Never a Barbie

Happy Barbie Day

2011-03-09T21:07:00.000-05:00

My friend Beth reminded me that today is Barbie's birthday. She told me that she hadn't known that Barbie owed her existence to Bild Lilli, a voluptuous German doll sold mostly in smoke shops and toy stores, a gag gift for adult males, whose inspiration, a comic-strip character named Lilli was, as your grandmother might have said, no better than she should have been.

Beth went on to say, "Barbie has done all right for herself though, evolved into such different expressions: mother, working woman, president even. Although I think she still retains that part of her. I see it in my granddaughter's Barbies, who are forever naked, hair a frizzy, frazzled mess, covered with ink pen tattoos. There are three of them (one is a knockoff and not a real Barbie) but they get together most every night in the bath tub and they swim and they hug and seem to have a good time and not judge themselves too harshly."

Ken doesn't seem to have judged Barbie harshly, either: he recently launched a social media campaign to win her back. (They broke up on Valentine's Day 2004.) Apparently all his Facebooking, Twittering, Foursquaring and YouTubing paid off, and now it's official: Barbie and Ken are back together again. Take that, Bild Lilli!

I wonder what Ken gave her for her birthday.

And Then I Didn't

2010-11-24T15:39:00.000-05:00

I think I mentioned that I bought a Barbie Dream House on eBay. The original 1962 model, just like the one I had as a kid. Not to play with. To write about. Really. Perhaps the italics have given you the wrong idea, but here's the truth: I had a Barbie Dream House, and then I didn't. I used to write, and then I didn't. Ah, but as a kid I wrote all the time. Wrote wrote wrote wrote wrote. Stories, plays, poems. Teachers awarded As. Classmates read avidly. My father corrected my spelling.

Was I good? Hard to say, though I've kept every scrap. The more important question is: Did I love it? Yes. I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. But I didn't. Not good enough, talented enough, dedicated brave strong confident stubborn defiant crazy driven enough. When I came back to writing nine years ago, it was no longer fun or easy. My fingers no longer itched when they'd been too long away from a pen and a few sheets of notebook paper. I had no idea what kind of writer I wanted to be. I had no ideas, period, and relied on exercises and prompts to get me started.

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg preaches the power and efficacy of what she calls writing practice--writing in response to a prompt for five or ten or fifteen minutes during which you don't stop to think or correct, you don't pass go, and you don't collect $200. You don’t even lift the pen from the page.

For example: write about a favorite toy. Ten minutes. Okay, go.

No, stop. What was my favorite toy? No idea. Well, let's see: my bike, roller skates, a baby doll named Jeanie, a teddy bear whose name changed depending on which one of my siblings claimed ownership, Barbie, the Barbie Dream House, COLORFORMS--whoa, wait. What was that about the Barbie Dream House? Ah, yes. The Barbie Dream House. I loved the Barbie Dream House. Whatever happened to that? No, seriously, what did happen to it?

It took me several writing sessions to remember the last day I played with it, and—I’ll let Barbie tell you her version of events:

"I was in the midst of a hot date with Ken when the Mom-person came to tell my person that it was time for dinner and that she had to go home. The Friend-person asked the Mom-person if my person could stay for dinner, but the Mom-person said no. (The Mom- and Dad-persons seem to have a lot of power. Especially the Mom-people. What they say goes.) And so my person and I went. She gathered up all of my furniture and stacked it against the back wall of my house. The bed on its side, balanced on the couch, along with the coffee table, the easy chair upturned over the ottoman....well, I don't know how she does it, but she gets it all in there. She takes good care of my stuff and for that I'm grateful.

"She doesn't pull my arms off or cut my hair. Doesn't let her little brother shoot me with his BB gun or blow me up with GI Joe’s bazooka. My friend Skipper’s cousin’s neighbor said she knew some Barbies whose Brother-person stood up in a field with some other dolls so he could pretend he was shooting Germans in WWII, but that might just be an urban legend.) But she does stuff me in my dream house on top of all that furniture, and then SHE LEAVES ME THERE. My back just kills me. One of these days, I'm going to become a chiropractor--or maybe an astronaut. I haven't decided yet. Whatever has the cutest clothes.

"Anyway, on THAT day, which would be--little did I know it--the last good day of my life, my person stuffed me into the house, folded up its walls, and off we went. It was a bumpy ride from the Friend-person's house to my person's house. She acted like I'm HEAVY or something because she kept setting my house down and letting out these big sighs. (I'd have been insulted if it weren't for my svelte, buxom figure, which I just know will still be sexy even when I'm 50.)

"Once, she set me down for a really long time, and I heard voices. Girl voices, and boys laughing. My person didn’t say much. And then, really clear, a girl voice said, 'Barbara, do you still play with DOLLS?' Like playing with dolls was a bad thing! Like it was a dirty thing. After that my person picked me up, real rough, like she didn’t care about my safety and comfort, and the ride was worse than it had ever been. She left me for a long time in the dirty, car-smelling garage. A long, long, LONG time. Like, forever."

Barbie exaggerates. It was two years, three tops, before the Barbie Dream House was disposed of in some manner I no longer recall but which most likely involved Goodwill, and Barbie, freed from house arrest, was relocated to the cardboard box that would become her tomb. (It was an accident, I swear.) Writing, shoved into a grimy and unvisited corner of my psyche, languished longer.

Why does this matter? Because I used to write, and then I didn’t. I had a Barbie Dream House, and then I didn’t. I didn’t write, and then I did—and when I did, the Barbie Dream House was one of the first things I wrote about.

Coincidence?

Mirror/Mirror

2010-10-29T13:28:00.000-04:00

A friend gave me a magnet that reads: Barbie wants to be ME. It's pink, of course, and yes, there's a heart on it. I thought it hysterically funny. Still do. But I don't believe it. Friends have said (some even publicly, in comments made on blog posts) that Barbie has nothin' on me (aside perhaps from the nifty convertible, the padded resume, and the height), but I don't see it.

What I see: a short, overweight, glasses-wearing middle-aged woman who is also--when she's not spending insane amounts of money to keep from looking 50--going gray.

I read a story the other day (by the fabulous Jo Pilecki, one of my workshop writers and a newly-minted Amherst Writers & Artists workshop leader) about a woman who bought a special mirror that made her look thin. Of course it would be wonderful to own such a thing, but what if the mirror on the wall reflected who we really are? If we could see ourselves as others see us?

Probably I would avert my eyes--just as I do whenever I stand before the bathroom mirror in the dark, for fear that what I will see there will be as hideous as the vengeful Bloody Mary, whose spirit can be summoned by the triple invocation of her name. For fear that I could never un-see how others see me. (Short, overweight, glasses-wearing, middle-aged, going gray, bossy, self-righteous, judgmental...)

