What Are “Men Extenders”?

Introduction

Have you ever come across the term “men extenders”? Perhaps? But maybe you can’t recall where? Well, I don’t recommend googling it. For research purposes I had to do this, but at least I used an Incognito browser window. The results were not pretty. It took me a while to turn up the origin of the non-penile sense of the phrase, but I am finally equipped (no pun intended) to tell you where it came from. Following that I’ll launch into a full exegesis, as is my wont.

The origin of “men extenders”

Outside the realm of the saddest cosmetic surgery known to man, the term “men extenders” appears nowhere on the Internet except pages deep into the Quotes section of the IMDB entry for “Barbie.” Here is the reference:

This movie is a perfectly fitting place to kick off this new (and highly useful) term, because as we all know from being kids, Barbieland’s denizens are replete with accessories. (Here’s an old joke from my brother: “Hey, have you heard about the new Divorce Barbie? She comes with half of Ken’s stuff!”) Of course, most of the accessories are hairbrushes and pink dream houses and pink convertibles, etc.—i.e. her stuff—and whenever one of my daughters got a new Ken doll the first thing she’d do was rip all his clothing off, exposing his greatest lack (which is an interesting counterpoint to the non-Ken context of “men extenders).”

I can’t remember exactly what got me thinking about men extenders, but I know it came from a dialogue I had with my wife, where she posed a question along the lines of, “What are the quintessential men extenders?” It turns out to be a fascinating realm of exploration.

But first, some housekeeping

Look, I’m going to get into some ideas here involving what’s manly, and what a man ought to be able to do, and what it would actually mean to extend a man’s, well, manliness. (And no, that’s not a euphemism for his member—enough with that already!) Naturally there has been a lot of evolution, perhaps even revolution, lately about what it means to be a man and what ought to be expected of us. So I should state right up front that I’m not going to be so progressive as to ignore the past, or try to make this all about a new male paradigm, much less delve into the realm of non-binary. This post is about the traditional sex roles that, looking across the landscape of mankind, continue to be predominant: roles that even the most modern man—and woman—are still saddled with.

Yes, modern man is more civilized than he used to be, particularly in progressive countries (of which, say, Afghanistan would not be an example). We men have learned to dress better, scratch our groins less publicly, be a bit less dense about equality, and may more willingly share the boardroom with women, to a greater or lesser degree. But this doesn’t change, in my mind, the fact that we men have certain impulses—unconscious biases might be the better term—that we either quell or indulge, depending on our personalities, our position on the cultural spectrum, and the situation. What I’m getting at is, when our intellect, education, and breeding cause us to modify and refine our behavior, what is the knee-jerk behavior that’s being subdued?

My past and present have enabled me to come at the thing from both directions: the base primitive male and the educated, enlightened, housetrained modern man. Consider the following photo:

Look at the dazed look in my eyes. I was not just the kind of dad who bottle-fed his baby once in a while so he could get brownie points for having done so at all. For complicated reasons, I bottle-fed one of my babies a great deal, in lieu of sleep. And I changed a lot of diapers. How many? Well, if I were to say in the presence of my wife, “I reckon I changed about half of A—’s diapers,” she wouldn’t burst out laughing. (I actually tried this. She said, “Probably more like 40%,” and didn’t even roll her eyes.) On top of that, I am such a modern man, I am able to keep track of a non-cisgender person’s preferred pronouns when they have changed. (This surely seems like no big deal to Gen Z, but believe me, it’s not easy for my generation and I assure you, we are trying.)

And yet, evolved as I am, I am a person who over the course of his childhood was in a number of fistfights, and rather than looking back on those episodes in shame, I recall them wistfully—fondly, even. And although my now fully formed neocortex would prevent me from ever resorting to actual combat anymore, I still like to have an excuse to duke it out (metaphorically speaking) with some rando when I’m cycling (see here, here, and/or here). Many a woman would call this “macho bullshit,” and maybe it is, but I’m gonna own it … it’s my macho bullshit and I’m not giving it up (even though I did a huge load of dishes earlier).

For more on the topic of male impulses that won’t go away, click here. On the other hand, if you are so highly evolved that the last few paragraphs have triggered you, maybe it’s time to stop and go read something else instead.

So what are the quintessential men extenders?

