Mary Hunt Asks, Should Barbie Get Her Feet Washed at Church?

Should Barbie get her feet washed at church? theologian Mary Hunt asks in a sharp new essay at Religion Dispatches noting the interesting coincidence of the Vatican's announcement that women can have their feet washed on Holy Thursday coming down the same week that Mattel announced three new sizes for Barbie and a number of other variations in its old model. And then Mary Hunt says:

If Barbie can change, there is hope that Catholics can deal with female feet in the public arena without a complete loss of faith, or so we pray.

I hope that pithy snippet from this spry essay will lure you to click and read. For those outside the suffocating, tiny and parochial world of American Catholic conversations, this Vatican announcement is being treated as a big deal, as Mary notes. 

Yes, Virginia, Catholics still make a big deal out of the issue of whether women's feet should be washed on Holy Thursday.

As Mary also notes, isn't it interesting how much people are making out of what is essentially a baby step on the part of Pope Francis, which allows him to look very good without changing much in any substantive way — like, say, perhaps allowing women to do the foot-washing, for Christ's sake. To which I myself say, Amen.

Barbie feet are apparently a thing, and I find this image of Barbie feet at a number of sites online, with no clear indicator of where it originates.