T O D A Y

What's it all about,
Barbie?
Introducing Salon's special Barbie supplement

Banned in Vermont
Birkenstock moms savage the bodacious blonde

The Littlest Harlot
Tracy Quan explains why Barbie is a role model for hookers

My Barbie, myself
Camille Paglia, Cintra Wilson and others recall intimate Barbie moments

The skinny on Barbie
Fun facts about America's doll wonder!

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T A B L E++T A L K

What is the truth about giving birth? Does it hurt like hell? Share your pain in Table Talk.

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R E C E N T L Y

"Just because I'm HIV-positive, can't I bear children?
By Lori Leibovich
Should a 38-year-old, HIV-positive ex-drug addict have a baby? Patti Radigan thought so -- and a pioneering San Francisco clinic agreed to help her
(11/25/97)

Reluctant role model
By Susan McCarthy
My classmates wanted to hear how easy it is to combine kids and graduate school
(11/24/97)

Coyote dreams
By Cynthia Romanov
Peter Coyote rescued me from a miserable divorce
(11/21/97)

Cujo's bite is worse than his bark
By Anne Lamott
The main pleasure in owning a pit bull is in detonating a sense of fear in your neighbors
(11/20/97)

Escape from parenting
By Ariel Gore
New York City turns a responsible mama into a reckless adolescent
(11/19/97)

Toying with us
By Albert Mobilio
Dissecting kids' lust for loot
(11/18/97)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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I was stunned. Such mothers don't live in my town. In my town Barbie is banned, reviled as the ultimate symbol of two evils -- commercialism and sexism. Plus she's plastic.

My town is Montpelier, Vt. It is the only state capital without a McDonald's, and that's no accident. A few years back local residents, dressed in de rigueur Birkenstocks and hand-knitted sweaters from Nepal, packed City Hall to protest a proposal for the golden arches. Many were vegetarians. Others were rabid recyclers. Some just hated corporations. Not for nothing is Vermont's only member of the House of Representatives a Socialist.

Here motherhood isn't just a natural phase of a woman's life -- it's a political statement. How long you breastfeed your children (two years minimum), where you school them (Waldorf or at home) and whether you permit refined sugar are just some of the factors used in measuring one's political correctness -- and fitness as a mother.

Your position on Barbie is another.

The anti-Barbie parents in my wooded, mountainous neighborhood outside Montpelier are numerous and nice enough. The school secretary, who sends her daughter to Waldorf, doesn't permit Barbie or her evil vehicle of dissemination, TV, at home. "That's not why we came to Vermont," she told me. My neighbor, Stuart, and his wife, Donna, an environmental lawyer, are equally serious about Barbie's potential damage to their daughter's psychological development.

"Barbie is supposedly the perfect female image when actually there are very few women who look like that at all," Stuart explained. "Of course," he added quietly, "my kids are salivating over the Barbies in the Ames Christmas circular as we speak."

With Mattel's $2 billion annual Barbie business, you'd think that the only toy store in town, Woodbury Mountain Toys, might at least try selling the Barbie horse or veterinarian clinic. But no. "No one has even come in and asked for a Barbie," sniffs Charlotte Dion, who owns the store with her husband, Tony. Charlotte, who home schools her very bright daughters, says Barbie does not foster children's creativity or imagination.

NEXT+PAGE: Caught pink-handed!