As you saw earlier, the men extenders example given in “Barbie” is the horse. Certainly this makes sense; in an archetypal way, a man on horseback is utterly masculine … just think of the Marlboro Man. Of course, nobody rides horses anymore, and a modern man who can afford a horse and the land, stables, etc. required for one is probably more like a polo player than a cowboy … not exactly macho. It’s only because “Barbie” itself is so archetypal that this notion works in the movie.

So what about a motorcycle? Consider the Bon Jovi song “Wanted Dead or Alive” and its central lyric, “I’m a cowboy/On a steel horse I ride.” Frankly, I think this song kind of killed any chance of a motorcycle extending anyone’s manhood. The video, showing well-groomed pretty-faced rock stars playing in a stadium full of star-struck teenage girls, makes them come off as pretty much the opposite of an actual cowboy.

A truck? Now we’re getting somewhere. A big manly truck … built Ford tough, etc. I certainly see a lot of pickup trucks when I’m out biking, and it’s not uncommon for one to accelerate mightily as it passes me, as if to demonstrate something. If I’m riding with a pal when this happens, I’ll generally remark, “Wow … did you hear  the size of that guy’s testicles?” And more often than not, the dickhead who uses his pickup in that antisocial way is a well-upholstered middle-aged white guy and his truck is immaculate and probably never leaves the asphalt. In contrast to that, the smaller pickups that pass me, which invariably give me plenty of room, are usually more run-down, and are full of gardening tools (shovels, mowers, etc.) and driven by workmen, usually Chicano ones, like the guys who, in a few short hours, dug a deep trench in my backyard to install a French drain, while I watched from the kitchen window while doing dishes, feeling deeply inferior as a man.

Does this mean a big, expensive truck can’t be a men extender? Why, no. It’s just that a pristine Range Rover with leather seats exemplifies only wealth, not manliness, so there has to be more going on. Take, for example, my friend B— who drove a bunch of us to the Deschutes River recently to go inner tubing, and hauled everything in the back of his big pickup. Nothing about his payload that day was particularly impressive, but he mentioned that a pal gave him the truck because it was so old and beaten down it was getting hard to keep running. B— gladly accepted it because he has a lot of fun making little repairs to keep it on the road. And that is fundamental: the know-how that goes with the physical object. Bonus points for lashing a canoe to the roof and knowing all the right knots so it doesn’t slide off and maim somebody.

The more I ponder it, the more utility seems absolutely central to men extension. This is why, in fact, a beard or a tattoo or an ear gauge cannot be a men extender: because these decorations don’t do anything; anybody can choose to have one. It’s a sartorial thing done to you then you just parade it around, as frivolously as a fancy woman of old showing off with a big feathered hat.

Is know-how itself a men extender?

Not all know-how is a men extender; it has to be paired with the right object. For example, men who are really good with tech stuff, while they can earn legendary amounts of money, will always be considered a bit nerdy, and seeing these tech titans in action isn’t very impressive. “Look at how his fingers fly over that keyboard!” moaned no enraptured woman ever. And the C-suite types? Knowing how to properly tie a silk necktie isn’t a men-extending behavior, and the hoodies of the Mark Zuckerberg set are frankly childish. What about men who are just really good communicators? Tony Robbins might be worth $600 million, but he’s never going to star in an action movie or get a grill named after him. His tools—a ballroom and a microphone—aren’t the kind the guy next door would secretly covet. How about a telescope and a masterful knowledge of astronomy? Naw. No layman could ever appreciate whatever it is these oddballs see in the night sky. I myself got to see Halley’s Comet through a powerful telescope at an actual observatory, and it was pretty much the most boring thing ever.

I guess I’m not exactly unearthing the pure essence of men extenders here, but it’s like so many things: you know it when you see it.

The men extender I wish I had…

I myself cannot mourn not owning a beater pickup truck, or a canoe, or the earth-turning tools that (combined with laborer-grade sinews) might enable me to dig a giant trench in no time flat. Based on the gentrification of my neighborhood (which somehow transitioned from the Prius Belt to the Tesla Belt while I wasn’t looking), I don’t think my neighbors would appreciate a dilapidated F150 dripping oil on our street. Meanwhile, I don’t generally do much boating (in fact, when my wife and I have tried to canoe together, we just went in circles). And if I were a career gardener who needed a work truck, I probably wouldn’t earn enough money to live in Albany, and my kids needed good schools a lot more than they needed a manly dad. (In fact, having now left the nest, they scarcely need me at all anymore, which is fine I guess—I mean, it’s according to plan.)

