So Robin's watching TV this afternoon and sees a commercial for a new line of dolls, which she later characterizes to me as "Teen Slut Barbie." We do some investigating and find that the dolls are part of a new Barbie spinoff called My Scene. It seems to be a kind of toned-down "Sex and the City" theme--the dolls seem to represent super-trendy young twentysomething women living in New York. In fact, it didn't take us too long to figure out that the dolls themselves were named after New York geography--Barbie's friends include Chelsea, Madison, Bryant, and Hudson. (It took us a little longer to figure out "Nolee"--short for Nolita, I guess?)

The My Scene website is intent on giving whole lives to the characters, featuring little "webisodes" with cartoon versions of the dolls. Each doll even has a personal home page with personal details--you can open up Madison's purse or Barbie's PDA. But you know what the ultimate mark of these characters' trendiness is? That's right--

THE DOLLS HAVE BLOGS.

I kid you not. Here's an example from Chelsea's blog:

"4/22/2003  Love Is in the Air
Had a dream last night – River was a really famous rock star, and I was his girlfriend. After yoga class, I told Nolee about my dream, and she kidded me about it all the way home. I had to give it right back to her about Bryant and how much he looooves her. We could have gotten mad at each other, but we just cracked up instead!"

Or Madison:

"4/19/2003  Boys Will Be Boys
All of us went to the opening of Blue Suede tonight – a hot and happening restaurant. It's totally glammed out on the inside, and the food was pretty fab, too. Of course, the guys kept staring at all the girls in the place. They were sooo obvious. Too funny."

Robin and I couldn't stop laughing--but now I can't decide if it's totally hysterical or profoundly creepy. Probably both. Don't be surprised if Barbie and Chelsea show up in my links bar soon.

[Super-creepy P.S.: Just after I posted this I linked back to Chelsea's blog to find that a new entry had just been posted:

"4/27/2003  Bikin' in the Park
I took the best bike ride in Cental Park today. Everyone was out – friends hanging, little kids playing, little league teams practicing… I just love spring in NY!"

Now since this is dated today (Sunday), I have to imagine that it was posted automatically with the idea that no little girl is going to be up in the middle of the night to read it. But of course, I am reading it, so now I have this picture of this doll biking around Central Park in the middle of the night. Maybe the weirdest thing, though, is the spelling mistake--"Cental" for "Central." It's hardly unusual to see a spelling mistake on someone's blog. But this is NOT A REAL PERSON. Which makes me wonder--was the error *inserted* to make the blog seem more realistic? Yikes...]