“You are feminist moron...” one email read. The next cheerful message read, “You’re a woman hater…” Another message said, “Why don’t you take a new Barbie doll, remove it from the box, and wedge it in your…”
I won’t finish the previous sentence because this is a family column. I will, however, say that Matel would not be thrilled about what the author suggested.
These messages were in response to a column I recently wrote about seeing the movie “Barbie.” At the time I wrote the column, I had no idea mentioning one movie would stir up such consternation.
So I would like to apologize.
I also want to say that I am actually a Barbie doll fan. Not a huge fan, mind you. But Barbie dolls have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
As a boy, my sister played with Barbie dolls. My mother had an old collection of vintage Barbies from her own childhood. Flight Attendant Barbie (1961), Career Graduate Barbie (1962), Astronaut Barbie (1965).
So there were lots of Barbies in our house. And we neighborhood boys were very curious about these dolls. Which is why we boys performed all sorts of experiments with our sisters’ Barbies.
You must understand, of course, that we were guys. Guys are naturally curious. We boys, for example, learned that the limbs of Olympic Skier Barbie (1975) do not bend unless they are first prepared in an oven preheated to “broil.”
We also discovered that Aerobics Instructor Barbie (1984) hair is highly flammable. My cousin Ed Lee also stumbled on the amazing possibilities of combining Barbie dolls with over-the-counter bottle rockets.
My sister even had Shaving Ken; you could actually shave Ken’s five o’clock shadow with a sponge-tipped razor. Although Shaving Ken was not true to life. At least not in my experience, inasmuch as men in my family had hair on their backs, not just their faces.
Whereas Ken had no hair on his back. Neither did Ken have hair on other bodily regions famous for sprouting hair. Such as armpits, legs, ears, eyebrows, nose, etc.
So my cousin and I corrected Matel’s slight design oversight by supergluing hair salvaged from our own heads to Ken’s little armpits, chest, and buttocks. My sister did not care for our anatomical enhancements, and this is how I fractured my right ulnar.
But anyway, yesterday I was at the supermarket when angry responses to my column started rolling in. There I was, pushing a buggy when my phone started dinging.
“Hey, idiot…” one message began, “why would you spread cultural sewage by writing about that movie?”
Another message called me a “[cussword] who plays with dolls.” Which is totally untrue. I also play with matches.
So I feel badly about what I’ve written. I am man enough to admit that I made a grand mistake.
I also want to state, in print, that I am not a political writer. I have no interest in discussing politics. Not in this column. Not anywhere. Not ever. I hope you, the reader, will respect this.
So I am sorry. If you were offended by my column, I hope you can forgive my faux pas. And if my sister is reading this, I hope she will forgive what my cousin and I once did to her Malibu Barbie (1977).
Although in our defense, girls have body hair, too.
Please, please, please never apologize for writing a column that might offend a small number of people. These people are way too involved with politics or “social justice” to understand the way you write. They barely have a sense of humor and wouldn’t know satire if it punched them in the throat.
Sean,
Some people are only happy when they’re unhappy. Their underwear is probably a size too small. You keep being you.