Barbie Doll as cancer patient: there is one now

I'm afraid I have mixed feelings about this one.

Barbie the doll, produced of course by Mattel, has over the years been portrayed in a vast number of professions, activities, roles, and such, all to promote and encourage such endeavors as future possibilities for young girls.

She has even been portrayed as a doctor and a nurse.

And now there is a Barbie out who represents a bald cancer patient, ostensibly to be provided for children who have been diagnosed with childhood malignancies, perhaps now bald themselves, as a means of uplifting their spirits.

I'm sure this is well intentioned, but I personally am not at all sure how useful this is.

Does it somehow help, or is it simply going to be a constant reminder to the child of her condition?

Maybe this is a question for discussion, as some may take the opposing viewpoint.

Opinions?

https://curesearch.org/special-barbie

(And there was actually an earlier version of this)

https://nationswell.com/news/mom-convinced-mattel-to-make-chemo-barbie/

Pratoman said...
Little kids live in a world of innocence and naivete.

I would imagine kids today manage to find their way onto the Web before they can even read and write. As such they probably see and hear things many of us weren't exposed to until we were closer to adulthood. I remember my Dad telling me there were certain very vile curse words he'd never heard until he was enlisted in the Navy for WWII at age 17.

My gut reaction to the doll is pretty much like Prato's. Let them be kids, if there is still such a thing as we remember it

I'll wait for Nursing-Home Barbie: you can play with her during visiting hours only, although if she's having a bad day, she won't recognize you. Bedpan, hearing aids, and funeral urn availably separately. Unfortunately Nursing-Home Ken is deceased and no longer available.

Djjn

Before prostate cancer, when I’d see anyone young or old with the tell-tell bandana on their head, it would scare me into not engaging. I guess I just couldn’t understand. I didn’t know what to say.

Prostate cancer took that fear away. Prostate cancer gave me the gift of wanting to know them better. Wanting to know about them as people as well as their cancer or condition.

Giving a cancer riddled doll to a little girl with cancer is NOT my idea of support.