Readers React: Barbie’s perfect, but only inside her box

To the editor: Barbie may be “basic,” as Meghan Daum writes, but playing with her is anything but. (“Curvy or no, Barbie is still a mean girl,” Opinion, Feb. 4)

We used to stick pins through her entire head and call them earrings, break her legs trying to make her ride a plastic horse. Ken got his head shaved in a sex-change operation. I’ve seen boys put G.I. Joe through talky soap operas that would rival “General Hospital.”

So don’t blame Barbie for being perfect. Once she comes out of the box, she’s quite versatile.

Jane Warden, Malibu

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To the editor: In the 1960s, my daughter and her friends would play with their Barbie dolls and always remove the head. It was so much easier to dress her headless body, pop her head back on and then deal with that mop of hair.

Imagine my surprise to read that what I thought was an act of simple expediency was instead “a beautifully basic rite of passage.”

Sue Sever, Long Beach

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