Barbie Gets Inked!

Remember my earlier post celebrating Barbie's 50th birthday, where everyone seemed to agree with my statement that little girls use their Barbies as a creative outlet? Remember when EVERYONE commented or came up to me and told me (outside of the blogosphere! omg!) that they used to draw tattoos on all of their barbies too? Well, Apparently Mattel has picked up on this 'popular' trend and created, Totally Stylin' Tattoo Barbie, which allows little girls to not only put little sparkly tattoos all over their doll, but on themselves as well.

As you can imagine, this new line of Barbie that comes complete with cutesy butterfly, hearts and flower tattoos has caused a lot of controversy, and parents world-wide have been filing complains stating Tattoo Barbie will make their little girls grow up too fast.

In this really hilarious and terribly written article, Robert Elessar states, "I don't know about the idea of little girls thinking about getting permanent tattoos before they graduate from medical school."
...WHAT? Yes Robert, all girls choose a path toward medical school, and they should wait until they've graduated to put ink on their bodies...???? How specific can you get?

Jenn Alcayaga, a parent from Sacramento, California, in a much more legit argument states, "It's attracting kids too young to want to expose parts of their body to show off tattoos."

In one way I think it's kinda cool, taking the MOST popular girl driven product and having her sport something that is usually seen as taboo. According to the Bitch Blog, only 1 in 4 women have tattoos, so essentially, this could create a giant shift in perspective. Plus, they're just moving a long with the changing times. It's not like they're giving Barbie tattoos of guns and spiders (like in these two photos where someone decided to give their own twist to tattoo barbie), it's still very innocent.

With that in mind, you also have to remember that Barbie is Mattel, and Mattel is a corporation who is obviously feeding off of the huge insurgence of tattoo culture and taking this opportunity for a little bit of corporate appropriation. Mattel argues that Totally Stylin' Tattoo Barbie, "let's children express themselves and be creative."

What do you think? Yay or nay?
Would you buy your kid Totally Stylin' Tattoo Barbie?

P.S. Happy International Women's Day! Don't forget to come celebrate tonight at Phog!