I’d long since stopped playing with Barbie by the time she uttered the infamous phrase "Math class is tough!" in the early ’90s. I agreed with her, though, and realized that with that attitude, neither of us would ever be a scientist. Barbie did go on to have illustrious, short-term careers as an astronaut, a dentist, a paratrooper and, on the other end of the spectrum, a secretary, a "stewardess," a pop singer and a pet stylist, among scores of others. It’s time now to pick her 125th job, and Mattel has turned to the public to decide if she’ll be an architect, computer engineer, environmentalist, news anchor or surgeon. She’s highly marketable, I know, but those are heavy-hitting professions in this economy. (And the blonde bombshell won’t even have to pound the pavement or earn any degrees to land the gig.) The program, which coincides with next week’s annual Toy Fair in New York, will be promoted with bus and subway ads, billboards at the Jacob Javits convention site, wild postings and de rigeur Twitter and Facebook campaigns. I’m voting to make her an environmentalist, since that’s vague enough to be benign and probably doesn’t call for the mastery of fractions. Say, Barbie’s just given me an idea …
—Posted by T.L. Stanley