But what if the magic mirror showed me the good things I don't see: wit, humor, kindness, generosity, intelligence, tolerance, talent. Would I then believe that Barbie wants to be me?

Actually, you know what? Who cares who Barbie wants to be. Who does Barbara want to be?

On the morning of my 50th birthday, I took a sunrise walk along the ocean. It was the last full day of our annual trip to Garden City Beach, South Carolina. We had had two full days of rain and several completely-overcast/partly-rainy days. Winds from Hurricane Nicole had blown through the night before, but Friday morning the sun rose unobscured by clouds. Due to the rain, or the winds, or maybe the hour, the sand was sprinkled with the kinds of shells that, in ten years of visits and ten years of sunrise walks, I had not seen before.

I am not a shell-seeker. (Good thing: Garden City Beach does not offer much variety, and the usual shells are often broken.) When I wander along the sand, head down, I am most often in search of tiny oval stones that, when I fold my hand, fit perfectly in my heart line, and which I take home in plastic baggies each year. But that morning of my birthday, charmed by the novelty of so many unbroken shells, I gathered several, thinking to show them to my husband.

In the weeks leading up to my birthday, I had thought of the significance we place on birthdays, particularly those we consider milestones, and of the likelihood that my life was more than half over. What, I asked myself, do you want the rest of your life to look like? I had not come up with an answer, had not expected an answer. It was enough just to ask, to realize I had a choice.

And then I knew I needed to leave the shells behind. I laid them at the water line, one for each of the selves I wanted to leave behind: a whelk for the depressed one; a starfish for the one that must always be right, because being wrong means being bad; a spiny sea urchin for the one who assumes that everyone won't like her; and two intact oyster shells for the overweight, unhealthy one and the fearful one who must always be on guard. I told them goodbye, and that they no longer served me. Then I turned and walked away from my repudiated, outgrown selves. I didn't look back.

To Whom It May Concern

2010-10-12T08:00:00.008-04:00

October 12, 2010

Fear of Being Laughed At
Department of Looking Stupid
Worrying Too Much What Other People Think, Inc.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to you today regarding a lifetime's subjugation to the fear of looking stupid, sub-catagory: fear of being laughed at. After fifty years, this fear continues to operate as efficiently as if its constituent parts and features--embarrassment, humiliation, exposure, blushes, and, yes, tears--were brand-new. In fact, it sometimes seems that this fear of being laughed at/looking stupid works better now than when first installed.

This is unacceptable.

It is this very reliability that makes the fear of being laughed at/looking stupid a health hazard. Frankly, I'm surprised that you have not already been sued for damages inflicted to self-esteem, ego, and potential. Do you have any idea of the things I have avoided doing because of you? Singing where anyone could hear me. Dancing. Writing. Saying "I love you" when it might have made a difference. Saying "I love you" when it wouldn't have changed a thing.

While we're at it, let's talk about my fear of losing control--kissing cousin to the fear of being laughed at/looking stupid--which requires--requires!--me to be in control at all times. I must avoid any and all situations in which the unexpected might occur. Surprise is anathema.

Thanks to you, someone is always watching. I am always watching, always vigilant, always less than I could be, my light perpetually basketed, lest someone find it/me laughable/stupid.

I really must insist that you accept the return of this paralyzing gelotophobia--which, by the way, I never wanted in the first place. As it was a gift, handed down through countless generations of my family--along both matrilineal and patrilineal lines--I do not have the receipt. Regardless, I feel certain that you will find a way to make restitution.

I look forward to your prompt attention to this matter.

Barbara

Cross-posted in the Sunset Coast Writers blog.

Never a Grandma

2010-09-26T10:36:00.000-04:00

My oldest (in terms of how long we've know each other) friend recently announced that she'll be a grandmother early next year, and all I could think was, how could she (and by extension, me) possibly be old enough to have grandchildren? I still remember the day we met, a sweat-sticky afternoon in early August. She was nine. I was almost-nine.

My family had just moved to Georgia. I had met all the other kids on our street, but for some reason I had not yet met Cherie. (She was out of town, or sick, or maybe grounded. I don't remember.) But I had heard about her. Everywhere I went, it seemed, someone would ask her little sister, "Where's Cherie?" And every time, I would think, "Oh, yeah, THAT'S how you say her name--Sure-REE." And then I'd forget again, what, exactly, her name was, only that it was exotic--and that everyone seemed anxious for us to meet, asking, "Have you met Cherie yet?"

In her absence, she assumed mythic proportions, so that, the day I finally saw her, holding a popsicle with one hand and steering her bicycle in slow circles in front of her house with the other, I was too shy to approach her. She was just that cool. I told myself that I would, you know, just ride BY her on my way to the other end of the street. As I steeled my nerve and pressed my feet harder against the pedals, she braked hard, jerked her handlebars to the right, and leaned over, orange syrup dripping from her chin and running down her arm. And there we were, face to face. We had no choice but to say hello, to become best friends.

Forty-one years later, I still love that little girl, and the woman she grew into. Her news brought both joy and the sudden realization that when my husband and I opted out of PTA and car pools, doctor visits and tantrums, all the challenges and, yes, the sweetness of parenthood, we were also opting out of grandparenthood. I don't know why that came as such a suprise. Not having children was a conscious decision, and it's a decision neither of us regrets. But sometimes I wonder about that particular not-taken road: what kind of parents would we have been? What would our children have been like? Who would WE be, if we had had children? There are no wistful if-onlys in my wonderings, merely speculation.

All of my life I have I lagged behind my friends when it came to rites of passage: drinking, driving, riding a bike, leaving home. I have felt that I didn't know the things that everyone else seemed to know: what to take to the family after a death, how to parallel park, how to throw a party. Eventually, the training wheels came off, I passed my driver's test, I found my first apartment. It's not too late to learn how to entertain, and I can get by without parallel parking. As I approach fifty, I know that I will--like everyone else my age--turn gray, need bifocals, gain weight. I may lose my hearing, my balance, my memory. But I will never wear a puff-paint sweatshirt that says, "Ask me about my grandchildren," or pose in place of honor at my 80th birthday party, and know that many of the people present exist because of me. Sometimes, there's just no way to catch up.

Take the road less traveled by, or take the first. Either way, the choice will make all the difference.

But you know what? Barbie will never be a grandmother, either.

What I Meant to Do on My Summer Vacation

2010-09-06T18:29:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on all that I accomplished on my summer vacation:

...

