1. “because I said so, that’s why.” Yes. That was me. And more than once. The phrase of parental last resort–and it’s not a resort that I’d like to visit as often as I seem to be doing.

2. There was a time, back in the day, when I thought team sports were the exclusive realm of the Great Santini and his offspring. I didn’t play a team sport growing up (me and hand-eye coordination were strangers for a long, long time); I don’t follow a particular team; I don’t get the whole “team” thing. Mostly I just don’t play well with others, is what it boils down to.  But then Liam fell in love with soccer and there I was…standing on the sidelines in the freezing cold, driving all over New York to games, and here in Abu Dhabi, I’m back in the shlep-wagon, out to soccer school, over to practice…And you know what? Being on a soccer team (and having the great coaches he had in NYC–thank you, Sean and Marcus) — it’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened to him.  Of course, my weekends are shot to hell, but hey, who needs a weekend away, right? Rah rah rah go team.

3. “do you know how many starving children there are in the world who would eat that?” I have a very clear memory, when my mother would say that to me, of saying back to her “well why don’t you mail my food to the kids in Biafra then, hmm?”  Funny, she didn’t seem to appreciate that idea. I remember also thinking to myself “I will never, ever say such a stupid thing to my kids.”  Yeah. Well. Um. What can I say. It’s true, dammit. So eat your carrots!

4. In graduate school, I spent a lot of time thinking about feminism, poststructuralism, gender theory, and other stuff that now makes my early-middle-aged brain hurt to even contemplate. At the time, however, my friends and I sat around talking learnedly about how gender differences were really just socially constructed ideologies that could be done away with if parents would just be a little more, you know, thoughtful.  I believed my own words until the first time my little boy picked up a stick and said “pwang pwang pwang…”  I’m still a feminist but now I’m a feminist who has to accept that she has sons who will, for reasons known only to their DNA, step over or around the socks on the floor, leave the toilet seat down, and look at her blankly when she says “why did you knock that over?” Let me be clear–they are made to put the socks in the laundry, wipe off the toilet seat, pick up the thing they knocked down. But I’m fighting against genetics, here, people, which means that, yes, I’ve been that person who smiles and shrugs and says “well (nervous giggle), you know, boys…” Ugh.

5. Related to 4: when my boys were toddlers, I’d watch their adorable chubby selves playing “bakery” in the sandbox and look in horror at those ill-bred “big boys” playing chase and I’m-gonna-shoot-you-with-my-triblatteringlaserpistolgrappler.  I’d be all smug and judgey and decide that the mothers of these boys had utterly failed. I mean really, what mother would let her children play such a violent game? Um…hi. That would be me. And I’ve even said “run around and chase with your friends,” because I recognize that children are like puppies. They need to be exercised regularly or they’ll just wreck the furniture. .

6. MY children will never be like those OTHER children who walk around surgically attached to their screens. Cue hysterical laughter here. Computers, e-readers, DSi, iPod touch…the electronics in this family could stock an Apple store. I think we manage their computer time pretty well but the sad fact is that when screens are up, bickering is down.

7.  You know how when you were little and your mom would spit a bit on her shirttail or (worse) her fingers and smootch at your cheek to get off the remnants of your last meal? And remember how you thought “god that is gross!” Remember how you thought, nah, you’d never do such a thing? Yep. I thought so too. And then just yesterday, I grabbed Caleb’s arm just before he got on the school bus and swiped–with my shirt and some spit–at the glob of jam on his cheek. He said “MOM THAT’S DISGUSTING” and squirmed away.

8. I never thought I would have sons.  How’s that for hubris? I always wanted to have children but in my mind’s eye, it was always me and charlottedoralucyameliaruby reading Little House on the Prairie and playing dress-up and then later, when they were grownups, my daughters and I would hang out and have long conversations about Life and Shoes and Relationships. They’d tell me what to wear so I didn’t look too dowdy and we’d be the best of friends.  But noooo, the gods have a larky sense of humor and so I am the mother of boys, which means I don’t sit on the beach and flip through magazines. No, it’s SWIM and DIG and PLAY BALL WITH ME and DIG and SWIM.  And when I’m an old woman living alone with a hundred cats, the boys will buy me the valu-pak of Depends and the high-grade cat food, and congratulate themselves on being good sons.

