FAT BARBI
                    (C)1993 Alan M. Schwartz

In the bleak beginnings of the second half of this century there 
was one mercantile ray blasting forth to blind and impoverish all 
who were unprepared.  The single most successful - profitable - 
manipulation of juvenile female minds of all time was a plastic 
simulacrum of a young lady in her early twenties with a 
biologically incredible 38DD-22-34 figure and an infinite budget 
for clothes - Barbi!  The sheer bulk of adolescent distaff 
neuroses directly traceable to a pair of proportionately huge 
plastic breasts hovering weightless about a doll's shoulders, 
supported by a wasp waist and outfitted with an explosively 
metastasizing collection of haute couture apparel that each cost 
the cringing parent near as much as a full-sized adult garment 
required the entire female US population to contain it.  As zits, 
grey hair, saddlebags, spreading butts, eye bags, wrinkles, bat 
wings, Cooper's droop and the ever-insidious middle age 
thickening claimed for victim woman after woman, Barbi remained 
invincible.  For each fairy tale adventure imaginable there was a 
special Barbi with her special wardrobe and special accessories, 
all sold separately.  In time for Christmas 1993 there was 
introduced the $200+ Lifesize Barbi which triggered two 
reactions:  Toy stores sold them faster than they could be 
shipped though they were shipped by the truckload, and Feminists 
went ballistic.

Feminists scorched the Media, excoriating the perverse male 
miscreants seducing and twisting little XX-chromosomed brains as 
they harvested bales of their filthy lucre.  Greasy-haired 
shapeless hags shook their bony fists and wiggled their loosely-
fleshed upper arms.  Their more than generous posteriors were 
pried from enveloping chairs and lurched to and fro with 
indignation.  Thighs richly decorated with varicose veins and 
bounteously storing calories for the lean times teamed with 
stringy calves to support the protesters.  Upper lips downy with 
matted fur writhed in outrage.  Chests inflated with paroxysm and 
indignation, hoisting withered dugs from their pendulous 
equilibrium with gravity.  Women's Liberation denounced an 
unofficial Western standard of beauty that condemned them to a 
lifetime of internal famine, cosmetic humiliation, and fearsome 
competition from their hot-to-trot teenaged sisters.

Little girls needed dolls to educate them in their womanliness.  
Little girls needed proper role models to prepare them for a life 
of whining to Equal Opportunity arbitration boards.  Little girls 
needed to worship a Goddess that they might better be disciplined 
in the wiles of shouting "RAPE!" when confronted with an 
opportunity for practicing conventional heterosexuality.  Wymyn 
everywhere banded together, demanded Federal grant money or else, 
and produced hundreds of thousands of realistic middle-aged 
matronly dolls for little girls to swoon over.  The jollity of 
what was christened by one and all "Fat Barbi," exceptions noted, 
was born.

Bearing a 34AA-28-40 figure, ample thighs, no cheekbones and a 
cute little moustache, Fat Barbi came with a lumberjack shirt and 
a pair of slack-cut blue jeans.  The recycled plastic was 
impregnated with the subtle but persistent scent of ripe cheese.  
Barbi was not to be enslaved by deodorant!  Her best friend 
Gretchen was Black and militant.  The Pedro doll was Hispanic and 
very sensitive to the needs of both Fat Barbi and her very best 
friend Gretchen.  He cooked and cleaned house and was empowered 
by the whole of it.  Barbi and her dearest companion Gretchen 
would attend meetings and organize cells to demand that trees no 
longer be logged, that fish were allowed to swim unmolested in 
Earth's oceans, and that the villainies of disgusting men lusting 
after innocent women be met with the full prosecutorial power of 
law appropriately reserved for terrorists, child molesters and 
murders.  Gretchen was a feminist lawyer admitted before the Bar 
via anti-discrimination legislation.  Fat Barbi was a feminist 
hero!

Larval Libbers were despicably cool to the idea.  Their fantasies 
of high heels, evening gowns, cosmetic ecstasies and Prince 
Charming soon to be mysteriously and wonderfully followed by a 
baby of their own left little room for a dialectical evaluation 
of materialist tendencies among unenlightened sisters.  Fat Barbi 
languished on toy store shelves for a year and, after fewer than 
a gross were sold nationwide during that time, the remaining 
multi-ton consignment was sold for $0.03 on the dollar to 
Mattel...

 ...who added fake blood and field dressings and repackaged the 
stuff as G.I. Barbi, making a financial killing selling it to 
little boys.