Perhaps I should reflect, instead, on what I didn't do. I did not:

ride my bike down to the lake every (any) day
go for long walks before daylight (that's really the only time I like walking, and then it's only because it makes me feel smug and superior)
attend the weekly brown bag concerts, the farmer's market, the Friday night concerts, or the Venetian Festival
finish all those literary journals that seemed to arrive on the same day in May
read all (any) of the craft books (The Nonfictionist's Guide, Fourth Genre, Keep it Real, The Art of Writing Creative Nonfiction, among others) that have been languishing on my shelves for lo, these many years like pressed, primped, and aging wallflowers
write

That's not completely true. I did do some writing, but not what I had hoped.

As the spring workshops wound down in May, I declared that this summer would be all about the writing. My own writing, not that of others. Encouraging others to write, that's a good thing. Probably the thing I do best. But, you know, "Do as I do" is really more effective than "Do as I say." And so, as I bade the writers in my workshops "Go forth and write," I might have promised to do the same. I figured that posting to this blog once a month would not be too great a drain on all that writing I was going to do.

Turns out this blog was no drain at all; you can add blogging to the list of things I didn't do.

Frankly, I just don't do summer well. I don't like the heat, and no matter how I spend my time, I always feel as if I'm not having the right amount of fun. Ah, but fall...now, that's another season entirely. I have always loved fall: the cooler temperatures, the almost unbearable blue of the October skies, my birthday, college football. School supplies.

By the time that my childhood summers wound down, time seemed to slow, almost to stop, as if the heat and humidity sapped its will to pass. I could hardly bear the anticipation of school and the excitement of buying school supplies--at no other time did we get so many new things at once: a new three-ring binder, pristine, unmarked; an unopened pack of loose leaf paper, unopened, the edges aligned perfectly; crayons; scissors; glue, a ruler; pencil case; and, when was old enough to need them, dividers. The new, unchewed-upon Ticonderoga #2 pencils, with their flat ends, did not seem sufficiently prepared for the work they would be asked to perform, and so I did the only thing I could to hasten the arrival of the First Day; I trooped to our basement, to the yellow and blue hand-cranked pencil sharpener mounted beneath the stairs, and hoped that one would emerge perfect, smelling of wood and school and possibility.

So have a good year, everyone. I'm off to sharpen some pencils.

Summer Hours

2010-05-25T08:16:00.000-04:00

Never a Barbie will return to once-a-month posting for the summer. Look for a new entry at the beginning of each month.

Have a groovy summer, dudes and dudettes!

The Curler Wars

2010-05-18T09:15:00.017-04:00

The Curler Wars

by Maizie Lee Linkous

Me, I'm a bona fide veteran of the curler wars. I know it doesn't sound very serious, but when you come from a long line of beauty queens--my grandmama was Miss Cobb County 1930 and 1933, and my mama was runner-up for Miss Georgia in--well, she wouldn't want me to tell you what year it was, but believe me, beauty is Big Business where I come from. And there I was, Miss Maizie Lee Linkous, with stick-straight hair. My sister Daisy had ringlets down to her butt, but me and the curlers, we got to know each other right early.

First it was scratchy metal ones, black and gray, like Brillo in a cage. Mama'd roll my hair up in a whole mess of those of a Saturday night and then jab one of them pointy pick-like things through each one. They were only plastic, but Lord God it felt as if it was like to go right through my scalp. Whenever I'd holler, "Ow!"--and you'd better believe I was never one to hold my tongue if I thought it could get me out of something--Mama'd say, "I'm not hurting you, Maizie Lee. Be still." And then she'd say, "You got your daddy's hard head, girl. Nothing's going to make a dent in that skull."

Then she'd send me off to watch NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, and I'd sit there in my pajamas eating a bowl of ice cream or some popped corn, my head already aching from where Mama'd wound it up so tight. I couldn't hardly enjoy the TV, thinking about what was to come.

I'd kiss Mama good night, and she'd pat me on the bottom and say, "Now, don't let those curlers come out, Maizie Lee." And I'd say, "I won't. I'll sleep real careful," and I'd lay my head down so easy on my pillow, trying to hold perfectly still. But those little Brillo Pads would make my head itch, and then one of them pointy picks would jab me, and so I'd turn my head--just a tad, just trying to get comfortable, you know--but it wouldn't do no good.

Finally I'd fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion, and next morning all the curlers on one side of my head woulda worked themselves loose somehow and just be dangling. Lord, then Mama would fuss. She'd pull them curlers from my hair and they'd hold on like they didn't want to let go, and when she was done, one half of my head would have smooth, blond curls, and the other would be all droopy. Mama would wrap those droopy curls around her hand, trying to get them to curl tighter but no matter how much Aqua Net she sprayed they just wouldn't tighten up.

So then she'd go to work on the other side, trying to loosen those ones. She'd brush and brush and stretch 'em out, then spray hairspray every which way. When she'd let 'em go, boing!, they'd roll right back up.

And there'd be Daisy, smirking at me through a mouth full of Pop Tart, her with her perfect, shiny little curls, watching Davey and Goliath before service, while I had barely enough time to get dressed

Played with Condition

2010-05-10T09:30:00.002-04:00

I ran across this on eBay the other day: "Vintage 1962 Barbie Dream House: Played with Condition."

Played with condition? What does that even mean, and why does it warrant mention? It's not like, in 1962, someone would have said: "Hey you know what? I bet this fold-up, carry-along dollhouse made of die-cut fiberboard will one day be worth millions. Let's put it aside, count our chickens, and plan the retirement vacations we'll be able to take on the proceeds of its sale in oh, let's say 2000. Never mind that the year 2000 seems as far away as the as-yet-unwalked-upon moon and that Barbie herself is only three years old, I just have a feeling."

No, in 1962, every Barbie Dream House would have been played with. There's no way, I promise you, that there is a single Vintage 1962 Original Barbie Dream House Model No. 816 that is not in played-with condition. Doubly unlikely, were that possible, is the existence of one that is MIB (mint in box), which would have required the foresight of Carnack the Magnificent to divine "collectors' item" in the Barbie Dream House's unassembled state. Not to mention that there was no box, just flat sheets of cardboard held together by plastic bands, cardboard from which the furniture had to be punched out, like paper dolls.

So you can see how flimsy the whole thing must have appeared to the parents charged with assembly, particularly those whose own experiences with dollhouses involved wood or metal--much stronger materials, as any little pig would tell you. Can you imagine the havoc a Big Bad Wolf could wreak on a house made of cardboard? Think trailer park in a tornado. One huff and a couple of puffs could have blown the whole thing completely away and Barbie with it, until she woke up somewhere that wasn't Kansas.

I will say this: putting a vintage 1962 Barbie Dream House on a shelf or in an airtight closet would have preserved the handle of my own 1962 Barbie Dream House, and my whole life might have turned out differently. But that's another story.