9. I would never make separate meals for my picky eaters. If they don’t want to eat what I cook, then they’ll go hungry. HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHA My children’s eating habits keep me in a state of perpetual humility. I have failed here and here and here and will probably fail again at dinner tonight.

10. God. Some people just can’t shut up about their damn kids. That’s what I thought. And then I started a blog.

Double-dipping this week: this post also links to the wonderful lovelinks site–it’s like Cheers bar for small bloggers (or micro bloggers, in my case). It’s where everyone knows our (screen) name and they’re always glad we came, where everybody can see that all our troubles are the same…and now everyone knows that I’m old enough to remember that show when it wasn’t in reruns! Click on the button below to find some great reading–and then come back on Thursday to vote for your favorites. I won’t even be mad if you don’t vote for me!

The ad is from 1981, not a year particularly celebrated for female achievement (although it was the year Britney Spears was born, so I suppose that counts for something).

I love legos and this ad only stoked my lego-love. My kids are lego freaks and over the years, my only consolation for finding those sharp-edged pieces in the couch, on the floor, embedded in rugs–on pretty much any flat surface–has been to feel all smug that my kids play with such a gender-neutral toy, a toy that is endlessly creative, blah blah blah.

Then I saw this ad on the lego page site:

If Polly Pocket mated with a Star Wars mini-fig, or if hookers gave away bobble-head doll versions of themselves…here’s what would result: chicks hangin’ at the Friends cafe.  When you click on the live screen, these figures sway back and forth, hugging each other and kissing each other on the cheeks. Maybe they’re whispering sweet nothings to one another–maybe it’s the lego version of “The L Word.”

But no. Nothing so interesting as a set of interlocking lesbians.  Instead we’re told that “Stephanie” likes planning parties; that “Andrea” thinks music puts life in full color (the only African American in the group and she’s the one telling us about music?); that “Emma” likes drawing, fashion, and make-overs. Girls who receive these sets can build a tree house, a car, an animal hospital, a beauty shop, or a cafe.  There are no intricate moving parts and when the sets are completed they look really bad dollhouses.  I imagine that completing Emma’s treehouse might not give the same sense of accomplishment as building this:

This thing swivels, jiggles, and moves; it creates destruction and chaos–and when you’re done playing with it in this form, you can take apart the pieces and combine them with any other lego pieces into any creation you can imagine. Emma’s tree house is always going to be Emma’s tree house. I suppose you could take the tree apart and stick the branches onto Mia’s animal hospital, but somehow that doesn’t strike me as satisfying.

Let’s recap, shall we? In the span of thirty years we’ve gone from celebrating a scruffy little girl’s ability to build whatever the hell she wants from a pile of multi-colored bricks to teaching girls that their strengths include parties, fuzzy animals, and make-overs.

Lego isn’t the disease, obviously, just a symptom. (In writing this post, I found out that several organizations devoted to challenging gender stereotypes are up in arms about these new girlie-gos).  Lego claims that it was just–wait for it–responding to consumer desires.  Apparently little girls only want to play with beauty parlors and kittens, so Lego made beauty parlors and kittens.

Okay. Even Lego has to make a buck, I guess (although with a lego set purchased every seven seconds or something, seems to me the company could’ve tried taking the high road). And okay, boys and girls have different ways of playing, I get that (years of watching perfectly innocent sticks become swords, guns, airplanes–pretty much anything that makes a noise or could inflict bodily harm). So yeah, maybe a seven-year-old girl wouldn’t want to build the Star Wars Death Star (and then un-make it, turn it into 85 other things, and then two years later whine “why can’t we make the deaaaaaath staaaaaaaarrrrrrr”).

And so even okay, make a “girl” Lego set. But what about a Princess Knight or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, or Wonder Woman? What about a group of girl pirates or airship captains?  If you’re going to target to girls, could you at least make your product…interesting?  Complicated? Challenging? Unusual? Little girls may want to play beauty shop, or maybe they want to imagine themselves in tree houses, but hell, couldn’t they at least get a measly multi-piece alien swamp speeder into the bargain?  Something with a little, you know, oomph to it?

Lego. I expected more from you. And so did that little girl in 1981.

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I am half-asleep, wheezing and coughing because I have a cold and maybe a sinus infection, shuffling around making the boys breakfast before school.  Why do they have to eat every morning, anyway? Why can’t they just get a to-go cup of coffee and get on their way, like normal people?

