In the light of the hypothesis that some autism spectrum disorders are expressions of an extreme male brain, it has struck me as a little ironic that boys suspected of being on the spectrum seem (at least anecdotally) to account for a non-negligible proportion of boys uninterested in (neurotypical-boy-targeted) action man dolls.
As I have said before, I hated dolls when I was a child. Eventually, I was persuaded to play with them – but I still only accepted life-like action figures. Fortunately, ‘trans’ wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then; and your good self, Ophelia, and the company here and on Facebook, convinced me that I had been misled about it being a genuine ‘thing’ when I was old enough to know better.
Amusingly, just shy of my sixty-seventh birthday, something wholly unexpected has occurred. I was rolling through a big supermarket on my recent trip to the UK, glancing at this and that, as one does, when my husband asked me “Did you see the Barbies? I responded “Of course I didn’t. I loathe Barbies; they are completely invisible to me.”
He replied “Well, I’ve found some Barbies which are invisible to everyone!” and guided me back to the horrible pink section, where – conveniently at my eye-level – there was an entire shelf filled with little half-sized Barbie dolls in wheelchairs.
After I stopped laughing, he persuaded me to let him buy me my first Barbie, and she now sits in all her pink-and-purple glory on the dashboard of the van. Of course, I gave her a tailless ginger cat (like mine) to hold on her lap, and a Halloween bat for a hat; can’t be having a conventional doll, can I?
In the light of the hypothesis that some autism spectrum disorders are expressions of an extreme male brain, it has struck me as a little ironic that boys suspected of being on the spectrum seem (at least anecdotally) to account for a non-negligible proportion of boys uninterested in (neurotypical-boy-targeted) action man dolls.
As I have said before, I hated dolls when I was a child. Eventually, I was persuaded to play with them – but I still only accepted life-like action figures. Fortunately, ‘trans’ wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then; and your good self, Ophelia, and the company here and on Facebook, convinced me that I had been misled about it being a genuine ‘thing’ when I was old enough to know better.
Amusingly, just shy of my sixty-seventh birthday, something wholly unexpected has occurred. I was rolling through a big supermarket on my recent trip to the UK, glancing at this and that, as one does, when my husband asked me “Did you see the Barbies? I responded “Of course I didn’t. I loathe Barbies; they are completely invisible to me.”
He replied “Well, I’ve found some Barbies which are invisible to everyone!” and guided me back to the horrible pink section, where – conveniently at my eye-level – there was an entire shelf filled with little half-sized Barbie dolls in wheelchairs.
After I stopped laughing, he persuaded me to let him buy me my first Barbie, and she now sits in all her pink-and-purple glory on the dashboard of the van. Of course, I gave her a tailless ginger cat (like mine) to hold on her lap, and a Halloween bat for a hat; can’t be having a conventional doll, can I?
This is the doll I have (sorry, doesn’t have the cat or the bat hat):
https://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Chelsea-Wheelchair-Sunglasses-Sticker/dp/B09NLDFPVK/