Barbie Babe and Rambo

I swear we girls all have it in us: The secret and often unacknowleged wish to be Barbie – and I don’t mean elongated, emanating plastic odor.

I am not kidding you when I say this. And you can find this highly offensive and yet I am telling you that almost every woman at some point (!!) in her life has wanted a slice of that vulnerable desirability that Barbie seems to promise: I am perfect, you want me, you want to throw me onto the floor, grab me by my exaggerated hair, and rip off my Velcro mini skirt.

That’s at least what I did with my elusive Barbie dolls. I tormented them. Their engraved smile at the same time attracted and annoyed me and left me in an uncomfortable state of ambivalence about womanhood that lasted for years.

I have come to grasps with that since then. I have more recently begun to wonder about men and their hidden desires.

Ken hardly seems to come close to who men really want to be – at least not between the ages of five and sixty-five. Quite contrary to the domesticated obsessively groomed Barbie playmate, the penis-extension wielding Rambo-type action figure seems to be much closer to the typical male ideal.

It’s the guy that will be on top of the food chain – forever. That’s who’s appealing. The guy that gets to order around Barbie until he is sick and tired of her and returns to shoot up some more hostile forces.

We all have lived through our respective Barbie and Rambo stages and some of us have done so with an unforgiving passion. It’s something inherent in our human condition. In fact, it’s what makes humanity procreate like rabbits. It’s a default setting that keeps us doing so despite obvious reasons not to.