Caleb looks at me. His eyes scan me up and down, like he’s Tim Gunn’s mini-me.

Caleb: Mommy, why don’t you wear make-up?

Me (about dropping the pancake pan): Make-up? You mean like those fancy moms we used to see at your old school?

Caleb: Yeah. I think you should.

Me: Uh…why?

Another full-body scan.

Caleb: Well….you’re a little bit…wrinkly on your face.

Liam (eager as always to be the expert): No, Caleb. You don’t get it. She only wears mascara sometimes. She told me. The other night when she was putting on mascara before they went out to dinner.

Me: standing slack-jawed staring at the panel of Glamour judges who are suddenly sitting at my kitchen table.

Caleb: Why she wears mascara?

Liam: She said she wears mascara when she doesn’t feel well because it opens up her eyes so she looks more awake.  (He fans open his fingers–sort of Bob Fosse jazz hands–next to either eye, to demonstrate this opening-up process.)

Caleb looks at me again: Yeah. You definitely need mascara.

My extended family will officially, legally, extend by one more person today, August 29.

My brother is going to become a father.

It’s very exciting and my mom has gone out west to join him for the big day.  They’ll meet at the courthouse where the papers will be finalized and then they’ll go out to lunch: my brother, my mom, my now-official nephew, his mother, and a few assorted other relatives.

It’s an event that would make Michelle Bachmann’s well-groomed toes curl in horror and make all of Rick Perry’s hair stand up straight (Michelle’s would stand up straight, too, except she uses too much hairspray. Come to think of it, maybe Rick does too).  In fact, my brother is pissing off the entire cohort of the Far Right today, with one simple action.

My single gay brother is legally adopting his biological offspring, the result of a single woman’s trip to a sperm bank some fifteen years ago.

Let’s back up, shall we? A long time ago, way back in the 20th century, my brother entered a management training program. He was fresh out of college and dazzled by the fat paycheck: he hung out in bars, drove a fast car, and was bored out of his gourd. “Look,” he said to me one night, “I like music, cars, and movies. I’m moving to LA.”

And he did. Maybe he quit the management training program, maybe he was—ahem—asked to leave; the details have always been a tad fuzzy.

But off he went, to LaLa Land, intent on making his fortune in The Biz. He didn’t want to act (sensible child); he wanted to be like Mike Ovitz–a player–so he started, where so many others have started before him, in the mail room of a talent agency.

In the mail room, meaning he was pretty much broke. He drove to work in a VW convertible bug that, while adorable, had all the speed and handling ability of a John Deere riding lawnmower, plus the pesky little problem of being unable to pass the emissions test, so it couldn’t be parked on the street for more than an hour or so.

Broke. What’s a guy to do if he needs a little extra cashaloola?  Yep. Make a deposit. Each desposit: fifty bucks.

And let’s be clear: my brother is chromosomal gold, people, chromosomal gold: smart, funny, handsome, athletic, well-educated, kind.

Flash forward ten years or so: my lovely brother has become…well, he’s a player. Drives a Porsche (handles better than the VW lawn mower and passes the emissions test with flying colors). Lives in the Hollywood Hills. Does deals. Has a BlackBerry, takes meetings, rolls umpteen-zillion calls a day.

Plus he’s still really a nice guy, with eyelashes so long they sometimes sweep against the inside of his sunglasses. You’d think maybe either of his sister would’ve gotten those eyelashes but noooo….he got’em.

So one day my long-lashed brother is flipping through GQ and comes across an article written by a man who, in his youth, had made a LOT of donations to a sperm bank, and is now tempted by something called the Donor Sibling Registry, which helps the “donor conceived” get in touch with other possible siblings and/or with the donor him or herself (the DSR is for recipients of egg donations, sperm donations, etc).

Hmm…thinks my brother and clicks over to the DSR himself. Whereupon he finds…a message querying his donor information from a boy and his (still single) mother.

Flash forward again, a few months later: my brother flies to off to meet the boy and his mother.  Brother says that if the woman had a partner, he wouldn’t have gotten involved, but she doesn’t so he did.

And fell in love. With this boy, whose smile lights up the room; who plays the piano beautifully (like our grandfather!); who loves to skateboard (okay, not our side of the family); who is gentle and kind and has long, long eyelashes.