But what I do long for, if I could just get my act together as a man, is a barbecue grill … and the know-how to use it. I mean, yeah, I could buy one of these giant gas grills that’s basically a stove you use outdoors, but I’m thinking more of something more traditional, like the classic Weber. Or, better yet, a giant commercial-type grill with the big ring you crank on to raise and lower that big blackened mechanism—a spit, is it?—that’s suspended by chains. You know, like you could roast a whole damn pig on (if you knew how). Because the fact is, I love barbecues, I love grilled meat, I love the smell of flaming lighter-fluid-soaked briquettes even if they’re deadly. And of course I’d love to extend my manhood … but even all these things put together aren’t enough to motivate me to actually buy a grill and learn how to use it. After all, I’m middle-aged, and already eat a dangerous amount of cheese, and had better look out for my health. Moreover, knowing I’d be buying this grill just to extend my masculinity … that seems somehow kind of wrong, kind of sad, kind of … well, emasculating, if that makes any sense.

My own favorite men extender

My wife assumed that to the extent I have any men extension, it would have to do with my racing bike, and my mountain bike, and the athleticism I’m able to pair with them. Honestly, I don’t think bicycles get the job done. Yes, I can ride them pretty effectively, but there’s really nobody around to see this except other cyclists, and at least on this side of the Atlantic the sport has never had the respect it deserves. Above all, a cyclist only propels himself along, and this doesn’t do anybody else any good. A fisherman with his own boat, especially like one of the guys in The Perfect Storm who braved horrific weather to haul swordfish out of the ocean, is very manly, as is a soldier, but some guy pedaling a bike faster than some other guys? Big deal.

My own favorite men extender is my toolbox, because it’s full of a lot of very cool bicycle-related tools that I actually know how to use, and which keep my family’s entire fleet going. Ditto my workbench and my smattering of household tools (drill, hacksaw, wood saw, etc.). Also ditto the tools I carry mountain biking paired with my ability to fix a student-athlete’s bike when it breaks down on the trail. Some of these bike-related tools are weird enough that the layman wouldn’t have any idea what they do. Others, like my wheel truing stand, have an obvious purpose but the layman wouldn’t know where to start. (Truing a wheel, by adjusting the tension on each spoke, is a real art and most DIY types could only cause harm with such tools.)

And what’s my absolute favorite tool? That’s a tough one, but I guess I’d have to say my Dremel rotory tool. It’s kind of like a drill, but you can put various different cutting bits on it, the coolest being a disc-shaped blade that will pretty much cut through anything. Sparks fly everywhere, which looks cool. The first time I encountered this phenomenon—though with some even cooler tool in my dad’s machine shop—I  asked him, “What are all those orange sparks?” He said they were tiny bits of molten metal. “Won’t they burn you?” I asked. He said by the time they hit you they’ve cooled off enough. So I think being brushed by a shower of sparks is actually kind of pleasant. (Of course I wear safety goggles—I’m not an idiot.)

Recently I bought a bike from a pal, and it came with a U-lock, hanging from the top tube, that alas lacked a key (thanks to my pal’s typically clueless teenager). I think I got a bit of a discount based on the hassle of that lock. But I had it off within minutes using the Dremel.

I used my Dremel again the other day, cutting a metal plate out of a giant cooking pot it’d gotten stuck in, and I mentioned to my wife, probably not for the first time, “The Dremel blade spins at ten times the speed of a drill.” Without grabbing my biceps, my wife did not say, “Get over here, you big hunk.” In fact, I don’t even thing she was listening. And that’s perhaps the most interesting thing about men extenders: I don’t think women even notice them. Women just aren’t tuned into that stuff.

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10 Reasons to Cut Barbie Some Slack

Introduction

Mattel, facing flagging sales of its Barbie dolls, manufactured some controversy recently by doing a tie-in with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.  Though some of the coverage of this (highly lucrative) controversy was quite good, mostly I came across lightly researched, predictable puff pieces.  (An example of the indifferent reporting:  few stories bothered to point out that Barbie wasn’t actually on the cover, but only appeared with a “cover wrap” in about a thousand issues.)  The low quality of existing coverage has emboldened me to tackle the topic despite my routine unwillingness to do a lot of research myself.

