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I have always loved my Barbie and Ken dolls, since I was six years old. I remember my Barbie and Ken as if they were childhood companions. I remember it as if I was riding around with Barbie and Ken in the Barbie Ferrari, or joining them by the pool in the Barbie Dream House that I got for my 8th birthday. I know that there are a lot of people who say that Barbie and Ken are not good role models for kids. They say that Barbie especially enforces bad self image for girls. She is supposed to make them think that they are not good enough unless they are tall, thin, and blond, and always feel bad about who they are. But I say that that is all hogwash. Barbie and Ken are not meant to be role models. They are meant to be toys, plain and simple. To expect children to try to emulate their toys is absurd, and besides, every child enjoys playing make believe with his or her dolls. Barbie and Ken just allow them another way to play these fun and healthy childhood games. I can not see anything wrong with that. Can you?

Of course, now that I have kids of my own, I can see that not everyone plays with Barbie and Ken dolls in the same way. For example, my son actually has war with them. He gets ahold of my daughters Barbies and makes them fight each other. At first she did not like this, and would come to me, crying, when he was playing soldiers with Barbie and Ken, but over the years she has grown to be resigned to it, and even to like it. Now they all play war together, pitting the Barbie and Ken dolls against each other. Sometimes I even see them using the dolls to act out world political events. They will actually have Barbie doll terrorist attacks, and pretend that one of the Kens is president Bush. This shows me that the Barbie and Ken dolls are not only fun toys for the imagination, but educational as well. So I dispute what the naysayers have been spreading about some of my favorite toys. They obviously quite simply have no sense of fun at all, if you ask me. Otherwise, they would stop talking trash about these great Barbie and Ken dolls, and join in the fun themselves.

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