Barbie's old enough for an AARP membership. How weird is that?

And so, for the umpteenth time, debates are raging on whether Barbie is a good role model for young girls.

Millions of girls have played with Barbie dolls for 50 years now. They've dressed them in fancy gowns, performed countless weddings between Barbie and Ken, and taken Barbie and friends on a few billion spins in pink Barbie convertibles. Best I can tell, it's all been good clean fun.

Who doesn't want to play dress up and live in world where you always have matching shoes, handbags and other accessories? (Sounds suspiciously like the hit HBO series "Sex and the City," doesn't it?) Such play does not portend that you will have poor body images, self-esteem issues or preen about town in a Bob Mackie-designed gown.

That said, I never owned a true Barbie. I had a Barbie doll based on the actress Diahann Carroll. As a child, I was a fan of her television program "Julia." She was a single mom, nurse and a Vietnam war widow. She was one of the first African-American women on television not relegated to the role of a domestic worker. She had it going on. Besides, the doll talked!

My other Barbie was Skipper, a kid sister to Barbie. I remember performing a wedding ceremony between her and my brother's GI Joe, who had some impressive accessories of his own — an Apollo capsule and a complete astronaut outfit. Considering that NASA astronauts were major heroes in my youth, Skipper could not have had a better suitor. Malibu Ken vs. GI Joe? No contest.

Do I feel damaged by my childhood flirtation with Barbie? Not in the slightest. When you come to realize that Barbie would be over 7 feet tall and weigh just 102 pounds if her proportions were human, it's a little difficult to think of her as the "ideal." It's more like a freak of nature.

The only woman I've ever seen in person who was that tall was former Utah Starzz center Margo Dydek. She's 7 foot 2 inches and weighs about 223 pounds, according to a WNBA Web site. Barbie only wishes she could block shots the way Margo can.

The Barbie phase for most girls is short-lived. As a parent, I was grateful for that because I grew tired of picking up Barbie's little accessories. They had this uncanny way of ending up underfoot when I stumbled around in the dark to comfort a child who was ill or who had had a bad dream. It was rather a relief when my daughters' interests changed.

Neither of them turned into a Barbie. Nor, I suspect, will the 90 percent of American girls ages 3 to 10 who own at least one Barbie, according to Mattel's statistics.

The reason is, girls are not solely influenced by the likes of Barbie. Most girls have strong female role models in their mothers, their grandmothers, aunts and other women in their sphere of influence, such as coaches, Sunday School teachers or community leaders.

My daughters, now teenagers, live in a time when women have every opportunity and choice to be whatever and whoever they want.

To hear Barbie's inventor tell it, that's what she intended Barbie to represent, a young woman with choices. Isn't that what we, as mothers, want for our daughters?

Marjorie Cortez, who once attempted to dress Skipper in GI Joe's astronaut suit, is a Deseret News editorial writer. E-mail her at marjorie@desnews.com.