Today is Barbie’s 50th birthday. She has gone through a lot of careers and gained many new friends and family members along the way (Stacy, anyone?), but she has never lost her unparalleled drive to maintain an unhealthily attractive figure and weight. For this, she deserves to be applauded.

I, like all self-respecting children, had a brief love affair with Barbie in my youth, primarily due to my desire to imitate the play habits of my elder sister, and I hold Barbie as one of the formative influences of my early life. I would not be the man I am without Barbie, and so I would like to officially express my thanks to Ruth Handler, who invented the Barbie doll and saw its first unveiling by Mattel on March 9, 1959.

Ruth, you have done us all a great service. We cannot thank you enough for fueling a fantasy of the idealized female body type. The fashion industry would be nowhere without you; the “adult modelling” industry would be very different without your advancement of its agenda into the young girls’ living room; modern psychiatry might not even exist without your contributions to a myriad of eating disorders.

Ruth, you are truly a goddess. Barbie, you are immortal.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you both.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie