger at Barbie and move onto the real source of the problem: The media and MOMS. Ouch. I'm stepping on my own toes, here. I think I'll go reread that section of the book since my daughter is due home next week for Spring Break. It couldn't come at a better time, since we will be spending time at the lake and it's sure to involve swimsuits...