Originally I thought the controversy would be about swimsuit models suffering from lowered self-esteem after being compared to Barbie dolls, but I didn’t actually find any evidence of this.  And when I watched a video that accompanied a story about the supposed controversy, I stopped worrying about the models.  The video didn’t even mention Barbie; it was just a few models having a routine interview interrupted by the big news that they’d made the cover of Sports Illustrated.  They jumped up and down and shrieked; one curled up on the floor, overwhelmed; and one—mid-hug—cried, “Oh my God!” and then (fearing a wardrobe malfunction),  “Oh, my hair extensions!”  Worthy of Shakespeare, that.

So I’m focusing instead on the original charge that Barbie dolls present an impossible ideal of womanhood that damages the self-esteem of girls.  As long as I’ve been a parent I have instinctively rejected this, and now upon reflection I am more convinced.  Here are ten reasons to cut Barbie some slack.

Reason #1:  Avoid the obvious hypocrisy

I have always puzzled over why feminists and other concerned parties seem to single out Barbie, when the rest of mainstream pop-culture is just as bad and probably worse.  It’s not as though Barbie were the only representation of the ideal female as tall, skinny, and beautiful.   At least Barbie doesn’t have fake boobs!  And at least she’s inert until animated by our daughters, unlike the hussies you see on TV and in the movies.

I suppose it’s because Barbies appeal to very young girls that people are concerned.  But I’m not convinced that preoccupation with body image begins in little kids.  My ten-year-old does enjoy coordinating her Barbies’ outfits and her own (which tend still to be pink and purple) but she spends very little time in front of the mirror and would be perfectly happy going to school with bed-head.  It’s her twelve-year-old sister, far beyond the age of Barbies (and who, significantly, never played with them to begin with) who has taken to stalling the family’s egress from the house with last-minute hair brushing.

Attire, physique, and grooming are aspects of a Barbie-like image that girls and women can strive for.  But what about beauty stereotypes women have less control over, like hair color?  Should we ban blond Barbies in particular?  After all, only 2% of people worldwide are naturally blond.  Couldn’t we argue that those mothers who dye their hair are equally culpable in creating an unrealistic standard?  And what about mothers who do manage to have an exquisite physique that their daughters cannot achieve?  Is their loss of self-esteem their mothers’ fault?

Reason #2:  Avoid the gender double-standard

At least I can’t harm my daughters’ self-esteem with my 8% body fat.  After all, they don’t look to their father as a role model of womanhood.  But what if I had a son?  Looking at how much flack Barbie has caught over the years, it’s worth wondering how Ken has managed to escape scot-free.  I’d argue that Ken is even more unrealistic than Barbie, because real-life men so often let themselves go after their teenage and young adult years.

When I went to my wife’s twentieth high school reunion awhile back, I encountered a lot of fit and trim women who were paired with seriously overweight men.  It was like a parody of some kind.  Sure, no woman had the wasp-like figure of a hypothetical real-life Barbie, but they were closer to Barbie than the men were to Ken.  Perhaps you feel assured that the self-esteem of these men has made it through this transformation unscathed.  Well, how do you know?  Another person’s self-esteem is always a matter of conjecture.

And how come nobody ever worried aloud that playing with GI Joes would make our sons want to become soldiers, or that they’d feel wimpy because they’re not tall and muscular?  Why haven’t concerned adults campaigned for bald, tubby GI Joes or portly, bespectacled General Kyles?

Reason #3:  Avoid the model vs. athlete double-standard

Could it be that looking out for little girls, without a corresponding concern for little boys, is just sexist?  As if the little girls must be defended against societal ills while the boys can take care of themselves?  Think about what little boys are messing around with instead of Barbies:  baseball cards (historically) and video games (nowadays). 

There isn’t enough disk drive space available on the Internet to cover the many ills of modern video games, but let’s consider a small subset of them, that being sports games featuring real players.  Nobody seems to mind when little boys (or girls) idolize pro athletes, who to a disgusting extent have manipulated their bodies artificially to gain advantage.  This is worse than Barbies, because we have actual living humans embodying impossible physiques.

Obviously football players on steroids jump first to mind, but in some sports athletes go the other direction and become so thin they’d make Barbie look stout.  You think Chris Froome got this skinny without a little help from his friends?  Thank God nobody has the poor taste to put out a Chris Froome doll. 

