MB & BO Readings and Reactions

I read "Experience" in Mondo Barbie and "My Brown Face" in Body Outlaws. 
"Experience" discusses how horrible Barbie feels about her own perfection.  She tells the author not to be like her, to be her own person.  "I know I look nice.  I'm what everyone wants.  I'm fulfillment, confection, art.  But Barbie said, You don't want it, just trust me."  The writer didn't look at Barbie and desire her perfection, instead she saw the sorrow in Barbie's contradicting, smiling face. 
     "My Brown Face" describes some of what it is like to be as admired as a barbie doll.  Writer, Mira Jacob, was a beautiful Indian woman.  Men couldn't stop from wanting her because she was so beautiful.  Like Barbie, Mira didn't want this kind of life.  This attention got to her, made her feel less important as a person.  She says at one point in the story, "Every part of my body had been itemized into comedic value, and a mere glance would set me smacking any tender portion into a window display, a caricature."
     The biggest difference between Barbie and Mira is that Mira can change herself.  Barbie has to keep her plastered smile, her pointy feet, and her boring personality.  Mira will always be Indian, and probably always beautiful and mysterious, however she can use her personality to be who she wants to be too.  She can change her own clothes, make her own friends, and go where she wants to go.  Mira is in charge of Mira. And near the end of "My Brown Face," Mira writes, "It is this woman (her perception of her) who is at the center of me, the one the men on the street will never see;  this woman who is simultaneously on fire and rising from the ashes."  She is working through her issues---and Barbie never can.