I came across an article about a mother who refuses to buy her daughter a Barbie doll because it’s objectifying and unrealistic and I was inspired:

She is four. She watches as her mommy gets ready for the night out, the mom brushes her extensions, she heats her straightener and applies serum to keep her curls tamed then proceeds to straighten away. She applies bronzer to her pale skin, plumps up her lips by drawing over the natural lines and applies her fake lashes. She then checks to see if her control panties are keeping her bottoms smaller and if her push-up bra is keeping her breasts perky while telling her girlfriend how she will definitely go on the all-juice diet tomorrow — not to be healthier, but so she loses the extra two kilos before the big wedding.

In another household somewhere a little less posh, the little girl watches her mommy apply the infamous Fair and Lovely to lighten her skin tone as she waits for the ash-blonde dye to kick and make her a sassy blonde. She then sleeks her hair down with oil as she makes her secret fattening recipe to keep her nice and curvy.

At the posher household, a few years down the line, little girl goes out with mommy and friend who speak of how they will replace their natural teeth with fake ones for the Hollywood Smile treatment and how she is considering mesotherapy to get rid of the fatty spot on top of her thighs. They all head to the hair salon to get the collagen treatment while they contemplate a little collagen for plumping up the upper lips.

And then it happens, that moment she yearned for the long hours she watched her mother get ‘beautiful’ as she dreamt of the minute she’s allowed into the realm of ‘beauty.’ It happens and the mother yields to the constant nagging and — instead of telling her every single day how beautiful her own hair looks — takes her to the hairdresser to straighten her hair for that special occasion; because how else can she glam up for a wedding or the feast?  The mother coos and smiles adoringly at her little one as she gets her hair done and her nails painted.

She struts her maine and refuses to let water touch it for days on end; suddenly the pool doesn’t matter and she couldn’t bother getting her freshly — or not so freshly — painted nails chipped playing with sand. But it happens, and she bathes, and then look at her unmade her and develops a strong sense of nostalgia for the days she looked pretty and all glossed up.

A few years later she becomes a teenager as her mother looks on disapprovingly while she guiltily eats a bar of chocolate. The mommy sighs and tells her how she needs to “watch it,” because she’s developing a little muffin top. 

She’s now 18, in college, throwing up every little bite she eats, dying her hair any color but her own, trying every salon treatment to make her hair straight — or curly if she already has straight hair — and lightening or darkening her skin according to the latest fashion. She’s begging for a nose, boob and many other jobs and she’s about to get into that bandwagon. 

She doesn’t know how to like her own hair, she doesn’t know her straight-haired friend yearns for her curls, she has no clue how her curves are the point of envy of a skinny friend whose mother is always on her case about her boyish look and she is ignorant of how lucky she is to have jet-black hair. Her mother wonders how it happened and why she’s getting into a series of destructive relationships.

The problem isn’t only little girls playing with unrealistic, objectifying Barbie dolls,  the problem is mommies turning the little girls into Barbie dolls of their own league.