Reason #4:  Recognize that our daughters are not stupid

It’s common to take it for granted that our children’s play is shaping who they’ll become some day.  But this isn’t a simple connect-the-dots matter.  The nexus of imagination and child development is complicated.  Isn’t the whole point of make-believe to entertain notions that are totally different from reality?  Lots of kids’ books start with the parents being killed (James and the Giant Peach, the Lemony Snicket books, and the Harry Potter books come to mind) but most adults have the good sense not to worry about these books filling our children with untoward fantasies.

To some degree, everybody acknowledges our daughters’ discernment, even in the case of Barbies.  Nobody bats an eye at how our kids gloss over the more glaring instances of these dolls’ unrealistic traits, such as what’s beneath the clothes.  If we really believe our daughters’ standards are shaped by Barbies, we should worry that these little girls will one day want to have their own nipples surgically removed, and/or marry men completely lacking in genitalia.  Why do we expect kids to completely ignore these anatomical fictions, while being nonetheless brainwashed about general body type?

Today I asked my daughter Lindsay, the one who loves Barbies, “Do you want to look like Barbie when you grow up?”  She emphatically replied, “No!”  I asked why not.  In a tone of near exasperation at my cluelessness, she said, “Because she’s too skinny, and her arms are too wimpy!”  I asked Lindsay if she would prefer more realistic Barbie dolls, and she casually replied, “No.”  I asked if, when she grows up, she would want a husband who looks like Ken.  “No way!” she said, impassioned.  And why not?  “His abs are too big!  He looks too much like a boxer!  And he has a painted-on face and molded plastic hair.”

Reason #5:  Barbie gives us insight into our kids

As I see it, Barbie doesn’t shape so much as reflect our daughters’ play.  I remember when I was a kid watching my friend’s little sister playing Barbies, and her play consisted mainly of one Barbie lecturing another about safety.  Thus it didn’t surprise me to observe, over the years, how worried and overprotective her mom proved to be. 

The brilliant writer Jo Ann Beard describes, in her memoir The Boys of My Youth, growing up in a blue collar Illinois town out near the sticks, where “things are measured in shitloads, and every third guy you meet is named Junior.”  Her account of playing Barbies with her cousin reveals much about the kind of adults she had encountered in her young life: 

                “Let’s say it’s really hot out and they don’t know Ken is coming over and they’re just sitting around naked for a while,” I suggest.
                “Because they can’t decide what to wear,” Wendell clarifies.  “All their clothes are in the dryer.”
                Black-haired, ponytailed Barbie stands on tiptoe at the cardboard sink.  “I’m making us some pink squirrels,” she announces.  “But we better not get drunk, because Ken might come over.”
                Both Barbies do get drunk, and Ken does come over.  He arrives in an ill-fitting suit, and the heat in the Barbie house is so overwhelming that he has to remove it almost immediately.
                “Hey baby,” Ken says to no one in particular.  The Barbies sit motionless and naked in their cardboard kitchen, waiting for orders.  This is where Dirty Barbie gets murky—we aren’t sure what’s supposed to happen next.  Whatever happens, it’s Ken’s fault, that’s all we know.

The contrast between this and my daughter Lindsay’s play is a great relief.  Much of the time, Lindsay is creating worlds for Barbie and Ken, like this hotel that threw our bathroom into disarray for a few days:

You see the bowl of water on the second shelf down?  That’s a soothing footbath for Barbie.  The stacked cylinders next to it make her chair.

Here’s Barbie’s music room, made out of sofa cushions.  The wooden cylinder in the foreground is the handle of a parasol Lindsay set up to get the lighting just right:

Reason #6:  Outfits

Barbie comes in many ethnicities, but only one basic physique, and it’s easy to trot this out as proof that she’s held up as some ideal body type.  But there’s a more basic reason:  it’s essential that the outfits be completely interchangeable among every Barbie ever made.  After all, mixing and matching outfits is one of the common forms that Barbie play takes.

This interchangeability seems innocent to me.  A more cynical and venal doll company might deliberately introduce incompatibilities, just to sell more clothes.

When I was a kid, my brothers and I liked to play with the album cover of our dad’s “Papas & Mamas Exchanging Faces” record.  This was a complex multi-page album cover, split horizontally, so you could superimpose the top half of any singer’s face on the bottom half of any other singer’s face.  What made it so fun was Mama Cass’s corpulent visage juxtaposed with the more traditionally good-looking countenances of the others.  This now strikes me as less innocent than the Barbies’ interchangeable outfits.

