Complaint: Damn You, Barbie

Even though we were only there for five minutes, my daughter managed to find the single most ridiculous book in the library. It’s a Barbie book, natch. It’s about two “Barbie Girls” and their “diamond adventure.” And get this, it’s “based on the movie”!

It’s bad enough that such a book exists, but that one can also attain a visual, talking copy of such dross is really disturbing.

Anyway, both of my children are interested in this book, but especially my daughter. She can’t take her eyes off it. She’s been carrying it around for three days. It tells the story of two perfectly gorgeous poor girls who save Melody, the muse of music and end up princesses (natch again). So why am I railing about this when just the other day I yearned to be Princess of Everything?

For starters, the writing is crappy. Very pat stuff, this Barbie business. And the throughline is spotty, though I at least partially blame the fact that a good two to four pages of vital exposition is missing from the book. Still, one can divine the gist of this tale without an advanced degree. There are two best friends and there’s an evil third who tries to thwart them. (Hey, just like high school!) The two reunite and save the day and turn into princesses, with accessories!

My kids keep asking me to read this to them, and it’s all I can do not to get apopleptic when they ask. It’s so very obviously a result of marketing; focus groups amalgamated a four-year-old girl’s ultimate, ultragirly fantasy and put it on paper. It's crack.

Even though the book is about the girls as friends, there is a rift, which they, of course, in the end, repair. (enough commas in there for ya?) And of course they are rescued at one brief moment by two studly guys named Ian and Jeremy. (WTF?) (At least the girls didn’t get married at the end. Phew.)

It’s almost physically painful to read this reductionist, sappy, stereotypical, bullshit pseudo-fairy tale to my children.

So I’m just thinking that maybe the due date on this book is going to be coming up really soon, if you know what I’m saying.