TheBigMoney.com – By Lauren Sandler
Before Barbie unleashed her nubile teen blondness on the world 50 years ago, dolls were babies. With a baby doll, the possibilities of play were limited to basically two roles: cooing mother or babbling infant. But in 1959, girls were given a vehicle with which to play out their fantasies of being a young woman who was neither infantilized nor relegated to caretaker. And because she was modeled on a German porn doll, she was an idealized vision of sexual beauty, of eye-popping perfection. No wonder she’s had so much sex with Ken—or with other Barbies, as American girls own an average of 12; it’s only logical that scenes from Caligula are played out in kids’ bedrooms every day.