What The Hell Is Up With That?

So I’m doing the exercise thing at Supreme Fitness – 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer then some weight lifting and home. But while I’m on the elliptical I got nothing but my Ipod crunching music into my ears to keep my legs pumping also the TV is on (as it usually is). I have to say that I don’t really pay attention to the tube, I only stare at it occasionally because it’s there but I never care what’s on.

I’ve literally cardio’d my way through – cooking shows, bass fishing shows, game shows, news, Nickelodeon and the occasional sporting event. I never turn it on, other folks do like I said I’ve got my music going and I focus on that. But… on this particular day while in the middle of taveling 4 and half miles while never moving an inch! I notice a Barbie commercial (hence the Nickelodeon observation above), you know Barbie®, the perfectly thin over accessorized over materialized girls doll that has been giving young lady’s everywhere a complex about how they look since 1959. Well add one more accessory to her bag of tricks. Lady’s and gentleman may I introduce Tattoo Barbie® or as Mattel calls her Barbie Totally Stylin’ Tattoos™.

Obviously I couldn’t get this image of my mind so I looked it up on the Barbie.com website and here’s their description of her - This trendy Barbie® doll comes with over 40 tattoos! Using the enclosed tattoo stamper and stickers, girls can wear the designs or use them to decorate Barbie® and her fab fashions. Its hours of temporary tattooing fun! (Ages 5 and up.). Before I get too far into this let me set the record straight, I don’t have a problem with tattoos, I have two myself and I’ve been toying with the idea of getting another (here’s where my wife will weigh in with a big fat “no way Chachie”). I got my first Tattoo at the age of 38 a Yankees logo above my right ankle and the second when I was 42 my grandson’s name over my heart (that one really hurt! But he’s worth it.). Tattooing is very trendy and has been for a few years now. I’ve seen a lot of young and old getting inked up, so it’s nice to see that the stigma around them has dropped off a little.

Having said all that let me get started. It’s one thing to have Malibu Barbie who travels around town in her Corvette with her boy toy Ken, but it’s completely something else when you are sending a message to kids that tattooing is the way to go. You should know the tattoos are temporary and temporary tattoos have been around since I was a kid and they’re fun. Except when I was a kid they used to die your skin and last a few weeks, it’s probably what lead to the eye twitch I have now. But when you’re telling a 6 year old that you can tattoo your lower back and reinforce that with her favorite toy… it’s not a good thing. I really believe that you shouldn’t be even thinking about tattoos until your 18 or dare I say 21, but when your 18 you can go to war, you can register for the draft so 18 it is, you can get a tattoo.

In this age of political correctness (or as I call it - the lack of ability to extract common sense and reason from any given situation), is it appropriate to have a “Tattoo Barbie”. Does it open the door for little girls to maybe expose parts of their bodies they wouldn’t normally have out there? Am I thinking too much about this? I don’t think so, but I put it out there and risk being called a prude – which I’m not. But I am about positive messages and I’m not sure that “Tattoo Barbie” carries that message.

But let’s balance this out with the 75 year old Tattoo Barbie and let’s see what years of sun and shopping and gravity have her tattoo looking like then… maybe that will slow down any wild thoughts of getting a tattoo. What the hell is up with that?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 4:12 am and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.