Nephew came to our family holidays and family reunions; he and my brother see each other maybe once a month or so.  My brother flies him to LA or flies out to his city—he was there for 8th grade graduation, for the big piano recital, for birthdays.  No, my bro didn’t weather the 4AM feedings or the tantrums of a three-year old, but he has become a firm part of N.’s life and today he’s making sure that N. knows he’ll be there forever.  N. isn’t leaving his mother or the city where he lives, but this legal step gives N. a guardian if god forbid something should happen to his mom, makes him my brother’s legal heir, establishes clearly N.’s paternity.

I know these high-tech birth stories don’t always end so happily, just as they don’t all look like “The Kids Are All Right,” either.  It would’ve been easy for my brother to have ignored the listing in DSR four years ago, or to have decided that hell no, he didn’t want a teen-age boy in his life.  He’s chosen the more difficult path and I wonder how on earth anyone could find fault with his decision. Isn’t my brother seeking out and embracing “family?” Shouldn’t that make the party of “family values” really happy? Shouldn’t the Bachmanns, the Perrys, the Palins, be celebrating this extension of family, instead of seeing my brother as some lesser minion of Satan? How can a simple declaration of love make people so afraid that they spit venom?

In one sense, nothing will change after the adoption ceremony: my brother will fly back to LA, rolling calls the entire way; Nephew will go back to high school, piano lessons, and the skate park; my mom will go back to Indiana.

Nothing will have change and yet, everything will have changed.  Our family grew today and no one can take that away.

photo: my brother dressed for his high school prom, back in the day. Dapper even before he’d come out of the closet. We should’ve known!

This post from the archives is my submission in the final round of freefringes lovelinks contest. The winner of the contest gets a blog button for an entire month on the website of the brilliant, profane, fearless, hysterically funny Bloggess, courtesy of the amazing Erica at freefringes.  You get one vote…and obviously my ENTIRE FAMILY hopes you’ll vote for me (not to put too much pressure on you or anything), but if you don’t like this post, then click around and read some of the other posts and, if you must, cast your vote in their direction.  And even if you can’t vote at ALL because you’re like the human equivalent of Switzerland or something, you should come back to lovelinks every week and see who’s posted what.

I remembered our conversation when I read Mamabirddiaries today, about parents being naked in front of their kids. We’re not big naked folks around here, although the uniform of most of the boys in this house seems to be shirt, socks, underpants.  Trousers get dropped more or less at the door.

Anyway, so the other day, Caleb nattered on about whatever was on his mind while I got dressed and then he stopped talking, looked at me.

Looked up, looked down.

“Mommy,” he said, “how come little girls have penises but big ladies don’t?”

Hmm.

“Little girls don’t have penises, just little boys. Little girls have vaginas, just like ladies.”

Caleb tilts his head, thinks a bit.

“Nah,” he says. “M.  in my class has a penis. And she’s a girl.”

Hmm.

“Um, how do you know that?”

Shrug. “I just figured that everyone had a penis except ladies. Like you. Penises are good because you can pee standing up.”

Indeed.

In the slosh of post-State of the Union commentary, the Repugs talked a lot about the need for “limited government.” Paul Ryan, the Eddie Munster-ish Wisconsin dude who gave the initial Obama rebuttal was all about how government has to scale back and cut back and generally just stay the hell out of everybody’s business (free enterprise cures everything, dontcha know). Somehow he invoked Lincoln as an arbiter of limited government (at about 9:04 of his speech), thus revealing himself as a graduate of the Michele Bachmann School of Historical Nonfacts. Wasn’t that whole Civil War thing fought about the question of federal authority? Lincoln’s government wasn’t so much limited as it was marching all the hell over the south proclaiming its power–abolishing slavery was sort of incidental.

Ryan’s talk looked a bit like a Midwestern infomercial, right down to the I-practiced-them-in-the-mirror head nods and sympathetic smiles, and his doublespeak should be something we’re used to by now, but this drumbeat of “limited government” has gotten so loud that when it stops, the silence is deafening.

And the silence about limited government deafens me most when Congress starts talking about abortion. When it comes to abortion, conservatives from both parties think the government should be making decisions on the uterine level.

