(Strip Number 6017, Original Publication Date, 26 April 1983)
Panel 1: As Elly tries to force a crying Lizzie to wear a shirt that she clearly hates, the baffled idiot insists that she actually likes it.
Panel 2: She then grudgingly asks her which one she actually wants to wear.
Panel 3: John asks if exposure to teen-aged babysitters has made Lizzie clothes-crazy. This is, of course, owing to his unswerving belief that all teenaged girls everywhere spend all their time obsessing about clothing and boys at the expense of all other priorities.
Panel 4: As she holds up the offending doll, Elly responds by attributing Lizzie's need to make up her own mind to the evil influence of Mattel's Barbie, thereby remindng us of her paranoia and stupidity.
Summary: John's blaming the babysitter is sort of why I think of him as being a sexist clod. This is because he seems to need to view the world through the distorted prism of stereotypes. That being said, Elly and Lynn are partially right to blame Mattel and MGA; where she and I part company is when she leaves herself out of the mix. That's because Lynn uses today's Lynnsight to sigh about Katie's need to be comfortable instead of pretty and how it made Mommy sad that her defiant little runt didn't want to be cute like girls are supposed to be.
ETA: Check out the latest banner! We got Elly nailing herself to her damned cross by working too damned hard! We got her feeling oppressed because her children are playing! We got a passive-aggressive caption that whines about how awful it is that the little strangers who do things because they're EVIL!!! and love CHAOS!!! and hate the idea of happy mothers aren't content to sit like little dummies in a glass box! We got a man in Saint John, New Brunswick asking "Why the Hell did this whining idiot bother having children if she can't stand to be around them?"
