HERE IT IS -- BURKA BARBIE!
Mattel has decided to auction off a Barbie doll dressed in a head-to-toe burka, with a mesh peep hole, as a collectors item. What is wrong with Mattel?
Burka Barbie was part of a 500 Barbie doll collection recently held in Florence, Italy. The most famous anatomically incorrect doll. Barbie was exhibited in international outfits to be auctioned by Sotheby's ironically to raise funds for Save The Children. It should be "save the children from Mattel."
MATTEL'S RUN-AWAY TRAIN
The giant Mattel is like a runaway train, boxcars full of discarded ethics, speeding down a mountain. It's gonna crash ... it's gonna crash!
Nope, it's Teflon Mattel -- no matter how horrible it acts, how plagued by ethics issues it is. (No, 'is' is not a preposition. For a fun list of single-word prepositions and baby duck photos click here).
The Mattel train, and its subsidiary caboose Fisher-Price, are the largest toy-makers in the world, and they are dangerous -- dangerous for children.
WITH NO RESPECT DUE
I would start this sentence using "with all due respect," but I no longer have any respect for Mattel and it amazes me that parents and grandparents continue to buy Mattel toys which may well hurt the children they love.
It's classic denial. You don't want it to be true, so you tell yourself that it isn't true. After all, it's Mattel toys that the little ones want. So, somehow, you convince yourself that it's not that bad.
Remember how millions of Mattel toys were recalled several years ago because of lead paint?
SECRETLY EXEMPT FROM SAFETY TESTING
It was so many toys that Congress passed a federal law requiring that products made for children by American manufacturers must be tested for safety. Guess what happened? Somehow, Mattel got federal regulators to secretly exempt their products from safety testing. If their toys are safe for children, why would Mattel want exemption? Although it was because of Mattel's huge recall that Congress passed the law in the first place, Mattel was exempt while safety testing is required of all other manufacturers.
MATTEL'S DANGEROUS CRIBS, TOYS
Just last week Mattel was involved in another big product recall. After children's deaths from suffocation, some 147,000 drop-side baby cribs, which carried Mattel's Fisher-Price brand, were recalled.
At about the same time, Mattel announced it's new Barbie brand toy -- "Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken Doll." What every parent wants for their little girl.
My God, it just never ends.
IS BEHEADED BARBIE NEXT?
And now it's Burka Barbie. Mattel says the doll honors Islamic culture and tradition. The problem is that a Barbie dressed in the burka symbolizes oppression and violence towards women. "What next?" asks D.K. Jamaal of Post Partisan Examiner. "Beheaded Barbie? If you order in the next twenty minutes do you get the discounted stoning accessory kit with "honor killing" instructions for only $19.99 more?"
In his excellent post, titled "Mattel pushing Burka Barbie ...Sweet, does she come with Radical Islamic Arranged Marriage Ken?" blogger Jamaal continues: "The burka is a symbol of misogyny as entrenched in radical interpretations of Sharia law, falsely telling Islamic women that they are immaterial, irrelevant, irredeemable and invisible. Do you want your little girl playing with this?"
A SYMBOL OF HATE
Remember how shocked we were in the U.S. by cases of Islamic immigrant fathers killing their Westernized, native-born daughters for their refusal to wear burkas and submit to radical Islamic sexist oppression.
"The burka Barbie is not a fashion plate," says Jamaal. "She is a symbol of hate."
In The Christian Science Monitor, David Clark Scott informs us that Saudi Arabia outlawed Barbie in 2003, claiming the doll's "revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories, and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West." In Iran, a prosecutor warned that Barbie dolls are "destructive culturally and a social danger."
And from The Frisky blog: "I can't help but wonder if this particular Burka Barbie comes with her own religious police who'll beat the crap out of her with sticks if she dares to show her ankles in such an outfit."
CLICK AND READ "MATTEL'S FISHER PRICE MASSIVE RECALL -- AGAIN: OVER 11 MILLION TOYS THIS TIME"
CLICK AND READ "WHERE ARE MATTEL'S ETHICS: UNDERCOVER LIKE BURKA BARBIE"
CLICK AND READ "TOYMAKER MATTEL FINED $23 MILLION FOR VIOLATING LEAD PAINT BAN"
TO READ "MATTEL SECRETLY EXEMPT FROM TOY SAFETY TESTING LAW" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "ETHICS-PLAGUED MATTEL AND PALM BEACHSUGAR DADDY KEN" CLICK HERE.
by Sharon McEachern
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