In the great pantheon of childhood toys there are few as ubiquitous, as culturally dominant, as wildly oversaturated as Barbie, the plastic approximation of a woman whose various outfits probably cost more than your entire closet. Being so intertwined with the tumultuous development of young girls, the brand is of course subject to great scrutiny. Barbie has been accused of being everything from an unrealistic, self-esteem destroying symbol of the male gaze to a Pied Piper of liberal values luring girls away from homemaking and into the workplace. That’s quite a lot of fuss to kick up about a toy whose ultimate fate was met in the jaws of the family dog more often than not, but there are legitimate questions to be asked about what Barbie represents for girls and the impact she has had on them over the years. Thus, when the time came to make a live a ...