Review of 'Barbie Fashionistas Doll #245 (Autistic Barbie)' at Mattel inc.

One autist on another...

Lo, Autistic Barbie, daughter of Mattel, Inc., nubile identity doll, is born. Bearing a teensy fidget spinner and iPad communication aide, this Barbie is sanctioned by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Her uncanny visage joins a lineup that includes Down Syndrome Barbie, Blind Barbie, and Broken-Arm Barbie—the "Diversity Barbies," you might call them.

But I propose an alternative name: the “Biopower Barbies,” or alternatively “Foucault’s Angels.”

Autistic Barbie and her compatriots are both cutie-pies and population control apparatus. Wearing her striped purple dress, Autistic Barbie exerts pastoral power: With love and affection always, she shepherds naïve subjects into nanny-state segmentations that arrogate to define the personalities of tomorrow.

Parents might use her to teach their children the specialized verbiage of care and control starting from the earliest moments of self-awareness. These are new heights of influence for Barbie, who once merely enforced the social norm for femininity. Now she is free to patrol the contours of neurotypicality.

In her world, the touchscreen replaces the human voice, and the fidget spinner simulates a meaningful occupation. She carries with her the gift of the medical establishment, and reminds the rest of us to demand our rightful alienation, too. She is the harbinger of a new Western psyche—an Autistic Civilization that, as the DSM-5 instructs, cannot recognize human emotion.