I heard some news last week that nearly made me spit out my Hershey bar, so y’all know it must have been truly disturbing.

Even now, I can hardly write the words but I feel it is my responsibility as a not-so-highly paid journalist to bring you the world’s news, no matter how personally upsetting.

So here goes:

It’s about Barbie — hold your breath — she’s got cankles.

No, it’s not an itchy disease.

Cankles, where calf meets ankle with no curve in between. Cankles are the new fat, so why they don’t just call them “fankles,” I couldn’t tell you.

The point is, Barbie, the iconic doll who for so long has been the brunt of criticism for having a too-perfect figure, one unattainable by real women, is being called out because her .2-inch ankles are too big.

What does this mean for the rest of us, whose feet don’t perpetually stand on tiptoe and whose hind ends aren’t stamped “Mattel?”

The standards are getting out of control, y’all.

It all started when Mattel asked designer Christian Louboutin to create three new Barbie dolls dressed in his fashions and he decided her ankles were too fat to properly showcase his shoe line.

Compared to his models, who I am guessing all look like they just spent four months in a refugee camp, Barbie must look plain overfed.

I happen to know she and Ken eat out a lot — at least they did when I was 8 and in charge of the Dream House.

And we all know those upscale designers don’t make clothes that won’t hang well on anyone above a size 0.

Just the other day, Karl Lagerfeld announced to the world that no one likes to see curves on a woman.

Do what? Say who?