Have I mention that I bought a Barbie Dream House on eBay? Not the one referenced above. That one, it turns out, was merely part of a dream house, the back wall and a bit of one side wall. I'm not sure that can legitimately be called played-with condition. Decimated by a hurricane condition, maybe, or shouldn't-be-trying-to-sell-it-to-someone-else condition, but played with?

To be fair, the seller was very clear, in the description section, about just what was on offer: "Vanity table with mirror still attached! 'Wood' cabinet! You have the closet with the clothes hanging rod still there! Includes the back portion of the house only... #816 from Mattel! circa 1962! Fairly big & bulky item! Shipped assembled! Insurance required! 13.5" tall x 26" long and 8" wide all chipboard (hard cardboard) structure!"

Still, it took me two reads and more minutes than I care to reveal puzzling over the mathematics of the dimensions to accept that, yes, someone was trying to sell a partial Barbie Dream House. Which begs the question: Who would buy something like that?

Not me. The Barbie Dream House I bought (at the age of 40, was gently used) and I bought it neither to play with nor collect; I wanted to write about it. Except...I couldn't quite remember what it looked like. Lucky for me, pictures abound on eBay, and I found several that confirmed that the outer walls (the carrying case) were indeed a shade of blue-green, and cleared up my confusion over whether the floor was orange or yellow. (White, actually, with a yellow throw rug on the right side of the room and an orange area rug on the left.)

Know what else abounds on eBay? People who want to sell you stuff like gently-used 1962 Vintage Barbie Dream Houses with all the furniture intact except for one set of books for $7.95.

$7.95? Well, I couldn't pass that up, could I?

I could not, and entered into my first online auction. Told myself I'd go no higher than, say, $15. Because, really, what would I ever do with a Barbie Dream House?

Well...maybe I could go to $20. I mean, with S/H, it's still less than $30, right?

Okay, $40. But that's it.

I ended up paying $85 for a toy--used--that I had once spurned. At least the handle was still intact.

Dumping Barbie

2010-05-04T09:30:00.002-04:00

I threw away my Barbie Dream House, in anger and with great deliberation – or so I have imagined – after the neighbor boy on whom I had a tremendous crush saw me carrying it home from my best friend’s house. A not unusual occurrence, but on that day in the summer before sixth grade, he was in the presence of Mableton Elementary School’s “It” girls, twins who, although my chronological age, were so far past me in maturity that we might have been different species. That day I saw that I would always be on the wrong side of the maturity gap. So I did away with the formerly beloved Barbie Dream House, and as soon as possible, forgot about it.

That’s not true; I have no actual memory of disposing of the Barbie Dream House, but do know that Barbie did not go the way of her house. She perished on a Saturday in the summer of my sixteenth year.

At dinner that particular Saturday, my mother thanked my father and little brother for cleaning the basement. “It looks so much better,” she said, “with all those boxes gone.”

“What boxes?” I said, not much caring that my father and brother had spent the afternoon cleaning the basement, a despised chore I had escaped solely through the coincidence of an all-day babysitting job, during which I ate the kind of junk food we never had at home, made ten bucks, and talked on the phone to BJ, my first real boyfriend, who called to sing me a song he had written during our recent break-up.

“The boxes that were under the Ping-Pong table,” my mother said.

Or maybe she said “all” – “All the boxes that were under the Ping-Pong table.”

A family of unrepentant and couldn’t-help-ourselves savers, the empty boxes, relics from our move three years earlier, had been stacked and nested and shoved under the Ping-Pong table against the someday when “we might need them.” (The Ping-Pong table itself was one of those things that had outlived its usefulness, evidence of a time when we had actually done things together, of when we had a finished basement rather than bare concrete floors and open wooden steps that shook when we used them.)

But not all of the boxes had been empty.

One, with the flaps carefully tucked each under the other, had been placed there for storage, the handwritten label clearly visible to anyone who cared to look: Barbara’s – Save.” Inside: a teddy bear named either Bobby Jo, Squeaky or Powder Puff, depending on which sibling you asked; a baby doll named Jeannie; a bride doll and her hand-sewn wardrobe that had belonged to my older sister; Tressy, whose black hair grew at the touch of a button; and Barbie.

***

When we had packed for the move from Georgia to Virginia, Mom had discovered the Barbie Dream House jammed behind some bags of old clothes in the garage. She said, “What do you want to do with this?”

I was thirteen, only two years past the day when the Spivey twins, smug after a day spent swimming with my neighbor, the boy I loved, the boy who belonged to me when we were at home if at no other time – asked if I played with dolls. The dream house’s dusty case brought back all the shame of that day, a shame that was never far away and that was, at that time, manifested in the braids my parents’ economy forced on me (I could only wash my long hair every other day) and the leather, hard-soled shoes necessitated by a skin allergy.

“I said, “Throw it away. Now. Right away. The sooner the better.”

“It’s in good shape. Some other little girl might want it.”

Some other little girl had been the beneficiary of every one of our previous moves, largesse being our parents’ excuse for shedding furniture, old clothes, my older siblings. I sometimes wondered whether Some Other Little Girl got to visit the third grade class my sister taught or spent the night on a cot in my older brother’s living room.

I thought, “Get it out of here, I can’t stand to look at it, can’t stand to realize that I’m still that same geeky girl, that not only is Jeff not my boyfriend but that no one is,” but just said, “Fine, give it to Goodwill,” resigning myself, ungraciously, to its continued presence in the garage.

“What about Barbie?” Mom said. “Don’t you want to save her for your little girl?”

No, I did not want to save Barbie. She had betrayed me by being the things I could never be.

“You might want her someday.”

We don’t know, at eleven or thirteen or sixteen, who we will turn out to be. The things we think we want to be seem inevitable and not merely one possibility out of several, not a path we’ll never take. And so I retrieved Barbie from the house that was almost her tomb, placing her ungently in the box that held my other dolls – all saved for that little girl that I would never have.

I had already wrapped my dolls in baby blankets, their clothes arranged for minimal wrinkling, leaving their faces uncovered. “Barbara’s – Save,” I wrote on the box, and “Do Not Throw Away,” peeled away the tape that held it closed, and stuffed Barbie inside. Maybe one day I’d be able to face her again – when I was older, prettier, no longer bound by my parents’ restrictions against clean hair, shaved legs, makeup.

***

And so now I said, “All what boxes? My dolls were down there.”

“We didn’t see any dolls,” Dad said.

My voice rose. “The box was under the Ping-Pong table. It was marked. It said, ‘Do Not Throw Away.’”

