I Want My Daughter to be a Hoochie Mama

Barbie, you know the perennial girlfriend of Ken from the Fabulous Fifties and the most successful doll of the century? Well, she’s gotten a makeover. No, not just some new clothes and a new car or a beach house or stuff, this makeover is supposed to radically reshape --- not her biologically unattainable proportions – but her image.

This time Barbie has been remade in the image of Lindsay Lohan and several other scantily clad overly made up party girls. In other words, Barbie has been made over into a hoochie mama.

Now haven’t we had enough of this Jon-Benet Ramsey sort of shit? Aren’t we tired of starting the sex kitten image younger and younger until they’ll start designing Pampers with peck-a-boo crotches? Can’t we see that in the advertisers’ never ending quest for profit, we are killing our children? Or hell, do we really care?

I mean, I’m assuming in coming up with the facetious title that most people actually care if their daughters are hoochie mamas. Hell, for that matter, I’m assuming that most mothers aren’t hoochie mamas who would relish the thought of their little princesses following in their footsteps. If that bears any resemblance to the truth, though, I think I’ll just hang it up and grow orchids or something ‘cause I’m all done.

Have we so thoroughly abdicated control over our children’s lives that we allow Barbie -- or any other mass produced cultural icon for that matter -- to dictate who our daughters will aspire to be? I shudder to think that the evidence seems to point to the “Yes” arrow on the Ouija board.

Witness gangsta rap music, enjoyed and emulated by ghetto hood rats and rural meth-rats alike – meaning all kids urban and suburban are taught its toxic rhymes.

Witness the rise of the Big Mac nation and the expanding waistline of an entire generation based on non-stop television brain-washing sucked down as quickly as a Diet Coke with a super-sized meal. Witness our children experiencing Baby Drama and Baby Mama Drama before they’re old enough to attend their junior proms.

And now Barbie, who I’ve frankly always had issues with, continues to spread her message of self-hate like a psychotic Johnny Appleseed but this time by lowering her image to the gutter. Whatever happened to women being valued for their inner qualities rather than their outer dimensions? Even aside from such lofty aims, whatever happened to parents discouraging young children from emulating hookers in their dress?

So between the video booty-shakers, the bitches and hos and now --- Barbie --- our future leaders (gasp) are being shaped by hoochie mamas. I can hardly wait.