Meet The Mom Who’s Trying To Turn Her Human Kids Into Plastic Barbies

The Daily Mail has done it again. Meet Sophie-May Dixon, the Barbie obsessed mom from the U.K.’s new television show “Blinging Up Baby,” and her two children, Precious Bell (age one) and Princess Bliss (age four). Yes, those are their real names. And when I say Barbie obsessed, I mean it. Sophie is bound and determined to turn her girls into her own warped version of what Barbie’s children would look like, if Barbie were real. This is how they look. Every. Single. Day.

According to The Mail, Sophie not only has the girls dress in pink, jewel-encrusted gowns and shoes every day (like her idol Barbie), but they also receive regular spray tans, wear fake nails and own adult-sized hair pieces. Sophie also has some questionable ideas about gender. When asked about the girls’ earrings, she says she believes little girls should have them, lest they be confused for boys. Because we all know that the worst thing a girl can be called is a boy, amirite?

I have too say, I love how deliciously judgey The Mail is in their Barbie Babies feature, though considering it’s The Daily Fail they probably shouldn’t be judging anyone. Here’s what the author, Shona Sibary, had to say about meeting the trio:

“As I take a seat, the girls charge around the downstairs of the three-bedroom house in Canvey Island, Essex, in the way all youngsters do.
Both have heavy gold loops in their ears and, if you didn’t know better, you’d assume they’d raided a dressing up box.

At some point these outlandish outfits will be changed for the summer T-shirts and shorts little girls feel most comfortable in, surely?
It seems not. For Princess and Precious, this very adult, Vegas showgirl look is part of everyday life.
From their over-the-top names right down to the blonde cascading hairpiece Princess wears daily, Sophie-May has orchestrated every aspect of her little girls’ lives to ensure they stand out from the crowd.”

This is bitchy as hell, but I’m sympathetic after seeing the hell this mom puts her kids through in the name of Barbie-tastic beauty. Sophie and her girls will be appearing on Channel 5’s new show “Blinging Up Baby,” which is based on an E! channel special by the same name, so you know it’s going to be CRAY CRAY. I watched a few other clips on YouTube, and these kids put Honey Boo Boo to shame. To shame I tell you!

According to The Mail, each dress that the Barbie girls wear costs upwards of £50 and was created especially for them by a dress designer. Sophie says they cost her about £4,000 in total. In addition to these custom gowns, there are also designer brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, where a children’s dress costs somewhere in the ballpark of £400. So of course, seeing as Sophie is a single mom and therefore inferior to other women (/sarcasm), they throw in a little welfare fraud shade:

“I want them to look traditional,’ she says somewhat bafflingly. ”˜I don’t like modern stuff. They never wear jeans and I would never buy something from an ordinary High Street store.’
She is reluctant to shed light on how she pays for all this. Sophie-May is, after all, a single mother and student with no job. So, is she receiving benefits?”

To which Sophie has an equally condescending answer:

“But I’m not like other single mums who just don’t care. I don’t drink, smoke or take drugs.
”˜I’m going to college to make a better life for my kids, who are my priority. Prin and Presh can be a strain on my purse, but treating them is my business.”

The entire article is just a perfect storm of awful. We have spray tanning babies, welfare fraud accusations, mommy shame. Everything. But the coup de grace is her obvious obsession with Barbie. I just can’t with this:

“They have Converse, Uggs and Hunter Wellies,’ she counts on her perfectly manicured fingers. ”˜I pay extra to have them personalised with Swarovski crystals. They are like Barbie babies. If Barbie was real, they would be her children.”

The Mail goes as far as to snark on her single status with a totally lame Ken analogy:

“You might be wondering where Ken is in all of this. Sophie-May is reluctant to go into details, apart from divulging that she was due to marry the girls’ father in 2013, but he upped and left when Precious was just 13 days old.”

Way to minimize this woman’s obvious personal tragedy!

Seriously though, putting aside my unrelenting urge to go full sanctimommy here, I think this mom has as much of a right to care for her kids as the next mom. She seems to understand that there will be a ton of (warranted and unwarranted) criticism thrown at her, and her response to the haters is actually pretty spot on:

“I’m like Superwoman getting them ready in the morning,’ she says.

”˜I want them to look their best, to turn heads on the street. What’s wrong with that? People can judge me if they want but there’s nothing wrong with wanting your children to look good.
”˜You can’t win. If you don’t care for them, you’re a bad mother. If you do, you’re a bad mother. At least I’m teaching them to take pride in their appearance.”

I might argue that she’s teaching them to care a bit too much for their appearance, but whose to say what’s too much, or what else she has going on. And we all know how these reality shows skew their editing to create “television moments.” Still, I can’t possibly see how spray tans and acrylic nails can be a good thing for little girls, but either way. I will be watching the hell out of this show as soon as I can figure out how to get it in the U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmJz_vSWHbE

(Photos: YouTube)