Good news on Barbie Torture

Every so often you hear an idea in the world of blog and it doesn’t quite ring into you head the significance of the idea. Then I see this over at Yahoo

But of course Barbie is not real, and was never intended to represent a healthy body or physical ideal. While Barbie has long been badgered about her "unhealthy" shape, no one complains that Mr. Potato Head's tubby physique is even less healthy. Girls are far more intelligent than Barbie critics give them credit for; they know their dolls are just that: dolls.
The girls in the British study are not alone. One adult woman in an informal survey reminisced, "Mostly I helped my brother decapitate Barbies and threw limbs in neighbors' yards. No one told me I should look like Barbie and I never felt like I should look like her." Said another, "I never regarded Barbie as a model for a real person. I actually hated her shape because it made it hard to put clothes on her."
The claim that Barbie can cause eating disorders also rests on shaky assumptions. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are serious diseases that cannot be "caught" from playing with dolls. Research has shown that the disorders are strongly influenced by genetic factors, not thin dolls or media images.

Little girls torturing Barbie… Seems it is after all a good thing.