The first time my daughter received a Barbie, I hid it. I smuggled it into a closet, and eventually I gave it away. The implications! A Barbie, after all, represented all that was wrong with the way we raise our daughters. Big, pointy breasts, blond hair, and those poor feet, she must be exhausted, standing on her tippy toes all day.

The birthdays continued and so did the flow of Barbies. I gave in to a battle Coco didn’t even know I was fighting. She was drawn to the dolls like ticks to a dog. The two, then three, then four, then five, and now she must have about 15 Barbies in all shapes, colors and sizes.

Barbie is keeping up with the times in order to hang on to sales. The little four and five year olds are turning to other dolls for times of play. Mattel has made the icon more fashionable, hip, cool, and full of the accessories modern day girls love. There’s the tanning Barbie that smells like coconut, the skating/skiing Barbie with ski jackets and knee pads, the art teacher Barbie (student included), black hair, blue eyed, dark skinned, olive skin, blond hair, red hair and all other politically correct combinations.

A few days ago, Coco turned six and I decided to buy one thing on her wish list. A friend of mine gave me the idea to defer all statements such as Mami I want this…Can I have a that…I really want…to a wish list. This has turned into a great tool for teaching my daughter how to write, plus it’s a way for her to do something with all those feelings of: isn’t the world a big, bright, shiny place where I can buy lots and lots of stuff and why can’t I have it all?

This is not the first parenting issue where I’ve flipped 360°. I marched into mothering thinking I knew what was best, not only for me, but for so many others. Barbie! Not me! Television! Forget it. Fast food! Disgusting! What I didn’t know when I started mothering was that the daily decisions constantly placed me on the other side of the fence. I ate fast food when we traveled because I didn’t want to get out of the car with a sleeping child, and I was so hungry I felt like nibbling on the steering wheel. Coco and I chill with the Home Decorating Channel. I relish the words, “Mami, next is Design on a Dime!” And, I’ve purchased my first Barbie.

I haven’t given up my values, instead I’ve relinquished the desire to censor many of the experiences of her life. Coco loves Barbies, for awhile. She loves her plastic animals more. She loves television, about once every two weeks, then she’ll turn it off and say, “I’m bored.” She loves French Fries, but she knows to eat her cucumbers and drink her apple/celery juice every night. I still have to keep her away from the really bad stuff, but I want her to experience the world on her terms, and if I keep stuffing all the Barbies in the closet, they’ll just come back to haunt me.

So, I walked up and down the toy isle and had it narrowed down to two wish list items: the large Barbie head in which the child styles the hair, or the Barbie with the dog that poops (pooper scooper included). Is there a really question here? Besides, the big headed doll was creepy.