Barbie: A Father's View -or- Don't give my kid Barbies

So when Kath and Lu got home from Gparents' house yesterday, there was a package on the porch for her (a bag, actually): the next door neighbors had gifted her 4 barbie dolls. Let's see, there was cinderella, and one in a short little red number with ripped nylons, and a ballerina, and a punky chick with a choker necklace and a black cat T-shirt. Oh, and a skirt too tight to move her legs around much.

There are a couple of assumptions on the neighbor's part here. I won't get into the prideful ones about us not being able to afford barbies, but what about parenting? Most likely we've all heard this before, but for those who haven't, humour me for a moment (the extra U was for Rachel)... Let's see: they all had blonde hair, their feet are shaped so that they can ONLY wear high heels (they show off the calves), and if I've been told correctly (haven't researched this)- the doll has breasts so big that if she were a real woman, she wouldn't be able to walk without toppling (especially since she would ONLY wear heels).

I'm not exactly Gloria Steinem, but we do try to model a little bit of equality for Lucy, and the ideas of feminist thinkers became more important to me the day I got married and even more the day my daughter was born.

Should women not be allowed to look dainty and precious? What do I have against high heels? Is there something wrong with blonde hair? No, of course all of these things (maybe not the hair) are choices that women can make, and of course are none of my business. But it's the unspoken-ness of the assumptions being "given" to my daughter by the (admittedly well-meaning) neighbors that isn't right.

In the same way that assumptions are made about me as a man (on a train once, in the dining car, a girl got up from the table she was sitting at, and went to get something from her seat. The man she was sitting with added alcohol to her coke, nodding at the guys sitting around and saying something to the effect of 'we are all guys, right?'.), and if I want to combat them I have to overcompensate, perhaps women should think about some of the 'Barbie choices' before they wonder why glass ceilings and objectifying attitudes exist?

I'm sure I'm in way over my head here, but I remember some church-going, smart women friends of mine in graduate school, who suddenly wore almost nothing and turned their brains off when we headed to a dance club. That's not what I want for my daughter.