She’s drab, she’s dumpy, she’s nothing to write home about, and she’s going to make the girls of America feel like beauty queens.

The “article” also suggests that beyond inculcating more “realistic” beauty standards in young girls, the doll would serve as something for them to feel superior to.  Each doll comes prepackaged with various “unflattering and ill-fitting blouses to drape over her shapeless torso” as well as “stick on psoriasis spots.” Would-be buyers could also purchase various Mattel playsets and accessories including “the Plain Pamela Cramped Studio Apartment, complete with special Dinner-for-One Kitchenette and Depressing Stack of Old People Magazines.” The article suggests that girls might benefit from cultivating a delightful sense of Schedenfreude at an early age.

When I was young, I loved Barbie. I loved Barbie so much that I even made my male cousins love Barbie. We all played with her. It was THE THING to do. I thought she was *beautiful*. In speaking with my friends about the lass years later, I have found that what we loved the most about Barbie was giving her hideous hair-cuts, delimbing her plastic torso and making her have unsanctified sex with just about anyone. Most of the delimbing was somewhat accidental: Barbie kicked her leg too high when she was auditioning for the cheerleading squad; Barbie, while adept at flying, failed miserably when landing; Barbie just couldn’t handle the orgy at the beach, (aka. bathtub); Barbie wasn’t very resilient when poked into the spinning fan blades.

Yes, poor Barbie often wound up back in the bag with the others, naked, delimbed and disgraced. And probably when reassembled for another play date, she acquired the legs and arms of her comrades, never to be truly whole again. However, we NEVER sullied her with magic markers like other kids did, or gave her Mohawks, or made her bald. That was just wrong. Those kids were messed up. However, in the aforementioned acts, Barbie would, from time to time, become decapitated.

I salute Plain Pamela, in fact, I think it would be amazing if Mattel actually came out with a doll like this. But, for the meanwhile, girls across America can continue to deface the company’s prettier models.