N.C. Woman Sells Naughty Barbie Dolls

Link : http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&ncid=757&e=10&u=/ap/20041004/ap_on_fe_st/bad_barbies

PITTSBORO, N.C. - Barbie's being bad. The wholesome, if sometimes surreal, beauty of the iconic doll is taking on a different twist under the influence of photo lab owner Anne Baker. Baker has coerced Barbie and her friends to ditch the sequin gowns and pink roadsters for sexy outfits, outrageous poses and delinquent behavior.



Plastic dolls line four long shelves in Baker's store, called Annie B and the Black and White Guy.


There's a cross-dressing male doll with long hot pink hair and a tight miniskirt. A "Jailbait Barbie" stands behind bars, wearing a pink and white striped uniform and an identification number. An eight-legged black widow doll crawls up a spider web, with Ken wrapped in her webbing. "She's a man-eater," the sign says.


In a scenario that has its parallel in real life, Baker finds down-on-their-luck Barbies - at thrift stores and from friends �- then introduces them to a world of sex, drugs and violence.


"I always loved Barbie," she said. "I don't know what led me to this. Barbie was too clean and she needed to be in the real world, so I put her in my world."


Baker has had jobs both in costume design and toy buying, and figures they inspired her to take up the Barbie habit three years ago. Now she sells the dolls for up to $125 each.


Sometimes they are placed in sets. One features Ken in a clay wolf mask, his tongue flopped across his chin like a dog, his long brown hair kinked sky-high. Barbie, her lips pouted around a perfect smile and head covered by a red cape, drops her basket of fruit in surprise.


Another, called "Hef and the Bunny and the Mansion," features a blue-eyed Barbie in a Playboy bunny outfit, serving drinks to Hugh Hefner (played by Ken).


Baker said children enjoy the dolls sometimes more than parents do.


"Kids actually don't even realize what they are," she said. "They just love them. It's the parents who get upset; the kids don't. "Most everyone thinks it's funny."