I threw down my napkin and shoved the wooden bench that had been my grandmother’s backwards, heedless of its age,

Hey, watch the chair

running down the steps with a haste my fear of heights usually constrained

followed by my mother, They're not there

unwilling to believe

I'm so sorry

but the floor beneath the Ping-Pong table was bare, clean, no sign of a big cardboard box marked “Barbara’s – Save,” and I collapsed on the bottom step, weeping, one hand still clutching the railing my legs incapable of holding me up unable to breathe stunned by the irrevocability of loss.

Mom, distraught, kneeling behind me, arms around me, weeping too.

Dad at the top of the steps, They were just dolls.

Mom turning on him in fierce defense of the heartbreak she had orchestrated, Call the dump. See if anyone's there.

Phone calls to the county: who was responsible for the landfill, who could we talk to? A real person on the other end, despite the weekend: The guy who works on Saturday, he really smashes things down. Any other day and you'd probably be okay. You can go look, but you probably won't find anything, Mom pushing us into the car, me with my unwashed face, Dad and Bryan protesting, Can't we wait until after dinner?

Couldn't you see that one of those boxes wasn't empty?

Dad, You told us to take everything.

Mom, guilty, quick to shift blame, Why didn't you look?

Me, sixteen, needing no provocation to blame parents for everything.

Mom, Maybe it's not too late

and hope, unfairly, revives only to die again when we saw the ground was indeed smashed, big tire tracks covering all. Still we searched, stumbling over hillocks and furrows, fearing and hoping for a sign of pale skin, a lock of bright hair.

“They aren’t here,” I said, but Dad said, “Let’s just keep looking. Maybe he missed it. Maybe there’s just dirt on top of the box.” My heart couldn’t stand the thought of their broken bodies and I wanted to go.

Then BJ appeared, loping up the road toward us – tight, curly hair, white T-shirt, jeans – his presence so unexpected I could not take it in. My parents did not like him – he smoked, he had a car – and thought he was a delinquent in the making. (Not true. He was, and remains, one of the most considerate, respectful, and honorable men I know.)

What was he doing there?

My mother’s voice across the phone lines, pushing him as she’d pushed us – Go, go, they're at the dump, she's crying – probably the only time she ever sent a boy to me, the only time she ever acknowledged my need for someone else. Family watching or no, I went to him, right to him, no questions about whether I felt the same way he did or what I wanted from the relationship or what other people thought. All I knew was that someone loved me, someone whose concern was uncomplicated by hunger or annoyance or guilt.

A Room of One's Own (Redux)

2010-04-27T13:15:00.003-04:00

Perhaps this bears repeating: the Barbie Dream House was not my dream present. But after forgiving Santa for not bringing Color Magic Barbie instead, and after all the Slot As had been inserted into their Slot Bs, I came around. Mostly because--although I couldn't have articulated this as a child--Barbie had independence and autonomy and a place of her own.

It would take me nearly twenty more years to achieve independence and autonomy and a place of my own. And even then my dad tried to tell me I couldn't afford to move out. Turns out he was right, but I was determined and/or stubborn and rented a small, cheap efficiency.

That little apartment held all the worldly goods I couldn't live without (or leave at mom and dad's)--bed, desk, dresser, TV, stereo, bookcase, couch--and not much else. A partition--fabricated from 2x4s and a single sheet of PVC by the previous tenant, and left intact at my request--bifurcated the apartment's one room and created a sleeping alcove just large enough for my childhood twin bed and a third-hand dresser. The kitchen, surprisingly roomy, sported full-size appliances and a fair amount of counter space, but no window over the sink. I promptly stuck up a poster my best friend had given me for my sixteenth birthday--a rainbow arching over Victoria Falls, as seen through a window. Curtains and a hanging pot of aloe vera (verra good for burns) completed the illusion that the apartment contained more than one window.

Barbie had fake windows, too. Come to think of it, the whole place was a lot like Barbie's Dream House.

Barbie had a painted-on accordion-doored closet. A separate closet rod, on which all her clothes had to be smushed, hung above a storage compartment for shoes and purses and other small items. The bottom of my own accordion-doored closet held everything from shoes and purses to dirty clothes and clean cat litter.

Barbie had an elegant (if dated) TV/Hi Fi combo, on which she could listen to Perry Como and The Lettermen. I had an old portable black-and-white which I mostly didn’t watch (it was too much trouble to pull it out from under the chair), and favored Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond.

Barbie had a maize toilet-paper-roll-shaped lamp (my least favorite of all her accoutrements), too short to be a floor lamp, too tall to sit attractively on the coffee table. I had a tarnished, faux-brass table lamp with a frayed cord and a cylindrical shade (which did not evoke a toilet paper roll, despite its shape), also left by the previous tenant--fortuitously, as I had somehow failed to notice that the main room had no ceiling lights. (What kind of place doesn’t have ceiling lights?) That cast-off provided my sole illumination for some time. (I still have it.)

Barbie had two sets of books (my favorite of all her accoutrements) that fit snugly on the shelves in her living room. I had an unpainted, soft pine bookcase, its top sheathed in clear contact paper, wishful-thinking protection from the claws of the three cats (two still kittens) who landed on and launched themselves from it on their way to and from the top of the partition. Sometimes, at night, they launched themselves onto the bed rather than the bookcase. Normally a deep sleeper, I learned to recognize the ripply rumble of the PVC that meant one or more of them was working up the nerve to jump down onto the bed and, by default, onto me. Sometimes I did not wake until they landed, and then the results startled all of us.

Barbie had a portrait of Ken (looking even more goofy in black-and-white than he did in color) on her coffee table. I covered the front of my refrigerator with comic-strip clues to my psyche--Bloom County, The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury--hoping that male friends would suddenly recognize my beauty and wit and want to be more than friends. It didn't work, but one did give me a ceiling-high cat tree, which we somehow found room for.

Barbie's couch more closely resembled the one I would buy two apartments later than the metal-and-black-leather-ish behemoth one of my father's chimney sweep customers had sold him for $25. Old-fashioned, allegedly a sleeper, the seat slid grudgingly forward and the back folded down to create an uneven and uncomfortable bed. Not good for all-night sleeping, but in its upright and locked position, surprisingly good for naps.

Moving me in, my father kept saying, This is not all going to fit in here, Barbara, and I kept saying, Yes, it will. I have a plan.

The Assembly Instructions for the Barbie Dream House claim that “The BARBIE DREAM HOUSE can teach your daughter to be neat and orderly. In addition to storing the garments and accessories on the rack and in the drawer, the furniture can be stored in the space between the front of the wardrobe and the folded sides as shown.” I don't know about neat and orderly, but years of playing with the Barbie Dream House had certainly taught me to cram a lot into a little. For the first week or so, the place looked just like the dream house at the end of playtime, the furniture and boxes stacked together like a wooden cube puzzle. The cats could travel the whole living area without once touching the (not shag) orange carpet that was, if not the exact shade of one of Barbie’s throw rugs, a darn close match.