The latest effort to unlimit government comes in a new bill introduced by Chris Smith of NJ, which would rewrite the laws about government funding (including tax benefits, such as a Health Savings Account) being used for abortions.  Currently, federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions, except in the case of rape, incest, or where the life of the pregnant woman may be endangered.

The new law under discussion–which has the full support of the orange crocodile himself, John Boehner–restricts funding in all cases, except those of “forcible rape” (Sect 309.1).

Okay, so maybe it’s just my English Professor hackles being raised here, but isn’t rape by definition “forced?”

Not according to the wisdom of Boehner, Smith & Co.  Statuatory rape isn’t “forced,” date rape isn’t “forced,” rape in instances where women were drugged or drunk isn’t “forced,” rape in instances where a woman isn’t mentally competent isn’t “forced.” And abortion for pregnancy that results from incest is only covered by federal funding if the pregnant body in question is under 18. Over 18? Apparently that’s not “forced.”

Would anyone like to guess who will be most profoundly hurt should this bill become law? Yeah, that’s right. Any woman (or girl) who doesn’t have private health insurance. Gosh, that would seem to suggest mostly poor people. Isn’t that astonishing? The teary-eyed congressman with the small penis giant gavel favors a law that will further screw poor women who have already been screwed against their will.

So let me conclude today’s lesson in how to speak conservative:

“Limited government” means unchecked regulation of Big Business and lots of regulation of small uteruses (uterii?); “forcible rape” implies that there is something called “unforced rape.”

Here’s the thing, Mr. Boehner. All rape is forced and my uterus is my own, thanks very much. Keep your gavel out of it.

No, there are no shoes available here, just black full-length robes for all female visitors not already wearing a robe, and white full-length robes for male visitors wearing shorts.

And here’s what you look like when you put on your black robe and veil:

When Muslim women wear the full abaya, with head scarf and face veil, they look to me like beekeepers in mourning. Me? I just looked like a white girl in a black bathrobe.

As I swished from the outer patios of the Grand Mosque into the inner courtyard, I imagined that wearing this robe would render me anonymous—just another devout Muslim woman.  But of course, peeking out from the black veil is my round Midwestern face–and no amount of Manhattan living, or black veiling, can disguise that, alas.

When I first put the headscarf on, Liam chided me for doing it wrong. I ignored him, of course. What ten year old boy knows anything about scarves?  And then just before I entered the mosque itself, the very nice young woman guard standing in the doorway pulled me aside. With a quick pinch of fabric in the back, a flick of the wrist, and a deft tuck or two, she had the veil adjusted: covering all of my hair in the back and snugly wrapped so that it wouldn’t slide around while I walked.

Liam, of course, was delighted to be corroborated in his sartorial judgments.

Wandering around the mosque in my black abaya, I wondered what it would be like to wear a robe all the time. It would certainly solve the whole muffin-top problem—there’s no waist-band in a robe and thus nothing for a tummy to spill over.  What happens to the concept of “sex appeal” in countries where women wear the abaya? Is it all about the eyes and the pedicure? The voice? Or are there codes and silent signals, the way there were when women carried fans all the time—fanning fast meant one thing, fanning slowly something else.

What would it be like to have your body not be available for scrutiny from anyone passing you on the sidewalk? To not catch a glimpse of a jiggly upper arm as you walk by a shop window and sort of wince? Would it make you feel more powerful or less powerful, do you suppose, to have your body just…not part of the equation of daily life, at least in public?

Considering questions of female empowerment was not, perhaps, the most mosque-appropriate line of thought, especially given that I was in the main prayer room—which is to say the men’s prayer room—while I contemplated the position of Muslim women in their society. (There are two ladies’ prayer rooms, each of which holds about 1500 people, adjoining the main prayer room, which itself holds about 9000.)  The main prayer room also, in fitting tribute to the “can you top this” spirit of the UAE, boasts the largest carpet in the world:

Of course, the other thing I kept thinking about, as I walked around with the boys, marveling at the intricate carvings and delicate details, is the Tea Bag Head kerfuffle a few months ago about the building of a Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan, near Ground Zero.  While there will be a worship space in that planned facility, it has about as much relation to “mosque” as a YMCA has to St. John’s Cathedral.

As we waited in line for customs (having been whisked to the “expedite” section—that business class, boy, it just gives and gives), Liam and Caleb had their first lesson in “we’re somewhere else now:” they were entranced by men in long white dishdashahs, their white keffiyeh floating behind, the corners lifting like wings as they walked.

