Protesting Pink: Barbie Dreamhouse Gets Fiery Welcome in Berlin.

[Divernan]

Berlin is my favorite EU city - lots of culture, history, good food - just super edgy - and they do know how to throw a good protest.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/protests-mar-opening-of-barbie-dreamhouse-in-berlin-a-900430.html

For some, it's a dream in pink. For others, it's a monument to misogyny. The Barbie Dreamhouse opened its doors in Berlin on Thursday, and demonstrators and journalists were out in force. Femen also made an appearance -- to burn Barbie on the cross.

"It is simply a very one-dimensional view of women," Bruha says about the exhibit. The message, she says, is that girls can become either models or pop stars -- and nothing else. "But there are other girls who are perhaps small or fat but can do other things super well."

Journalists from around the world -- from Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US were present. All of them wanted to see if Barbie Dreamhouse is really that bad -- and if something newsworthy might happen outside. For a long time, it didn't. Until midday, the Pinkstinks people were the only ones holding their posters up to the cameras. "Barbie is not my baby," reads one. And "Don't just bake cupcakes, eat them too!"

The scene was almost idyllic. Leftist demonstrators, feminists and other anti-Barbie protesters sat peacefully on the artificial grass or on pink chairs enjoying the warm May sun while small children crawled around in front of the display tent. And then, Barbie was burned on the cross.

[frylock]

1. errr umm NSFW

[BainsBane]

2. If you'd mentioned the article covered

topless FEMEN protesters, you'd get lots of attention. Hats off for keeping it on the main issue.

I was a little girl who loved Barbies more than anything. It's hard for me to think like a feminist when it comes to Barbie because I think of those wonderful little shoes she wears. I suppose that's an example of how some women can be conflicted about the various messages we get about beauty and femininity.

[Nye Bevan]

3. Well, Berliners crucifying a burning Barbie is nowhere near as bad as Kristallnacht.

So I for one am encouraged by the progress that Germany has made over the last 70 years or so.

[Divernan]

4. Hitler hated Berlin - and the feeling was mutual.

I thought anyone who claimed interest in a topic such as Kristallnacht would have a broader knowledge of Hitler's well-known hatred of Berlin.

http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2009/01/monster-dome.html

Hitler hated Berlin. He hated its cosmopolitanism, its freewheeling bohemianism, its messy vitality, its insolence. It was the only major city that the Nazis failed to win in the 1932 elections. It was long a center of left-wing support. That's why all the big party rallies were in Nuremberg, and not in Berlin.
Hitler planned his revenge on Berlin as obsessively as he plotted his revenge on everything else in his long list of hatreds.
Hitler wanted to effectively destroy Berlin, or at least a very large part of it, and rebuild it as "Germania," the capital of his global empire after his war of conquest was complete.

"Munich was the birthplace of the Nazis. Hitler was popular there, while Berlin had always been a leftist city. In fact, Hitler hated Berlin - it was Goebbels’ idea that the new government should set up in Berlin. As a result, the city was damaged by air raids, and especially by the Battle of Berlin. After the war, Berlin suffered once again when she was split among the allies and consequently the divided by The Wall. While Berlin paid for Munich’s mistakes over decades, Munich prospered – and still prospers now, while Berlin, the great building site, is in ruins. (posted in 2010)
http://englishmaninberlin.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/berlin-vs-munich/

As to Kristallnacht, if you would visit Hitler's first concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, located near Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, you would learn that for the first two years after it was opened in 1936 (prior to Kristallnacht, in November of 1938), there were no Jews there, but rather Berliners who were journalists, priests and ministers, academics, artists, homosexuals, trade unionists and communists - the cream of the city's intellectuals and political activists.

So I make no apologies for Berlin.