I had little space and no money, but no matter: this "one" finally had a room of her own.

Unfortunately, despite Virginia Woolf's eloquent treatise, there would be no writing of fiction in that room, no writing of any kind; that dream had been cast aside long before. It would be another fifteen years before I went looking for it.

A Room of One's Own

2010-04-20T11:29:00.009-04:00

Virginia Woolf famously (and long-windedly) said, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

All I ever wanted, even before I started writing, was a space of my own, something inviolable that belonged to only me. I shared a bedroom with my little brother for six-almost-seven years, and when my older brother married, went from the twin beds of babyhood to the big girl world of a double bed and a huge dresser that held only my clothes. Santa brought a bookcase that year. Books and a door behind which to store them: What riches.

Still, the space was not all mine: Mom dictated when the sheets were changed, when I cleaned and what constituted "done," and even when I could read. (Not at all after bedtime, whether by flashlight, the glow of the streetlight in the alley between Warrington and Livernois, or the fading twilight of an early bedtime on a long summer night.) There was no place where my wishes and desires, however small, were not summarily overruled.

Barbie, on the other hand, had a whole house to herself. There, within its cardboard walls, Barbie had everything she wanted. (As long as she didn't need to eat or pee.) No one but me could tell her what to do or when she couldn't read.

A couple of years later, when we lived in a different house, and the living room was on the same floor as my bedroom, and family was always just a hallway away, I took to playing in my closet. Like a teenager leaving home for the first time, I furnished my nest-within-a-nest with cast-off and purloined items. First, a scratched and dented TV tray, sneaked up the basement stairs and behind my mother's back as she watched Love of Life and General Hospital, the pop! of its metal legs snapping into the plastic brackets making me hold my breath. A second stealth mission netted a folding chair from our card table set, which I unfolded slowly, hoping to minimize but really just prolonging its screaky complaints. Neither item was regularly used and so, unlikely to be missed. Their misappropriation, however, would not have been tolerated: Those are not toys, young lady, and You don't need to be playing in your closet where I can't see you, and Go outside and get some fresh air!

Shoving my clothes to one end of the closet (and repeating as necessary) left just enough room for my table and chair. A pink crib for Jeannie, a baby-sized doll, fit neatly beneath the smushed-up clothes. A red plastic desk lamp from my nightstand provided just enough light for reading and writing. Mostly I wrote at our dining room table, one foot tucked beneath me, but there was something particularly thrilling about the stories set down in that little space. Behind that closed door, I was a grown-up writer, with a baby and a place of my own.

It's Complicated

2010-04-13T08:30:00.001-04:00

I am not a Barbie collector, a Barbie fanatic, or a Barbie abuser. But I read. I hear things. Tales of dolls kidnapped, barbecued, and blown up by brothers little and big. Dolls buried in the sands of backyard Iwo Jimas, dolls as target-practice stand-ins for the Germans of WWII. The most common mistreatment occurs at the hands of the seemingly-fond owners: the shearing of the locks. Almost every woman I know speaks, with a mixture of shame and pride, of cutting her dolls' hair. I never did that.

I never overtly mistreated my dolls; I do have a story, however, in which the child narrator kicks and punches her Barbie Dream House in an attempt to alleviate my -- I mean her -- mortification at having been caught playing with it by the Popular Girls who, although chronologically my age (alright, yes, it was me), were years ahead by maturity's reckoning. I suspect I still haven't caught up.

That event became, through the alchemy of time and perspective, the inspiration for my first adult-written short story, an essay, the title piece of my graduate school thesis, and the name of this blog. Clearly, Barbie holds significance for me, certainly she shows up in my writing. Perhaps it is easier to bare imperfections under the solidarity of common experiences: a shared spotlight turns glare into glow. As little girls we played with dolls, exploring our selves as we shared wardrobes and dream houses, taking readings from each other: does this dream make me sound crazy? What if I were to do or say this, would you still like me? We tried on attitudes and attributes, rehearsed, repeated, ad-libbed our futures.

Sometimes I wonder when I'll give up writing about Barbie -- it was all so long ago -- and yet I think there's a deeper meaning to be mined and illuminated, real value in providing a reflective surface for others who might see themselves in my memories. Sometimes, as writers, we need to proffer our own moments of darkness, however tiny and seemingly-insignificant, so that what really matters becomes clear in the contrast. Insights, no matter how long, long ago the initial event, can lead to a sort of rebirth, a peeling away of a no-longer-needed armor.

Happy Belated Birthday, Barbie

2010-04-06T07:29:00.007-04:00

April 6, 2010

Dear Barbie,

I missed your birthday.

Someone even told me it was coming, but I guess March 9 is not nearly as memorable as, say, my own birthday. Besides, fifty-one is not nearly so earth-shattering as fifty, which is clickety-clacking toward me like a train on a steep grade.

I would ask what the view is like from the top of the hill, except that I doubt one can see clearly through plastic. (Which, come to think of it, is why I gave up contacts. Twice.) At any rate, your view, however configured, would no doubt differ from mine. You seem to have escaped the indignities suffered by women constructed from more organic materials. No sagging jaw lines, spreading bottoms, or wheezing metabolisms for you, my girl. No wildly inappropriate temperature swings, no doctors who look twelve and whose sentences begin with, “Now, Ms. Simpson, a woman your age…” You can still dress like a teenager and no one, least of all you, bats an eye. On the other hand, no one is much impressed that you can still fit into your wedding dress/skinny jeans/cheerleading uniform, so maybe there are some trade-offs, after all.

Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I am, a little. It does seem a bit unfair that real girls are overtaken by raging hormones at both ends of the childbearing decades, and from where I sit, your life looks pretty easy.

You never had to change schools or leave a beloved house behind – we just took the Barbie Dream House and all your friends with us, from Mendota to Warrington to Luther Drive. You got every job you wanted, zooming right by entry-level to upper management, passing GO every time. Every day may as well have been payday. I bet you never had your electricity turned off because there was a one-day gap between the this-time-we-mean-it notice and the day your paycheck cleared, or that, when you went down to the office the next day to have your power restored, it was the mother of a high-school crush who waited on you so graciously and so completely free of judgment.

I have often been guilty of the sin of envy where you are concerned, until someone pointed out that while Barbie never learned to stand on her own two feet, Barbara did – even if those feet were sometimes in the dark, or awash in ice melt from a leaking soft drink cooler in the goody wagon some kids locked her in during the Salem Days festival.

