By Kelly Kazek
I heard some news last week that nearly made me spit out my Hershey bar, so y’all know it must have been truly disturbing.
Even now, I can hardly write the words but I feel it is my responsibility as a not-so-highly paid journalist to bring you the world’s news, no matter how personally upsetting.
So here goes:
It’s about Barbie — hold your breath — she’s got cankles.
No, it’s not an itchy disease.
Cankles, where calf meets ankle with no curve in between. Cankles are the new fat, so why they don’t just call them “fankles,” I couldn’t tell you.
The point is, Barbie, the iconic doll who for so long has been the brunt of criticism for having a too-perfect figure, one unattainable by real women, is being called out because her .2-inch ankles are too big.
What does this mean for the rest of us, whose feet don’t perpetually stand on tiptoe and whose hind ends aren’t stamped “Mattel?”
The standards are getting out of control, y’all.
It all started when Mattel asked designer Christian Louboutin to create three new Barbie dolls dressed in his fashions and he decided her ankles were too fat to properly showcase his shoe line.
Compared to his models, who I am guessing all look like they just spent four months in a refugee camp, Barbie must look plain overfed.
I happen to know she and Ken eat out a lot — at least they did when I was 8 and in charge of the Dream House.
And we all know those upscale designers don’t make clothes that won’t hang well on anyone above a size 0.
Just the other day, Karl Lagerfeld announced to the world that no one likes to see curves on a woman.
Do what? Say who?
Yes, he said it: “No one wants to see curvy women. You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly.”
Y’all, I nearly spit out my chips and turned off the TV.
So, Mr. Lagerfeld, who himself looks like the Cryptkeeper, only not as animated, thinks women’s shoulders should all look like clothes hangers.
Look, I know I could stand to lose a pound or 30, but on behalf of my sister girls, I feel compelled to tell Mr. Loggerhead that a woman whose figure goes straight from her shoulders to her hips is, well, a 10-year-old boy.
The androgynous look may be a hit on Paris runways, but here on Earth, people like to know which gender they are talking to.
So while I never thought Barbie would become a poster girl for real women, I’m making a plea to Mattel: Don’t let Louboutin shave off Barbie’s cankles.
Not now. Not when women can finally relate and when little girls everywhere can say, “Look, Mommy, if you were standing on tiptoe all the time and you were only 12-inches tall, your ankles would look just like Barbie’s.”
We need this one victory over designers before the world is filled with clothes only mannequins and the Jonas Brothers can wear.
The future of real women everywhere depends on you, Barbie.
And that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever written.
I think I’ll go find that Hershey bar. And where’d I put those chips?
