Barbie isn’t getting the warmest welcome in Berlin. Protestors from the Left Party showed up in force at the opening of a life-sized Barbie house Thursday. Billed as the “first-ever touring life-size Barbie™ Dreamhouse®,” the “Barbie Dreamhouse Experience” is 27,000-square-foot life-sized pink estate that resembles something Paris Hilton would consider home. The Dreamhouse is full of Barbie fashion, furniture and accessories, which is exactly what the protestors hate. “They present an image of cooking, primping and singing, as if it were in some way life-fulfilling,” Socialist Alternative editor Michael Koschitzki, 27, told German newspaper Der Spiegel. “The Barbie Dreamhouse is the expression of a conventional role model that isn’t OK,” he said.
The very un-Barbie-like protester above has “Life In Plastic Is Not Fantastic” scrawled on her body. She’s holding up a burning cross with a Barbie doll attached to it.
And, you know, I get it. Pink sucks, Barbie is a ridiculous ideal, blah, blah, blah. But there are a lot of little girls who like playing with dolls and house and dress up. They like the color pink. Just because little girls go to check it out doesn’t mean Mattel is going to indoctrinate them to give up their career hopes and dreams for a life in the kitchen as though it were some sort of Barbie Dreamhouse of Horrors.
Go protest something else for on behalf of women, like the fact women in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to drive. Or the fact that in the US women still make 82 percent of what male counterparts do. There are real concerns that need your attention and energy. And pretty awesome naked protesting.
