It's Scorsese Barbie!

So now Barbie comes with a camera. Not a camera in her hand. Not a camera in her phone. A camera in her ... how shall I put this? The aperture is below her neck, right above her famous cleavage. If you think about it too hard (which I don't recommend), it makes her look a little like Tracheotomy Barbie.

Not a big seller.

Anyway, if you look at X-rays of this new Barbie's body (which I also don't recommend, but there they were, on one of the websites about her), her thighs are comely as ever on the outside but filled with batteries on the inside. These are connected to wires that thread up to where her stomach would be, but instead, there's the camera's hardware. Her back? It's a full-color video screen.

It's enough to make Ken run straight to his shrink.

Or G.I. Joe.

Which is where he always seemed to be heading anyway, right? I suspect that's why he never needed his own house or car or job beyond "beach bum." He's the original rent boy. But I'm getting a little off topic.

The truth is this new $50 doll is more empowering than a space shuttle's worth of Astronaut Barbies. That's because it's cute, prissy and girlie. The demo video shows a movie Barbie "made" of Skipper looking through a closet of clothes. Gag me with a plastic shoe. But what's cool is that now technology is just a normal part of a girl's childhood.

It's a snap to make a movie, a snap to snake the cord from Barbie to the computer, a snap for this generation to edit films as easily as my generation made Barbie clothes out of fabric scraps we'd cut two armholes in.

Most of us didn't grow up to be dress designers (at least not those of us who made those dresses that looked like egg roll wrappers with arms poking out), but the world of fashion was one we felt at home in.

Likewise, most boys don't grow up to be soldiers (or rent boys), but camo and guns and lightsabers are part of their collective past. They're even part of my own middle-school boys' past — and present — and I'm one of those pacifists who resisted toy guns for a long time — till the Nerf arsenal won me over. But somehow my boys are at home in the worlds of war, sports and technology.

With Video Girl Barbie, the technology part becomes a level playing field (to use a male phrase). The new Barbie does what Surgeon Barbie and President Barbie and AP Biophysics Student Barbie all tried to do: It empowers girls.

Even if all they do is take videos of their doll friends' clothes, they still become the producer/director/key grip who isn't afraid of a USB port. And if they need someone cute to film riffling through the closet?

There's always Ken.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM