Architect Barbie:: helpful or harmful?

About a foot high and made of synthetic materials that smelled like expensive plastic, Barbie made her debut on March 9, 1959. Back then, Barbie was a teenage fashion model. But over the decades, she quickly climbed the corporate ladder. Her résumé includes stints as an astronaut, ballerina, babysitter, surgeon and doctor. She then decided to become an aerobics instructor, art teacher, race car driver, paleontologist, firefighter, the guest editor of a fashion magazine, and, yes, a cashier at McDonald's.

But this time, Barbie somehow squeezed in five years of architecture school, took an internship and passed her ARE (Architectural Registration Exam), and made her debut as an architect. She wears a hard hat now and carries a set of construction documents. But she is also wearing a sporty cropped black jacket, a trendy dress, hipster glasses and unflattering ankle boots.

Heels may be fine for the office, but not on the job site. It’s a little tricky traipsing through mud and concrete or balancing on steel beams. Mattel seemed to forget to show her with a rounded back from 80 hours a week hunched over a drafting table and a claw for a hand gripping the mouse doing endless CAD edits. And really, her belly should be pouched and flabby from hours of sitting and eating a bad diet; her face pale and corpse-like from lack of exercise; her lips chewed to a frazzle from the pressures of deadlines. Her hair should show two months of root growth. She’s so busy she couldn’t get to the salon. Her accessories need include a Starbucks grande latte with a double shot of espresso, chased by a few slugs of Pepto-Bismol, and a prescription of anti-anxiety pills in her desk drawer.