• Rubber clothes, purses, and shoes were included in a list of items that not even Barbie could ever wear. The bendable components weren't her size anyways, and it wasn't like half of the wardrobe was 50% pink, with everything else being made out of sparkles, bejeweled princesses, and Malibu-themed bathing suits. The stretchy outfits were worn by the Polly Pocket dolls that now occupied the lonely, hidden shelves of my room- though the line was actually called Polly Stretch, since "Polly Pockets" were the small figurines of the same person about the size of the average fingernail that would be propped inside of miniature settings, but that was beside the point.

    The ones I'm referring to, not the tiny ones, were still pretty small though, since they were only about the size of half of my hand, but that didn't matter really. If anything, I liked them just as much, if not better, than the standard Barbie doll. Sure, so maybe both of them had blond hair- and Polly's would either be in a plastic, mustard yellow ponytail, or she would have 'real' hair that was platinum blonde- and they both have blue eyes. You could also say that each of the dolls' set of 'friends' that popped into their lines all just served the same purpose; to fool us into thinking they have a 3-dimensional characterization, and that they have life beyond the clothes they wear. But that never stopped Sierra, a friend that went to elementary school with me and at the time was in 4th grade, from advocating her love for all things Polly Pocket, while stating that just Barbies were the bane of all existence, that they were the sole cause of anorexia, cookie-cutter celebrities having porcelain faces looking exactly the same, and self-esteem issues- all of which invade one little girl's bedroom at a time.

    And me? I had at the time, and still have buried deep within the black hole of my closet, a trunk full of them, all thanks to the older dolls from the 80s that both of my older sisters used to play with. In all of my blunt, stubborn honesty, and while I supported her, I thought it was pretty stupid. They were just dolls for crying out loud, it wasn't as though one small glance at their smiling little faces could drive someone into the brink of a manic insecurity. Even when I was younger I've always been pretty skinny, but not because of that (though she never accused me really, I wasn't underweight either), and why I'm still on the thin side annoys me as hell; I'm not athletic, I don't have the time to be athletic, I don't like sports (but I've always liked watching basketball, oddly enough), and I may or may not have a sweet tooth for Chocolate. But even during my beloved yet horribly misguided childhood years, Sierra always had a point: Considering the anatomy, her waist is tiny, and it definitely takes the hour-glass-figure montage up a notch, even when compared to the average supermodel. Not to mention that her neck is long, as she's practically a giraffe without brown spots compared to the average adult female. And don't get me started on her feet, since it's best not to think about how uncannily deformed they are- even without the mention of an ever so loved and rather painless procedure known as, wait for it, foot binding.

    But maybe I'm getting a little off topic here- or maybe this is exactly my point. Both Barbies and Pollys are similar, and if anything, it's not just because of the blonde-hair-blue-eyes thing:They even have the same, demented, deformed, pointed, and possibly mutilated feet. That isn't how we look. Not even I, as a skinny, 16-going-on-17 year old with blue eyes and hair that used to be a natural blonde when I was little, could ever reach that level of an abomination. My hair is a curly frizz nest. I wear glasses. I get acne and have to wash my face every day unless I actually want my face to look like greasy slab of fried eggs with bacon on the side. I do stupid stuff and I've never been the first woman president, princess for a day, nor have I joined NASA and the NBA in my entire lifetime- I probably never will, either. I'm a person, not an accessory, just like you and everyone else. I'm still just like every other 16-going-on-17 year old girl, take or leave a year, who's still trying to find herself when everything in the future feels so close, yet too far away for one's own grasp. It's as simple as that, and it's plain to see that a plastic, hollow head could never understand that kind of reality.