To the posters who queried about Barbie being banned in the Middle East....what the Middle East has is named Fulla, also made and marketed by Mattell toys. Fulla comes in a package wearing a hijab, which can be removed to reveal hair, and an abaya, the all-covering black shroud called a burqa in Afghanistan (here the burqa is only the actual face mask). The abaya can be put over an 'at home dress' which is colorful.

Fulla looks like Barbie and the rest of the stuff you can buy for her is typical--makeup, clothes, furniture, blah blah blah. I have not seen any Middle Eastern version of Ken, nor do I believe that one exists.

So yes, Barbie is there to teach gender roles, including whether to wear a tent over your head when you go out.

Whether or not you have a problem with that depends on how serious you think their influence is. Yes, I agree that these dolls tell girls it is okay to become acquiescent to their own oppression (those who think a burqa isn't oppression needs to try to eat in the food court in the mall while wearing one). Those who think that puppy groomer and babysitter, Barbie's typical work choices, are real career choices for women need to try to make a living from such jobs. Yet many women end up there, because, you know, we all thought we were going to meet Ken and get married for ever. So we quit college and married Ken, and then.....well, the beat goes on.

The trouble is, that Barbie (or Fulla) is probably a symptom and not the actual disease. They reflect the cultural norms and perhaps help promote them, but they don't create them. The only way to really raise your daughters free of negative cultural messages is to raise them in a cave.

When I see Barbie, it doesn't help to know that her creator was a man who was called a disgusting lech even by his friends, who compulsively chased Playboy-bunny lookalikes his entire life and who thought women were only there for his sexual pleasure. Yes, Barbie is the porno fantasy of a skirt-chaser. That doesn't help.

But, you know, my ban on Barbie in our house held until my daughter was roughly three years old. Then she started receiving them as presents (they are cheap, about $4) and that was the end of that. When she was about six, we spent a lot of time buying clothes and horses for her Barbie so she could dress her up and play horsie. And then she started beheading Barbies, so we knew the love affair was over.

Some things are what you make them. If Barbie is just a toy to your kid, it doesn't need to become much more than a toy in your own eyes. Even if she comes wearing a burqa.

I can feel sorry for the LW, because she's obviously one of those terribly insecure people who needs affirmation from every member of the opposite sex. She might ask herself how she's going to feel when she's 50 and most men on the train fail to find her attractive. Her job is to work on that critically low self-esteem, not find another partner.

I'm a little baffled by Cary's advice--meet train guy again? WHY? To what purpose? He's not a dear friend. Train guy is a near stranger who has very patiently put up with her badmouthing her current BF day in and day out, and as a nice kind hearted soul he has tried to give support short of actually telling her to leave him (so he says things like, oh, I don't think I'd like him). But, as one poster wrote, he has 'crossed her off his list' in terms of a relationship and probably for friendship too. I agree with the others that a meeting will just feed the drama--rather pointlessly, I may add.

Advice: constantly trashing/complaining about your current or ex partner is a very unattractive behavior in the eyes of everybody, including friends and new partners. Just don't do it, even if your ex was a real toad. And if you're still with him? It looks even worse.

She needs to back off and ask why she is so unhappy in her current relationship. Maybe she needs to leave it. Some women cannot leave until they have prepared a landing pad somewhere else. The LW doesn't need to be one of them, but she has to be able to think about the real issues first, and she seems far from doing so. In the meantime, she just needs to leave the guy on the train alone.

I almost feel sorry for her but not quite--if she's an adult working woman she should know better.

this southern Repub crowd is the apparently nationalistic "buy America First" crowd. Guess not when it comes to unions and other forms of "commie" organization!

Let's face it, they're just fascists, in the good old fashioned sense of the term. They'd send us to concentration camps if they could.

That is all.

I have a 68 year old ex MIL who has smoked all her life (and it shows in her skin and teeth) and dyes her hair an unconvincing shade of reddish pink. She dislikes and resents men, too. A perfect candidate for elderly celibate woman, you say?

She's kicking me and the grandkids out this weekend to meet her new Spanish boyfriend for some "private life" as she calls it. This is a few years after a married French boyfriend she stopped seeing when he got cancer.

You can have it if you want it. Good grief.

required to believe in conspiracy theories is also a feature of religious people. They engage in all the same mental gymnastics. Why can't we ever talk about that?

problem solved.

I want little blue ribbon drawstrings around the knees of mine.