The friend who reminded me of your birthday asked me how I felt about you. “I can’t tell from your writing,” she said. Fair enough. I guess I would have to say, “It’s complicated.”

I do feel as if I suffer in comparison with you. Ah, but then who, exactly, is doing the comparing?

The Unkindest Cut

2010-03-02T10:46:00.005-05:00

January 11, 1995

Dear Chuck,

You don’t know me. I only know your name is Chuck because that’s what your stepdaughter called you. It’s not the name I would have chosen. I would have named you jerk, or asshole, or even bastard. You see, I was at The Hair Force today, seated in the salon chair next to the one holding the little girl you left on her own while you did who knows what. She handled herself just fine without you. In fact, that’s what snagged my attention -- the voice of a child unaccompanied by an adult.

That’s not the way things usually work, Chuck. Usually, Chuck, children arrive in groups of two or more, their appointments scheduled back-to-back with that of the attending parent -- typically a mom -- who oversees and sometimes directs the stylist’s movements, while not literally wielding the tools of beauty herself. So when I heard your little girl chirping away at the next station, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop.

How old is she, Chuck? Seven? Eight? I know a lot about her. Getting her hair cut was her idea. She thought about cutting her hair short, but decided that would be too short. She used to have a boyfriend but he dumped her for a kindergartener. I drifted into the half sleep that I fall into whenever someone works or plays with my hair. Then the stylist said, “Does your mama know you want to cut off your hair?”

Your little girl said, “Oh, yes. She said it’s my hair, and I can decide what to do with it.”

I abandoned the unspoken dictates of beauty parlor etiquette, which require that patrons pretend we can neither see nor hear each other, and opened my eyes, thinking, first, Where is your mama? and second, How old was I before I could decide what to do with my hair? Nightmare visions of pixie cuts and Toni home perms and butchered bangs flashed before my eyes in the time it took the stylist to glide her comb through the thick, dark blonde tresses that cascaded over the back of the chair. “Are you sure you want to cut it? It’s so pretty .”

“Oh, yes. I figure it will be easier to take care of. It pulls when Mom brushes it.”

So the stylist set to work, Chuck, her clipping and snipping a percussive accompaniment to your daughter’s chatter about boys and school and hair and boys until the blonde locks just brushed her delicate shoulders. After consulting your daughter, the stylist used a curling iron on each lock, turning the ends under just the right amount. It was magical, Chuck. Even the stylist was entranced. Your daughter turned her head, admiring from every angle the self she saw in the mirror, and that hair swung softly.

And then you showed up, Chuck. Do you remember what you said? I do. You said, “Is that how you’re getting your hair cut?”

I know that tone of voice, Chuck. It’s my father, during the intermission of Crimes of the Heart, the very first community-theatre play I directed: “Couldn’t you have picked a better play?” My mother saying to my sister, about the dress I wore: “Bill hates it; he thinks she has no taste.” My sixth-grade English teacher, about the eight-page story I had just read to the class: “I didn’t tell you to write a book!”

Your little girl, Chuck, that lovely, sparkly child, completely deflated.

You said her hair wasn’t short enough. Told the stylist to take off some more.

The whole time the stylist quietly re-wet those pretty curls and cut them all off, and didn’t even ask the girl to sit up straight, you talked. This was her idea, you said. The trick is to teach her to take care of her long hair, you said. It won’t kill her to lose another two inches, you said.

Your little girl said nothing. For ten minutes, Chuck.

When the cutting finally ended, she said, “It’s too short,” and tugged on the still-wet, chin-length hair, as if she could make it longer.

An hour later, I saw the two of you outside the Hallmark Store at University Mall. I spied on you from behind a bookshelf at Printer’s Ink, and heard her say, with more than a little anxiety, “Do you really think Mom will like my hair, Chuck?”

Chuck, if it hadn’t been for you, she wouldn’t have had to ask. I won’t forget this, Chuck. I bet she won’t, either.

Barbie's Dream House

2010-02-03T08:15:00.006-05:00

I had a Barbie’s Dream House once. An original, first-ever, Model No. 816 Barbie’s Dream House, made of die-cut fiberboard that had to be assembled in 119 not-so-easy steps. I got it for Christmas in 1966.

It hadn’t been on my Christmas list, a masterful document, each item carefully culled from the Sears Wishbook. I had wanted many things, but none more than Color Magic Barbie (page 625) whose hair and clothing changed colors when painted with the magic solution. (Refills sold separately.) Barbie’s Dream House wasn’t even in the catalog. (I know; I’ve checked.) And yet, there it was, under the tree on Christmas morning. To say I was disappointed is like saying that the Great Chicago Fire was a flash in the pan.

In fairness to that right jolly old elf and those helper elves known as my parents, 1966 might have been the year that we went to see Santa not at Livonia Mall, where my dad sold tires at Sears, or at Hudson’s department store downtown, whose windows were a marvel, but at Detroit’s Cobo Hall, where the main attraction might actually have been the stories-tall snowman slide that we climbed in order to whisper our secrets into the fat man’s ear. Apparently everyone in the greater Detroit area had brought their kids to see Santa, as the place rang with sounds of the season: whiny, tired, bored, hungry, excited-to-the-point-of-mania children.

I am certain that my little brother and I did not whine about being hungry, tired or bored. Or, if we did -- it was a very long line -- and if a look from Mom did immediately silence our complaints, the very real threat to take us home, right then, without seeing Santa, would have. When we say, in my family, that Mom was “good with” children, what we mean is that she was good with discipline, with setting boundaries and enforcing consequences. She was not overly patient with cranky. Perhaps she secretly hoped for some misbehavior that would warrant our early departure, but as it was “jest 'fore Christmas,” we were all as good as good could be.

Still, the hall was so full, the line so long and the stairs so high that by the time my brother and I reached the North Pole, Santa had little time and less patience.

The visit went something like this:

"SitonSantaslap.Thereyougo.Hohoho.Whaddyawant?Smile!Flash!
Okayoffyougo."

And with no time for anything but regrets, down I slid, with flash-blinded eyes and the leaden-heart certainty that I had failed to draw Santa’s limited attention to the most critical item on my list. He had assured me that he would read the entire thing, but his “Yeah, yeah. Next!” did not inspire me with confidence. I suspected that, this year, being good was not going to be enough.

On Christmas morning, I ripped open a package that said “From Santa” in my mother’s handwriting and revealed several sheets of what I took to be cardboard, which my father, never a handy man, had to put together. Better than a lump of coal, but just barely. I don’t remember the assembly process, except that the closet rod was somehow not included, and the whole enterprise came to a screeching halt while we waited for Montgomery Ward to send a replacement.

