(no subject)

[austin_tycho]

This article both amused and frustrated me. I'll let you figure out why it's amusing but I'll tell you why it was frustrating. Allow me to be humorless and curmudgeonly for a moment. Assuming he didn't make up his quotes (and I've heard similar elsewhere, so I don't think he did) I get irked when Wiccans hold 'Secret Spell Barbie' up as a sign that people are 'finally taking Wicca seriously.' So, where is 'Orthodox Jew Barbie' and 'Southern Baptist Convention Ken-Submitting Barbie' and 'Burqa-riffic Muslim Barbie'? There aren't any. Secret Spell Barbie, Harry Potter, and poems talking about how you should believe in witches, elves and Santa Claus ('A World Without Witches' by Robert Potts, recently posted on a few Wiccan lists) because it's sad to lose your child-like wonder don't really further the cause of Wicca at all. Hey, look, those all treat witches as if they were figments of the imagination, people! Yes, it's nice to have a well-developed sense of fantasy and all that, but putting Wiccans in the same categories as Malibu Barbie and Santa Claus doesn't exactly make it easier for people to take us seriously or see Wicca as a religion that deserves the same constitutional rights as any other.

I have nothing against 'Secret Spell Barbie' and am not so humorless as to think that it should be destroyed or avoided by any Wiccans that happen to be amused by it. I just wish people would quit equating her with actual Wicca.