Look out, girly girls. The biggest threat to female children today isn’t premarital sex, bad stepdads or bulimia. It’s a combination of all three.
From Germany to Florida to Manhattan, we’re seeing a vicious backlash against not the 1 percent, but against the busty doll at the center of little girls’ hopes and fantasies: Barbie.
In these days of unhealthy body image, when gorgeous model Ireland Baldwin is considered fat, the 11 1/2-inch, super-skinny sex object, usually blond, is no longer an inanimate play thing.
She’s the enemy.
Last month, the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience opened in Berlin, a shrine to all things pink, sparkly and superficial. In the retro palace, a kid can “bake” virtual cupcakes on touch screens, choose a career as a pop star or supermodel (not American secretary of state), and get lost in Barbie’s awesome shoe closet.
On opening day, angry, topless protesters waved burning crosses. Men in fuschia skirts and blond wigs cried, “Occupy Barbie’s Dreamhouse!”
A few days earlier, a Dreamhouse opened in Sunrise, Fla., where little girls can walk a fashion-show catwalk. Adult “Barbie friends” teach kids to pose with hands on hips and blow kisses, skills necessary for attracting pedophiles.
Soon, Barbie will spread her empty-headed message — Girls, get back in the kitchen or the bedroom! — in this city. Toymaker Mattel has hired a team of interior designers to create Dreamhouses in California, India and in New York, possibly in a high-rent district along Central Park.
One city mom, Stacy, tells me she won’t let her 10-year-old daughter play with Barbies. Ever. She thinks they’re magnets for starvation and female subjugation.
Are we witnessing a gross overreaction to Barbie World?
I don’t think so.
Since she was created in 1959, Barbie (real name: Barbara Millicent Roberts) has borne obscene physical dimensions that would hinder a gal from doing much of anything except lounge in the boudoir, throwing up.
Hamilton College student Galia Slayen determined in 2011 that if Barbie were a similarly proportioned life-size woman, she would measure 5-foot-9, weigh 110 pounds and bear massive breasts that threatened to topple her over. Anorexic, Barbie would likely not menstruate, and be forced to walk on all fours.
At a time when a woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, may soon make a stab at the White House, why this mania to return to the ’50s and ’60s, when men were men and depressed moms popped pills over hot stoves?
In the real world, things have changed. Mom is the chief, or only, breadwinner in a record 40.4 percent of American homes, a new study from the Pew Research Center revealed. But as women in the Middle East fight to uncover their faces, a rush is on to turn your daughter into Betty of “Mad Men.”
The latest issue of Shape magazine reveals that plastic surgeons in recent months have seen a huge influx of patients opting for surgery — not to obtain Barbie lips, but labiaplasty known as “The Barbie.” Look it up, if you dare.
Mom of two Sarah Willman, 30, is North Dakota’s “Malibu Barbie,” daily risking skin cancer on a tanning bed to achieve the doll’s golden glow, she told The Daily Mail.
It’s not just females who are obsessed with the toxic creatures. “Barbie Man” Stanley Colorite, 41, owner of a Florida dry cleaner, has trolled garage sales and now eBay for 16 years to feed a 2,000-doll habit that eats up tens of thousands in cash each year. With thousands of miniature Bob Mackie gowns, and bathing suits he meticulously hand paints on little bodies with nail polish, his collection takes up four rooms and a bathroom of his seven-bedroom house. His boyfriend has acquired 1,000 Ken dolls. Some dolls are donated to charity.
“It’s better than doing drugs,” Colorite told me. It probably costs as much.
Camille Paglia, professor at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, told me, “Barbie is an idol, totem, and fetish of girl power.
“Her tiny face is a cartoon of perfect, porcelain femininity, but her hard, long body is armored and Amazonian.” Barbie “continues to seduce little girls [and a guy] everywhere.”
Playing dress-up is cute, but things can spiral out of control. (Remember JonBenet Ramsey?) Although Barbie sales dipped 3 percent globally last year — and have dropped in the United States since 2000 — Mattel sold a whopping $1.3 billion worth of dolls last year. Now, she’s coming on strong.
That’s a toy to fear.
Eliot now sleeping in 5th Ave. doghouse
Silda Spitzer has stood by her man. Living with him is another thing.
Five years after former Love Gov Eliot Spitzer resigned from office, caught patronizing high-end hookers, he’s regularly sleeping away from home.
Spitzer, 53, who reputedly wore black knee socks during illicit romps, was spotted going in and out of a two-bedroom flat at 800 Fifth Ave., owned by his ailing real-estate mogul father, Bernard, Page Six reported.
Silda, 55, stays at the couple’s 985 Fifth Ave. digs.
After nearly 27 years of marriage, Spitzer is keeping an eye on on his elderly parents, who live in the 800 building, his spokeswoman said. But Spitzer’s new pad is less than 20 blocks from his wife’s.
A friend concluded that, with the youngest of Spitzer’s three daughters heading to college, there’s no reason to hang around.
It’s a shame Spitzer had to drag New Yorkers into his midlife mania.
Imploding star
Amanda Bynes, busted after allegedly flinging a bong from the window of her 36th-floor Times Square apartment, is scaring people.
Neighbors said the ex-Nickelodeon star — who, it emerged yesterday, has been booted from the building — muttered to herself like the demonically possessed girl in “The Exorcist.’’
Bynes, 27, got into an ugly Twitter feud with Rihanna, who she said deserved to be beaten by Chris Brown because she’s “not pretty,’’ and with Courtney Love, “the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.’’
Her dad, Rick, reportedly wants to stage an intervention, but she will not talk to him.
Someone, please, lock her up. I fear for the city if she roams free.
Beware intern-al affairs
Sexaholic ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner is hoping to lure the same types of people to whom he compulsively sent Twitter pics of his privates — computer-literate young adults. (I hope they’re adults.) Weiner ran an online ad to attract unpaid interns to join “the most exciting campaign of the year.’’ That would be Weiner’s bid to become mayor.
Interns will organize house parties, recruit volunteers and — hold your mouse! — use social media to spread Weinermania.
Don’t let your kids out of your sight.
One host has the right stuff
Jay Leno trounced David Letterman in the May sweeps. The closeted conservative’s bashing of Obama administration scandals, from the IRS’s hounding of Tea Party groups to the Department of Justice’s eavesdropping on journalists, is turning millions into “Tonight Show” fans. The “Late Show” host avoided the subjects like ebola.
In February, Leno is to be fired from NBC. Even liberal suits will miss him.