The Barbie Bandits are headed to a new Dream Home.

A couple of attractive blondes robbed a bank the other day, which naturally led to the media dubbing them the Barbie Bandits. Immediately one of their mothers came out swinging. "That certainly wasn't the way I raised her!" she claimed.

Now, I love the picture this invokes. You imagine this woman and her daughter sitting in the kitchen of their Arkansas home, with its cow-patterned wallpaper and knotty-pine breakfast nook, sipping General Foods Hazelnut coffee. Mom is stirring hers with a giant spoon that's got an enameled portrait of Kenny Chesney on the end. "Now Debbie," she says over a slurp the neighbors can hear, "remember: if you ever need for anything and I'm not around, just take a gun into a bank."

What she means to tell the world, I guess, is slightly different: "DON'T BLAME ME! I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" It may seem a little, er, selfish to scream this after your flesh and blood has been tossed in the slammer for life, but she didn't exactly have a choice of what to say. Her daughter's face has been caught on eighty different security cameras, so it's not like "She's not guilty!" will work.

And so, despite the fact crooks are in jail, this story leaves me feeling sad. Why would a pretty blonde think she has to steal, when the usual wearing-slutty-clothes-and-trapping-a-rich-husband will work? Why would her mom's first reaction be self-defense? And last, why don't the ToyLand second bananas ever get any recognition? I long for the day a plain-looking, dark-haired woman robs a bank and the New York Times calls her the Midge bandit, or a white-bread guy with a bump where his genitalia should be holds up an armored car and Katie Courie calls him the Ken bandit. But I'm not a pretty blonde, so I never get what I want.