Reason #7:  Social politics can be dodgy with kids

When teaching my daughters to be thoughtful, considerate people, I try not to introduce too many abstract concepts, like political correctness.  When I see Lindsay playing Barbies, my instinct is not to run over and ruin her fun with a lengthy dissertation about Barbie and gender politics.  And Barbie’s figure is only the beginning.  I’m sure many a parent in our community has sat his or her daughter down and said, “It’s time to talk about Barbie, beauty, and race.”  My wife and I have not done this.  (This isn’t because of any fully formed ideology, mind you; we’ve just never gotten around to sorting out our position here).

It so happened that when Lindsay picked out her very first Barbie at Ross Dress for Less, she chose an African-American one.  The cashier was also African-American, and she looked suspiciously at my wife Erin and said, “Why did you pick a black one?”  Erin, feeling a bit awkward, said, “I didn’t choose it; I just told my daughter to pick out whatever doll she liked.”  So the cashier redirected her question to Lindsay, who casually replied, “Well, it’s because she’s beautiful, and I like her dress.”  The cashier seemed pleasantly surprised.  And she didn’t have to wonder if Lindsay was being sincere or just being the good liberal and sucking up to her mom.

Reason #8:  Barbie is the victim of an unfair assumption

We tacitly assume that little girls self-identify with their dolls, but I’m not sure they do.  I asked my older daughter why she never played much with Barbies.  She replied, “I don’t know.  They just didn’t interest me.  I didn’t like dressing them up, and their feet were weird.  I preferred stuffies.”  (That’s her word for stuffed animals.) 

Of course it had never occurred to us to worry that Alexa would want to become a bear or a tiger or a dog some day.  We never feared that she’d develop low self-esteem due to lack of fur and fangs.  It’s easy enough to see that when a kid plays with a stuffed animal she’s not pretending that she is the stuffed animal; the stuffie is a third party.  (Just as it didn’t affect my self-esteem when my brothers cut the hands and feet off my Smurf and painted the stubs red, to teach me not to play with dolls.)  Likewise, the Barbie doll is not necessarily a representation of self for the girl at play.  Sometimes a toy is just a toy.

Would you like proof?  Consider this odd Barbie behavior:

I couldn’t figure out what Barbie was doing there.  Later, I found Lindsay playing with the Barbie at a nearby desk, and asked what Barbie had been doing in the light fixture.  Lindsay explained, “She was looking down to watch me solve the bear puzzle, so she could learn how to do it.  Now she’s doing it herself.” 

Got that?  Barbie is not Lindsay’s avatar.  She is just a playmate.

Reason #9:  Barbies are well-crafted

Barbies are well-crafted and durable.  (I took this for granted until my daughter received a cheap knockoff Barbie for her birthday; the poorly made doll tended to fall apart mid-play.  It was heartbreaking to see how carefully Lindsay moved its arms and legs and how shocked and dismayed she became every time a limb came off in her hand.)

Take another look at the violinist Barbie above.  She’s wearing a handmade dress we bought second-hand; an old lady in our community made a tremendous number of them over the years, in an endless variety of styles, and sold them to the used toy store.  Lindsay has Barbies and Kens that are older than I am.  She checks their manufacture date (embossed discreetly on the torso) like a rare book connoisseur inspecting a title page.  I like this.  In a society where so many grownups buy a new smartphone every year or two, it’s nice to see a product that lasts long enough to be venerated.

Reason #10:  Barbie is a known entity

It’s often put forth that Barbie is a throwback to the unenlightened ‘50s and that it’s time to move in a more progressive direction.  But how many modern toys actually do this?  We’ve seen all manner of alternative female doll, but they tend to be tarted up, brazen, rebellious, and ironic:  all the things we hope our sweet little girls don’t go too far into during their upcoming teen years.  Why should the toys we buy them lead this charge? 

I won’t even get into the vast array of consumer goods that replace toys entirely, like all these electronic media devices that rush our children headlong into adult-oriented time-wasting activities.  We’ve had over fifty years to dissect and disparage the ‘50s, but it’s not clear to me that many people are keeping an eye on the societal value of the modern digital life, with its social media, continuous connectedness, and ever-increasing screen time.  Maybe instead of worrying about Barbie’s bad influence on kids, we should pay more attention to our own.