Is there anything Barbie can’t do? Of course not.
On April 1st (ahem!) we told you about Barbie’s ordination to the priesthood and service in the northeastern U.S., where she has been seen in all manner of smart high-church ecclesiastical wear designed by The Rev. Julie Blake Fisher of Christ Episcopal Church in Kent, Ohio. Barbie’s doings (which prompted one to ponder, “How long till she is Bishop Barbie?”) caught fire on Facebook and elsewhere.
All fine. But did you know this pop-culture phenom has also been an Orthodox Jew with tefillin and Talmud?
Or that she’s also been imaged lately as an atheist?
Seems we need ready cultural icons to turn into what we are and to reflect how we see ourselves. It should come as no surprise in a year that has seen the announcement of a computer engineer Barbie whose clothing and accessories were the result of a vociferous lobbying process by actual computer engineers. That’s about a million miles from the 90s Barbie who infamously intoned that math class was hard.