How to annoy your co-workers with just one Barbie doll

This just for fun post requires an explanation.

I live near Detroit and most of my co-workers are avid Detroit Tigers fans.

They have learned over the years that I root for Cleveland sports teams.

To make that point on a week in which Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians played each other in Major League Baseball, I posted this doll display at my desk.

Ooh, it's been quite a while since I've heard so many snarky comments about a doll display.

My comeback line is that if they can find me a Detroit Tigers doll outfit, I will happily play along and put that one on display sometime.

So far, we haven't found one.

This Cleveland Indians outfit came from a craft show in northeast Ohio about five years ago, and cost me only $1. It was one of several doll outfits I bought that day. Yes, one of the others was a Cleveland Browns dress.

It'll be traded out for a pageant doll soon enough. My pageant friends are in state competitions next week.

Doll pageant: Charity appearance in winter

Continuing my doll pageant series:

Miss Barbie Roberts is dressed as if she was making a charity appearance during a Michigan winter.

Doll and Fashion Avenue outfit are both from the late 1990s. The crown I bought from a crafter on Amazon. The sash is from a different Barbie outfit. The screen shot in the background is the Miss America Organization web site.

Santa Barbie is on my desk

Santa Barbie on my desk - this was one of my estate auction finds this summer.

Black Friday Shopper Barbie (OOAK)

I have created very few "one of a kind" outfits because I just can't do the tiny sewing. But I do have a great collection of dolls, accessories and outfits that I do arrange into OOAK displays!

So in that spirit, here is my Black Friday Shopper Barbie display. The shopping bag is from a 1997 Wal-Mart Shopping Time Barbie. The green sweatshirt and backpack are from one of the Fashion Avenue collections of the 1990s; although the jeans are from another outfit pack. The doll was purchased late 1990s. The pink tree is a purchase this season from Hobby Lobby.

 
This is the first time I've done this scene.

My daughter figured out the theme right away -- but her follow-up comment was that I gave the doll the wrong pair of shoes. She pointed out that the doll should have flat-soled sneakers rather than stylish heeled sneakers. You can't run, after all, in the heeled shoes.

By the way, if I was trying to depict myself on Black Friday, she wouldn't have a shopping bag. She would have the iPhone, a camera or video camera and a business bag as her props.

Yes, I cover the Black Friday shopping madness for my newspaper. I find it far more entertaining to be the reporter than to be one of the shoppers.

Salute to 9/11: Tea Time at the Plaza Gene doll

The Nashville Doll Collecting Examiner has this post with a photo of Gene doll posed in front of the New York skyline with the World Trade Center in the background: Tea Time at the Plaza Gene Doll - a Remembrance of 9/11.

The photos were taken by Kathryn Darden in the style that's been so popular in recent years of a doll or stuffed animal being posed on its "travels" around the city, country or world.

My traditional "doll on my desk" display for 9/11 was to dress Teresa in a firefighter outfit. But I was so busy last week that I forgot all about digging through the doll boxes to get that doll out of storage.

River Raisin Jazz Festival Barbie

Here's the doll changeup today: A So in Style doll (Kara) with her own boots but the top and pants from one of the 1990s Fashion Avenue sets; sunglasses of unknown origin; art easels, microphone, a trumpet and a flute from assorted collections. Translation: River Raisin Jazz Festival Barbie!

 

The Barbie dilemma continues 50 years later

One of the criticisms all along about Barbie has been that her figure and style was a bit too "adult" and commercialized for some parents' tastes.

One of my co-workers pointed me to a column by Terry Mattingly, On Religion, about the challenges of pushing too grownup of a style and culture on little girls. Terry's column ran locally in the Ann Arbor.com newspaper; but you'll also find it many places across the web including The Republic of Columbus, Ind. A snippet:

Barbie dolls are not the only products that define this dilemma, but they are highly symbolic. In an essay for the journal Books & Culture, Riley noted the power of a story recounted in "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture," a book by feminist Peggy Orenstein. The anecdote begins with her filmmaker husband approving a Barbie purchase for their young daughter.

"I demanded that he take it away from her. She started to cry. So I gave it back," wrote Orenstein.

The parents argued some more and the Barbie went back on the Target shelf.

I did buy my daughter Barbie dolls. I bought myself Barbie dolls.

I realize that some moms are not entirely pleased with the concept. But here's a thought:

It will be hard to get through childhood without dolls of any sort crossing your daughter's path.

So, what dolls would you find acceptable? Brats and that over the top attitude? American Girls and their pricey wardrobes? Disney dolls and the princess extreme that genre has turned into?

Or a Barbie with her sisters, Skipper and Kelly; her friends Teresa and Kira and Ken; for whom you can easily find retail and handmade doll clothes and furniture to suit a variety of tastes, fashion and sensibilities?

By the way, there has been a doll on my desk since May 1997. And I had a customer remark today about my tradition and my current doll - a So in Style African-American friend Kara in 1960s 'mod' handcrafted outfit.

Perfect summer day

Does this dress not scream "summer!"

This was a handmade outfit I bought in fall 1998 at the Ohio Fashion Doll Collector's Club convention in Akron, Ohio. One of the So in Style dolls from recent vintage looks right at home in that dress.

Pink shoes, of course.

Trichelle the photographer

Trichelle from the Barbie So in Style collection was cast as an artist.

But the art school accessories didn't just include paints and an easel. She also had a very serious looking professional camera.

I've had her on display before, but not recently. She'll be the next doll on my desk.

Salute to Miss Michigan

The newly crowned Miss Michigan from the Miss America Organization pageant system is Elizabeth Wertenberger of Dundee, Mich.

While she ran under the title of Miss Southwest Michigan, Elizabeth is a former Miss Monroe County queen. My job as a reporter for The Monroe Evening News includes getting the Miss Monroe pageant appearances listed in the newspaper - although when it comes to actual competitions, that assignment does vary based on who is scheduled to work that weekend. I've also met many of the queens, contestants, princesses and volunteers over the years. That includes Kaye Lani Rafko Wilson, Miss America 1988, who still lives in Monroe.

Because I figured it was time to do a pageant doll display on my desk, and the local pageant season will be in August, I ordered on line a few days ago some doll-sized crowns and an assortment of beautiful ball gowns.

I'm really glad I did that now, but the doll fashions haven't arrived yet.

This will be my "doll on my desk" display for now. This is a brunette Barbie from the late 1990s. She came with beads you could pinch into her hair. I still have the hair kit, although I don't use it much. This was the first "pink box" Barbie I bought for myself as an adult. Her face was just too cute. Once I bought that doll, I knew I had crossed over into Barbie land.

The pageant frocks are, as best as I can remember, from the late 1990s because that is when I bought a lot of pink box fashions. The red dress and its sash came in a package of three outfits intended as college campus wear, along with a graduation cap and gown. The blue dress may have belonged to my daughter at one time. Personally, I like the red dress so that's what the doll will wear today.

I also found some fake flowers in my craft supplies that she can hold.

I have nothing - absolutely nothing - that can be repurposed as a doll crown unless I want to take a crown off one of my collector dolls. I'm not going to do that when I'll have a selection of doll crowns in a few days.

Update: Here's the doll on display, with her crown: