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.