From: Ceri 
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MM All,

There's been a bit about the Witchy Barbie on several lists lately -
_when_ I've time to catch up. But I thought this was an interesting
comment. 

More so considering this little (uber-conservative) corner of the
twilight zone was selling them months ago (well only the _white_ Barbie
model). Maybe we were used as a test area - wether it's conservatism was
known by the marketers (?? to taint the test market) or not is a
mystery. However the shop couldn't keep enough on the shelves...

  Rai who'd _never_ paid full price for a Barbie before 

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: [ActElemental] alas, gotta do it - Morford on 'Barbie the hot
pagan witch' (delete forthwith!!)


Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse Barbie The Hot Pagan Witch It's
the bimbo blond doll's latest Wicca-like incarnation, ready to  "poison"
young girl's minds
By Mark Morford

Listen up, naughty girls. Do you long to be an "ordinary schoolgirl" by
day who "transforms at night" into some sort of scary pink-robed
glittery giggly perky blond pseudo-witch "magical enchantress" thing,
perusing your "book of spells" with its plethora of "mysterious
compartments" that "hold your secrets," along with recipes for
concocting real potions "you can actually drink?" 

You do? Well Jesus with an orgasmic wolf howl and some heavy goth
eyeliner, are you ever in luck. Because just in time for Halloween and
just in time to make a few thousand hyper-Christian parental brows
furrow with consternation and spiritual constipation, and just in time
to make any true Wiccan roll her eyes and flick this story away like so
much bad juju, here comes Secret Spells Barbie. 

That's right, it's Mattel's latest Wiccan-flavored mutation of the
famous and famously obnoxious pneumatic blond dingbat, joining the likes
of Barbie Loves Spongebob Squarepants and the Barbie Romance Novel
Giftset and Princess of the Portuguese Empire Barbie and Spirit of the
Earth Barbie (all genuine items, alas). Not to mention the long-desired
Manic Depressive PR Exec Divorc‚e Barbie and Resentful Proctologist
Barbie and Bloated Don't-You-Freaking-Touch-Me PMS Barbie and
Desperately Lonely National Security Advisor "Condi" Barbie, with bonus
Spinning Head feature. All, presumably, coming soon. 

Hey, witches are cool. Everyone knows witches are cool. Way, way cool.
Willow from "Buffy" was cool, and the vaguely lesbian witchly threesome
on "Charmed" are ostensibly cool (in a bitchy backstabbing black-mascara
mall-hopping sort of way), and even "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" is
passably cool if you're, like, 12, ditto the entire whack "Sailor Moon"
anime universe, because anime is just way cool, just by default. And of
course Harry Potter, the king himself, is still despoiling millions of
young minds with his blasphemous heathen wizard spells and preteen angst
and secret burgeoning lust to discover what magic dazzling
transformational enchanted wunderfrump lies beneath Hermione's knickers. 

Yes, Secret Spells Barbie is a witch. Sort of. But not really. Even
though she is. But Mattel would never dare call her that, of course.
Barbie just, you know, dabbles. Plays around. Casts a "spell," then
twirls her hair and pops her gum and giggles a lot and then goes
shopping. This is what Barbie does. Nothing seriously Wiccan here,
nothing remotely intelligent or in depth or knowledgeable about true
witchcraft or magick or Wiccan belief, of course, because were Mattel to
venture too far and dare to actually educate or inspire young maidens to
shun church and embrace nature and dye their hair black and change their
name to Raven Wolfdancer and start holding slumber parties/yoni
awakenings on the winter solstice, why, terrified Christians would
almost certainly rise up and light torches and march on their local
pseudo-Christian Wal-Marts, which would immediately stop carrying the
demonic lesbian Wiccan dolls that only masquerade as oversequined
sanitized blonds with the equivalent of 39-inch chests. 

No, SS Barbie apparently takes witchcraft about as seriously as, say, a
hair barrette. About as seriously as the caulking on the Dream House.
About as seriously as Ken's deeply repressed desire for a Barbie-size
strap-on and a serious S&M whipping. And yet. Apparently there's a TV
commercial for this new doll, one that instructs Secret Spells Barbie
fans to gather "at a secret time, in a secret place" to enact these
"secret spells." And then it cuts to a shot of our fair
witches-in-training "secreted" away at the library mixing
"potions" and
"doing spells" and one rogue girl perks up and asks whether the spells
actually work, and sure enough right then a hunky teen boy appears and
strolls right up to the girl who has the Secret Spells "kit," and she
grins all knowingly and enchantingly and giggle titter wink ooh isn't
this wacky witchcraft fun? 

It is just so cute. And it is just so sad. 

Because you could argue that Secret Spells Barbie signifies the ultimate
saccharine dumbed-down heavily bleached mainstreaming of witchcraft and
Wicca, sucking poor little Harry Potter dry and embarrassing even
Sabrina and deflating all the joy and sexiness and funky chthonic wonder
out of witchcraft and magic, and for this Mattel can rightfully be
jeered at and besotted with night sweats and made to wear the Cursed
Necklace of Dhzarzebub. Or something. 

And, furthermore, you could say that Witch Wanna-Be Barbie exemplifies a
deep and rather obnoxious insult to true Wiccans everywhere, the
equivalent of Mattel launching some sort of perky bare-thighed Islamic
Fundamentalist Barbie or maybe Frigid Catholic Nun Barbie or Wide-Eyed
Rosicrucianist Barbie or even Creepy Cult of Scientology Barbie with
Deluxe Tinfoil Hat and Fanatical Grin. You could say that. But it's not
really worth it. 

Because more than anything else, you just have to say that this
incarnation of the world's best-selling virgin, this premolded hunk of
insidious white plastic that inflicts the initial lashings of the
American beauty myth on millions of young girls, is utterly, shamelessly
useless. 

Secret Spells Barbie is, despite her potential and much like every one
of the 150,000 weird sub-subniche Barbies on the market, entirely
pointless and disposable and, unless the girls who end up with her
somehow tap into their inner badass witchiness and suddenly get inspired
by some divine funky moonscream to rip off Barbie's arms and paint her
hair bright red and tattoo her nipples with a Magic Marker and impale
her on a red-hot hair pin and suspend her upside down from a
dreamcatcher, well, she does nothing to further the cause of funky
gorgeous goddess-thick witchness and nothing to further the cause of
earthly luscious pagan interconnectedness or divine feminine power. Not
that she claims to. Not that this was ever Mattel's point, or Barbie's
raison d'etre, really. And I suppose it's sort of wildly unfair to hope
that Barbie might actually inspire girls beyond the hair-twirling
saccharine fetishism of shopping and friends and cars and boys and
shopping and money and dye jobs and shopping and fake careerism and
shopping. 

But in Secret Spells Barbie, there was a glimpse. There was a glimmer of
hope that underneath her massive drapery of blond follicles and beneath
that massive melon chest and beneath that huge pink cheap sequined magic
robe beat the raw red heart of a latent pagan priestess, just dying to
bust out of that whitebread virgin faux-Christian Botox world and get it
on with the divine, even a little. 

Alas, it's not to be. Oh, Barbie. When, oh when, will you strip down and
writhe in the woods and howl at the moon?


-- 
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Ceridwen is a default net alias
       Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.



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