Barbie's opinion not welcome

at girls' playtime

An opinion column I wrote for The Examiner about Barbies that can talk.

WITH thanks to toymakers Mattel, Barbie is redefining the way that children play.The latest "Hello Barbie", released in November, is your child's new (artificially intelligence-enabled) best friend.

Using WiFi and speech recognition technology, she has the capability of holding conversations, playing games, sharing stories and telling jokes. And just in case that wasn't selling point enough, Hello Barbie also gives parents the power to record their children's conversations.

Because you know, that's not creepy at all.

The creative team at Mattel are pretty proud of themselves. I'm kind of appalled. Ever since Barbie stepped onto the toy scene in her plastic stilettos, she's raised more than a few eyebrows. Her slender figure, large breasts and heavily applied makeup have had feminists raging for decades; and rightly so. A 2006 study in the journal Developmental Psychology concluded that "girls exposed to Barbie reported lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape".

If mute Barbie has had such a powerful impact, what will happen now that we've given her a voice?

On a surface level Mattel has managed to achieve every child's dream, a toy that actually speaks. But the more I think about Hello Barbie, the angrier I become. Mattel can talk up Hello Barbie all they want. But behind their fancy-pants marketing campaign stands a doll that is encroaching upon your child's imagination, tainting it with more than 8000 lines of pre-recorded content. Mattel says this means "hours of countless fun". I say this means reason for extreme concern.

By the time I was nine years old my Barbie, Jasmine, was at the height of her career as a professional horse rider. A Virgo just like me, she drove a convertible, and was in a committed relationship with my older brother's red Power Ranger, Jason.

I'm not sharing this slightly embarrassing anecdote "just because". I'm sharing it in order to demonstrate that when it came to my playtime as a girl, I was in control. I didn't have a pretty girl with perfect hair telling me what game we should be playing, or that she no longer had feelings for her red action figure beau. And for that reason, my imagination reigned supreme.

As a girl I daydreamt wildly, and I daydreamt often. But what will reverie look like with Barbie interrupting? For this reason, psychologists who study the imaginative play of children are also concerned.

While throwing a tea party with a talking Barbie might seem wildly creative, researchers worry that the digitised doll may prevent children from harnessing their own imaginations; discouraging them from exploring their own version of make-believe.

Where old-school Barbie allowed a child's mind to flourish - after Jasmine crashed her convertible and broke her leg, she retired from horse riding to become an interior decorator - Hello Barbie revokes the need for fantasy. Complete with fuchsia lips and a calculated personality, she doesn't need direction from your child, because a team of writers at Mattel have already told her what to say. And while that might be OK for your child, it's not really my style.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought playtime was for daydreaming, not pre-programmed conversation.

This article was first published in The Examiner.