What kind of things you like about Barbie?

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I remember I had a kinda scratched and deformed barbie in my considerable haul of toys and cuddly things because I'd thieved it from my sister's room one day, she used to go in the army all the same and frequently be slammed into the carpet battlefield and do her part either becoming a hero, a bit part or a pinata, she didn't really become very heroic on a frequent basis because to be honest she's just a generic plastic doll and whilst my imagination is quite fertile, I could never get past the fact she was a barbie doll and a high maintenance airhead manifested in plastic form, sometimes I tried jamming a tiny plastic weapon of other more humble toys props in her stupid fists but that didn't work, I think i blue-tac'd a lot into her arms but they usually fell off before she was approached in the narrative (she threw them off obviously), she usually got whacked into the corner and one of the three cherished dinosaurs trampled on her vacantly grinning head.

I wasn't really too fond of girly toys but I sort of tolerated Barbie because you could give her any identity you wanted and play with her in all sorts of scenarios. My sister liked Barbies so when we would play together we often incorporated different things for both of our interests. For instance, some days we played Dr Frankenstein with the Barbies and other times they were superheroes working with the Power Rangers and other times they were just regular people. If McDonalds did the whole HotWheels and Barbie thing her Barbie would be a giant chasing my little racing car like the t-Rex in Jurassic Park.

I think my relationship with Barbie was complicated. I didn't really care much about the toy itself but I did resent the fact that I was expected to enjoy these things and want to emulate "girly" things. I was a bit of a nutter as a child and wanted to be like Steve Irwin (sans the stingray death) so that didn't really appeal to me. But the cool things my about a lot of girls toys is that they can be somewhat customisable and can be personalised, which can encourage some level of creativity.

The cool thing about my childhood was that my parents didn't force gender roles on their children. Okay, maybe my mum wanted to dress us up in matching dresses but it was her job to humiliate us.

I remember being in 5th grade and someone gave me a skipper doll. I pulled it's head off, cut it's hair, drew on it's face, sewed it's mouth shut, and then used the head as a pencil topper. My teacher made me take it off my pencil and give it to him. He did not approve. That was the only barbie thing I had as a kid. I never wanted or liked them. As an adult I spent a brief chunk of time painting them up to look like day of the dead dolls. It was fun for a month or two.