BARBIE is 50 next month. I know what you’re thinking and she doesn’t look like any of the 50-year-olds I know either.

To be fair, she doesn’t look like anybody I’ve ever known, perhaps with the exception of a girl I was friends with in the sixth form.

The all-American girl, with her teeny weeny waist and legs that go on for miles, Barbie has won herself a legion of loyal fans over the last five decades.

But she’s made some enemies on the way, too.

Feminists have given Barbie a verbal beating over the years.

And eating disorder charities don’t think much of her either.

One even tours with a life-sized model of her showing that “real life” Barbie would be 5ft 9in with a 39in bust, 18in waist and 33in hips.

Seeing as her petite size 3 feet wouldn’t be able to support a woman with these proportions, Barbie, they reckon, would have to walk on all fours.

When it came to dolls, Sindy was probably a much better role model for little girls All well and good, except for the fact that every little girl who had both dolls knew that Sindy just wasn’t as good as Barbie. It wasn’t just that Barbie got the pink caravan, cadillac and handsome boyfriend with a strange smooth area down his pants.

She just seemed more glamourous somehow.

My sisters and I used to fight over who got to be Barbie and who had to be Sindy when we played house.

Even getting Skipper (Barbie’s little sister) was better than having to have Sindy.

Some parents would argue that it’s wrong to give little girls such an image-conscious toy to play with. They don’t want their daughters wishing they could be a size zero and live in a pink mansion when they grow up.

I don’t think it’s so bad.

Nowadays it seems like kids are taught that sooner or later anyway.

With Paris Hilton, Jordan, and a string of less successful glamour girls parading in front of us on TV and staring out from the tabloids every day little girls know the easy way to having everything they’ve ever dreamed of is to marry someone rich, or to get famous by taking their clothes off.

Today’s society is in a fair old mess, with everybody clamouring for their 15 minutes of fame and children more interested in looking up to their favourite celebrity rather than their mother or father, but it’s hard not to be hypocritical.

How many of us, I wonder, would take a “Barbie pill” if it came on the market?

If you could be guaranteed to be taller, slimmer, blonder and more tanned (with no side effects) would you be happier?

I think the vast majority of people probably would be.

Sad, but true.