Barbie deprivation is a crime that few of us are prepared to commit

Barbie deprivation is a crime that few of us are prepared to commit.Nor are there any real alternatives on the market. Her Aryan perfection will be found in many a Christmas stocking A consumer boycott is not likely. Sindy, one feels, could easily see off a Dragon Flyz Riptor Dragon or a Mighty Roar Goliath or Big Slammu or any of those macho boys’ toys.If Barbie is ensconced in a retrograde view of the world, it doesn’t show saleswise She is more popular than ever. Sindy is romantic but practical.Sindy, for instance, has a magic dreamboat, a plastic gondola that transforms itself into a dining table and chairs Sindy really does a lot of things Sindy “really dances and her jacket lights up” Sindy “really pedals” Sindy “really spins”. Sindy is, how shall we put it, more athletic, endlessly disco-dancing in her playhouse, doing somersaults or cruising around in a speedboat. Her lifestyle doesn’t involve work but endless fantasies of feminine fun.Sindy, an Essex girl version of Barbie, meanwhile, is more down-market, and, it has to be said, a lot cheaper. She is exactly what a woman should be, and yet small enough to manipulate in every way.

Still, who needs genitals when you can have ridiculous pert breasts and legs that go on forever and can ride a songbird carriage that features decorative birds that flutter their wings as you move along?Watching little girls play with these creatures, one realises that Barbie is both Babe and baby. Here he is engaged in all sorts of acts that one would imagine require genitals Fortunately, neither Ken nor Barbie herself possess these. Fag Hag Barbie, it would appear, lives in a dream house with a gay man and a couple of little sisters that she has picked up along the way (Shelly and Stacie) – Single Mother Barbie is not on the agenda as yet.Her friend Ken is not exactly in the closet, anyway, as anyone who enters the Barbie pages on the Internet will realise. She has a boyfriend of sorts, but what can you say about a man who calls himself Shaving Fun Ken (he has “real” hair and a beard to really shave)? Ken is also prone to dazzling us in his “sparkling holographic” beach shorts. She is a princess, a mermaid, a gymnast, a songbird, a ballerina She goes on picnics She has a horse with hair as long and blonde as hers She lives in a plastic Tudorbethan palace. Her royal pinkness exists in a world of pre-adolescent girliness. Of course, I shall reluctantly stretch lycra over the Barbie bosom until the inevitable day that I find Jewel Hair Mermaid Barbie, naked accept for a coating of felt tip and biro, legs askew, hair mussed up by having been washed one too many times with real shampoo, at the bottom of the toy box.You won’t find Abused Barbie in the shops, though, for Barbie is pure.

She wants to take her clothes off with her fat little fingers and then nag at me to put then on again. She wants to put her to bed in between Paul (Sindy’s boyfriend) and Aladdin. By my five-year-old, anyway.My daughter wants to say she has got another Barbie in order to be part of the Barbie economy that dominates the playground. She cannot walk because her golden dress fans out into a mermaid tail She is beautiful and she is desired. “I know it’s not good for her, but all her friends are doing it.” Don’t worry, we say, it’s a phase, she’ll grow out of it.I told myself this only last week when I was purchasing Jewel Hair Mermaid Barbie Her hair is 38cm long and full of star-shaped jewels She has no nipples, but her earrings stay on for ever.

Forget gender stereotyping, ideological objections, crass consumerism – harassed mothers hand these toys to their kids as if they were supplying them with crack. This was her name for these dubiously flexible creatures.
I gave in Most of us do. As a toddler, she would wail night after night for “a bender”. At least I know that my eldest daughter went through the same thing and has now been so successfully deprogrammed that the only game she plays with Barbie is one she calls “Barbie commits suicide”. She has entered “the magical world of Barbie”, and try as I might I can’t get her back. As a parent, one strives to protect one’s offspring from malign influences, but despite everything my youngest daughter has succumbed to the most common cult of all. Now, when they start advertising Hooch to the elderly for medicinal reasons .. but I suspect the elderly would have better taste..

And it feels like it, not just by observing the office party scene this festive season, or even observing the Hooch Man on the box. It is impossible to prove that the long-term trend in drinking alcohol is still rising, but it feels like it. There are lots of little signs: the Swedish government making alcohol sales more attractive by privatising its liquor monopoly; the move to continental European (ie lower) tax levels on alcohol here; the tendency for places serving alcohol to serve food too, and so on.The thing about big social swings is that they are impossible to chart until long afterwards. But there are obvious practical difficulties in imposing such a policy! Clearly, what you have to try to do is to encourage moderation, but that is not an easy trick to pull either.Third, it may be that what might be called the southern European ethos about drinking – little and often rather than the periodic binge – is spreading north. In an ideal world I suppose you would try to discourage the young from drinking and encourage the old. In absolute numbers of deaths, though not years of life lost, there was a gain from drinking. There is also a fascinating study on alcohol and mortality in New Zealand, carried out by the University of Auckland, which suggested that alcohol cut the death rate of the middle aged and elderly, but added to the death rate of the young.