I ran across a blog post today on CNN that made me roll my eyes. I commented on the post, but thought I’d share my take here and see if I’m totally off base. You can read the original post that annoyed me here.

The post is about the new Barbie doll that celebrates women entrepreneurs. It’s just the latest in the decades-long gripe session that has been focused on the most popular doll ever made. According to the post’s author, Amy Rosen, the Entrepreneur Barbie is stuck in a time warp. It’s not that Barbie is representing women badly, it’s just that she’s representing them insufficiently. In Rosen’s opinion, women entrepreneurs don’t all wear pink, or heels, or carry their laptops in a briefcase. And since they don’t all look like Mattel’s version of women entrepreneurs, this Barbie doll is wrong. This is where the eye roll began.

Back in the 1970s, when I was playing with Barbies, the complaint many women levied against Mattel was that they were not representing women adequately for the changing times. They were models and flight attendants (called “stewardesses” back in those pre-P.C. days) and surfers and gymnasts… but while Barbie could be a  nurse, she was not a doctor. There was no “career” anything, really… just pretty dolls with pretty clothes. Bad Doll.

When my daughters played with Barbies, they began to be seen wearing the “uniforms” of some predominantly male jobs. Doctors appeared, Barbies in the uniforms of the Armed Forces, even NASCAR Barbies! But, they were still unreasonably proportioned and therefore were leading our daughters down the road of unhealthy eating habits. Because, we all know that little girls base their own self-image on 11.5″ fashion dolls. So, they were still bad. Bad Doll.

Today, my girls are grown and my son prefers Legos over Barbies, so I have no first-hand knowledge of the careers Barbie is currently pursuing. I may have even cheered a little when I realized I never had to walk down the Pink Aisle at Toys R Us again. However, I do know that they have undergone a thickening of their midsection and breast reduction surgery – Good Doll! And, while they are still wearing couture, they are also landing on the Moon. Barbie is holding down a career of her choice and holding babies, and she is still rocking the good hair and trendy clothes. Barbie can have it all in a way real women only dream of.

But clearly, it’s not enough. Rosen posits the the idea that teaching our daughters they can create their own path and be their own boss simply isn’t sufficient. She refers to the new collection of images inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, that highlights women in all their diverse brilliance. They are tattooed, working at home, climbing mountains, juggling kids, wearing tool belts and meeting in coffee shops… etc. So, because Entrepreneur Barbie doesn’t reflect any of Sandberg’s faces of entrepreneurship, she is, unfortunately, still a Bad Doll. (Although, I bet this woman is wearing heels and has a laptop bag…)

Come on.

I know a fair number of female entrepreneurs, and guess what – most of them carry satchels to keep their laptop close at hand, and many of them even wear heels and skirts on occasion! I also know some who work from home and coffee shops (myself included), but do little girls really want to play with a doll that only has a pair of yoga pants and a holey Dave Matthews Band t-shirt to wear??

Obviously, one Entrepreneur Barbie is not going to represent millions of women striking out on their own career journeys across the globe – but I believe planting the idea in little girls that they can be entrepreneurs, and starting the conversation about how to make that happen is a great move forward. I’m thinking Barbie is simply on her way to pitch her business to some angel investors. (She worked out earlier that day and left her two children home with Ken, who works on a flex-schedule to help her get her business off the ground.)

In the end, I know that Amy Rosen is trolling for easy traffic on her column, and on the CNN website. But as a writer myself, it annoys me to see writers get paid to create content that has no legs. Surely she has more relevant and thought-provoking topics to write about? Maybe she just hadn’t had enough coffee? Maybe her yoga pants were riding up?

Let’s embrace and encourage women entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes, shall we? Even if they have oversized ponytails.