With half an eye, I noticed that there were more men in the airport than women—Western or Arab—but the observation didn’t stick. I was so tired that it took my last shreds of energy just to stay vertical.

The next morning, however, my observation re-surfaced.  I went outside to get a cab to an early morning meeting, something I do in New York all the time.  In Abu Dhabi, however, the first challenge was simply to get to the other side of the street.  In a city whose drivers make those in Boston and LA, even Rome look tame, crossing the six lanes of traffic felt like a huge accomplishment. I managed to avoid death in the crosswalk (signified by a green-lit outline of a man walking, which moves faster and faster to indicate that you’re close to losing the light.  So far I haven’t noticed if the display breaks into a panicked run, but it should, judging from the speed with which drivers hurtle through intersections).

I crossed the street and stuck my arm up to troll for a cab in the morning rush, then looked around. I was the only woman on the street. There were a few women in the cars whizzing past me, and I saw a woman in Western clothes further down the block but then she ducked into a store.  In lieu of a burqua, I was channeling my inner Connecticut matron: beige linen trousers, brown sandals, short-sleeved navy blue cotton sweater, pearl earrings.  Can you say Talbots 101?  But even so, men stared at me as I walked past them, or as they drove by me.

Their looks weren’t predatory and I didn’t feel unsafe; I didn’t have the sense that some raving fundamentalist was going to stone me for being a godless harlot. It was just that I could tell that my presence was noted: Woman. Western. Alone.

I shrugged to myself, chalked it up to coincidence: the time of day, the neighborhood, random timing.  Two times later that day, however, in different parts of town, I had the same experience: I was the only, or almost the only, woman in a several-block radius.  So maybe…not a coincidence.

Being solitary like that made me self-conscious—I stood with my arms loosely wrapped around myself and made only the barest gesture to hail a cab (which, of course, meant that it took me longer to find one).  There were Western women at all the meetings I went to today, and at the beach there were even more (in bikinis, no less), and in the grocery store I saw Arabic women, Indian women, and several European women.

But not on the street. On the street I was an anomaly, and it was not an entirely comfortable experience. When was the last time you looked around and didn’t see any faces that looked, even remotely, like yours?

It’s funny. Sometimes in New York, I moan about feeling invisible–a middle-aged mom shlepping her kids around doesn’t attract much notice–but standing there on the street in Abu Dhabi, I realized that sometimes invisibility is a comfort.

I swear, sometimes these days it’s like we’re living on the other side of the looking glass. The mayor appoints a maagazine saleswoman to run the entire New York school system.  Obama’s administration can’t quite clarify its position on the Bush tax cuts. Michelle Bachmann thinks that passing “the mother of all repeal bills” will make the US the leader of the free world. For that matter, Michelle Bachmann was elected. Rand Paul ditto.

Another looking glass moment? Ethan Hawke was named one of the New York Public Library’s Literary Lions.

And Sarah Palin has a reality show.  Although I guess that makes sense.

Here’s the real kicker: tonight I saw something that made me almost like Cindy McCain. She’s part of the NOH8 Campaign against LBGT bulling–and she’s speaking out against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Cindy McCain speaking out in support of gay and lesbian troops–and thus against her husband?

Welcome to the world on the other side of the mirror.

And she’s hanging tough into the 21st century. I saw her today, in K-Mart’s Christmas themed window, and after I stopped gagging at the idea that someone thought I was ready to think about the holidays (um, talk to me, I don’t know, December 23?) I had to look more closely at this festive, not-yet-seasonally-appropriate Barbie and her tastefully brown friend:

Barbie’s friend isn’t African American, I don’t think: I thinks she’s a Mumbai gal with a look that’s pure Bollywood (that hair! those dramatic eyes!)

But Bollywood Barbie isn’t the only 21st century updating that’s happened here. Barbie herself is looking very…I think the phrase they use in L.A. is “well rested,” particularly around the mouth:

I think Barbie’s had a little work done, don’t you? She’s got a sort of Melanie Griffith, Lisa Rinna, Meg Ryan thing going on–a mouth all puffy and plumpety-plump, like a squashed tomato.

She’s a 21st century gal, all right, this Barbie: a South Asian friend and a Restylaned, Juverdermed mouth. What more could a little girl ask for?