Barbie wrapped in a Manchester United footie scarf—pinned, scarred and misshapen, like a memento left behind by a vengeful sorceress going at a voodoo doll—is your Exhibit A. It shares space with things you would deem to be part of the normal, reassuring ecosystem atop an urban teenage girl’s chest of drawers: a Harry Potter collection, a high-end Bose Bluetooth speaker set and bobble heads of Beyonce and Kim Kardashian. What gives? What brought this turn to the macabre in this regulation picture of girlish innocence, with its coy aspirations to ideals of beauty?
Well, the grotesque doll is a reminder of the months of depression this girl went through early this year—pockmarked by bouts of hysterical rage that she vented on the toy. Why? Because she was trolled and body-shamed for her small breasts. She was asked if she was from ‘Man-chester’—a cryptic taunt that swiftly opened the sluice-gates for a torrent of plain in-the-face filth. She pulled away from her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds, and...
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