Barbie puts on a bit of weight.

Mattel are introducing new Barbie dolls.  The two weathermen looked down at their bodies.

Weatherman 1 : Mattel are adding tall, curvy and petite to their line of Barbie dolls this year. They claim they are offering choices that are more reflective of the real world.

Weatherman 2 : Are they doing obese?

WM1 :  No, just curvy. I suppose that’s a euphemism for fat.

WM2 : What about big stick-out ears?

WM1 : You can’t tell because there’s hair down to the ankles.

WM2 : So no doll is thinning on top?

WM1 : No, but they do have black dolls these days, and dolls with spectacles.

WM2 : Society is full of people with attributes we wish to avoid. They’re overweight, bald, have big feet...and what about bad breath?

WM1 : I don’t recall my Action Man having bad breath. He didn’t breathe – except underwater, that was really cool with his aqualung.

WM2 : My dad must have felt really inadequate. No six-pack, bald, wore specs, and the closest he got to water was a scrub of his dentures in the morning. The bathroom was so cold. He wouldn’t let me have an Action Man. He said it glorified war, but maybe the real reason was that he felt humiliated by the stereotype – a body image he couldn’t hope to achieve. I didn’t judge him – there were glamourous men like James Bond, and then there was my dad.

 WM1 : My dad got annoyed if I tried to dress him and undress him. You’re right the dolls don’t go far enough in reflecting reality. My mum was 5 feet and if you saw her at a certain angle alongside my sister’s Barbie, they looked about the same height. A real woman shaped like a Barbie would be 7’6”.

WM2:  You might think normal parents with moles and spots, and bits of themselves they don’t like, would not allow such an image of perfection in front of their children.

WM1 : If a child thinks that skinny waistlines are good, then she will gravitate to skinny women, or develop anorexia. And talking dolls just went to a new level.

WM2 : Don’t they say “hello my name is Barbie, what’s your name?”

 WM1 : These days they connect to the internet and have become an opinionated font of wisdom.

WM2 : Don’t ask it “Barbie Barbie in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” Because it may reply “well it isn’t your mum that’s for sure.”  And now the internet has reinforced what the child always suspected...that mum needs a bit of work in a few departments.

WM1 : It might be a force for good. When dad says “there are too many immigrants” the little girl could counter “but Barbie says immigrants pay taxes, bring in much needed skills and create a demand for our products.”

WM2 : And Barbie gets murdered – drowned in the bath without an aqualung.

WM1 : Unless the doll is as easily influenced as her dad and she comes out with Donald Trump lines like “Barbie says a nation without borders is not a nation,  and foreign workers hold down our salaries.”

WM2 : That doll is coming to life. What happens when it starts to say “I hear the boy next door has an Action Man with a cute bum. Can we pop round and say hello sometime?”

WM1 : We’ll start getting AdultLine counsellors for stressed parents who think their children and Barbie combined are a force they cannot cope with.

WM2 : She could run for President. With the internet to help balance her thinking and her stunning looks, Barbie could trump Trump and Clinton.

WM1 : There will still be a child pulling the strings in the background.

WM2 : Just as long as they don’t push the button.