I find the whole Montgomery Ward thing suspect: We never bought anything from Montgomery Ward. We got everything at Sears – school shoes, Sunday clothes, a washer, a dryer, a portable dishwasher, flowerdy everyday dishes, and a turquoise stove and refrigerator that survived two moves and three states. We even got a dog there - a standard poodle Dad found in the parking lot when he sold tires in Atlanta. (He named her Matilda.)

Why, then, would my main present have come from Montgomery Ward? Why would anyone even think to give me something not on my list?

No doubt the Barbie Dream House was my mother’s idea. She was the main gift-giver and sole gift-wrapper and – no offense to my father – the one most likely to know her children’s likes and dislikes. It was the '60s; fathers went to work, mothers stayed home and, unless great trouble or major rejoicing had occurred, the men were not always privy to the day’s details. For once not privy to our conversations with Santa, maybe my mother drew her own conclusions about our Christmas wishes. Maybe she saw Barbie’s Dream house advertised on TV. Maybe she wanted me to have a doll house because, as she once told me, she had always wanted one. Years later, she and I briefly considered buying a doll house kit -- a Victorian, perhaps -- for which we would choose wallpaper and floor coverings, select furniture, and arrange tiny occupants.

I wish we had. Mom started losing her memory, and herself, nearly thirty years ago, when I was barely out of my teens, and died in 1994. We did so little together, really. I like the idea that she gave me, in Santa’s name, something that she would have loved. Something she thought I would love. Something that I did come to love.

But that came later. On that Christmas morning in 1966, I had great skepticism about Barbie’s Dream House. I was only six; it looked like no dollhouse I had ever seen; and I was still mourning the loss of Color Magic Barbie. I didn’t even have a real Barbie yet. That house might have been Barbie’s dream -- or even my mother’s -- but it wasn’t mine.

Growing Older, With or Without Grace

2010-01-25T11:14:00.003-05:00

I am not going to grow old gracefully.

I thought I was. Really, I thought I wasn't that vain. No plastic surgery, no nip and tuck, no stomach stapling. No coloring of the hair. And yet, here I am with a head full of artificially red-and-blonde hair, hiding the gray revealed by the too-honest glare of the lighting at The Hair Place.

You'd think hair salons would be more careful about lighting and other environmental effects. Aren't we supposed to feel good -- pretty -- when we're there? Isn't that why they are -- or used to be, in my mother's day -- called beauty parlors? Ah, but perhaps that harsh light is carefully calculated to drum up business. It was, after all, during the lengthy process of a professional manicure that I, with nothing to do but stare into the mirror opposite me, noticed just how gray I had become.

Of course I immediately made an appointment to get my hair colored.

Covering up the gray brightened my face, but truly, if my "gray" was snow-white or a lovely soft silver, I would let it go natural. I have these visions of myself as one of those women with long, gray braids down their backs, but then I also have romantic fantasies of living off the land, composting, wearing natural fibers, and bringing home supplies in hand-woven Free Trade bags.

Yeah...not gonna happen.

But if I were one of those women, I would grow old gracefully. I'd ignore the lines and creases I see in the mirror -- even the ones that make me look as if I'm constantly frowning. (My mother was right about that whole face-freezing thing; it just took longer than I expected.) But I'm not one of those women, and so I use Age Perfect moisturizers. Age perfect: a nice way of saying skin care for middle-aged matrons. But here's the thing: middle-aged I may be, but all I know about matronly is how to spell it.

Not that there's anything wrong with being matronly. It's just that I don't even know how to be a grown-up yet. How can I be getting old(er) when I never got the memo about how to be an adult? Shouldn't I be wiser by now, and not just older? When will I have all the answers? When will I stop comparing myself to others and seeing only what I'm not and never will be?

Forget the snow-white hair. Perhaps I should just ask for a little self-acceptance and grace.

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor...

2010-01-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

Is It True that Blondes Have More Fun?

2009-12-12T18:57:00.001-05:00

Barbie takes a lot of heat for creating unrealistic ideas in little girls, particularly for her impossible-to-humanly-achieve measurements (approximately 39-18-33). Maybe there’s some truth to that, but frankly, I think there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Take fairy tales, for instance, which left me anticipating the arrival of a handsome, white-steed-mounted prince, who would swoop into my humdrum life with magical kisses and the conviction of love at first sight. Or what about all those commercials promoting bouncy, shiny hair as the way to a man’s heart? Bouncy, shiny, terrific-smelling hair. Bouncy, shiny, terrific-smelling blonde hair.

***

Summer in Detroit, late 1960s. I was at Molly’s house, next door. We wore lightweight shorts and sleeveless blouses, scoop necked, tucked in. Socks and round-toed play shoes. Little kid clothes. We might have been seven and eight. While Molly and I played Barbies on her porch, a tall concrete stoop guarded by boxwoods that were no higher than the stoop itself, but wide, wide – so wide that when we jumped over them from the height of the stoop, we risked landing on their trunks and damaging the genitals whose intended purpose we didn’t yet know – my brother and David-from-three-doors-down lurked in the bushes with their G.I. Joe action figures, spying on the enemy (us) and pretending to blow things up.

Tiring of our pretend "boyfriends" (my doll had a long-term fantasy fling with Davy Jones of the Monkees), Molly and I begged the boys to play Barbie and G.I. Joe (or boyfriend/girlfriend) with us. My brother, Bryan, two years younger than me, refused. David, my age, the next-to-youngest of thirteen children and perhaps more mature sexually and more aware of the possibilities of pre-sexual play than Bryan, was at least willing to entertain our pleas. I didn’t really want to play Barbie and G.I. Joe with Bryan, anyway, but we needed two boys. Bryan would pair up with Molly, leaving David for me.

Now, I have to say that I did not then, nor did I ever, have a crush on David. Throughout my life I have had crushes on boys in my class, boys at church, boys I merely saw across the cafeteria without ever knowing their names, TV characters, co-workers, friends, my brother’s friends, and even a cousin. I know from crushes, okay? So I think I am not being disingenuous when I say that although I liked David, I did not like him like him. Still, there was more to playing Barbie and G.I. Joe than just play. This was some sort of practice for the real thing, and when Bryan opted out, leaving just one male to choose between two females, the stakes rose precipitously.

If Molly and I didn’t actually say, "Pick me, pick me!" it was certainly what we implied – and what we felt. It hurt when David declared that G.I. Joe would go out with/date/be the boyfriend of Molly’s doll. Molly – who was younger and less mature than me. Molly – who pulled her pants to her ankles and then hopped about, laughing, until a parent came to spank her bare bottom and then drag her pants up and her into the house, not necessarily in that order. Molly – who never took part in our all-day-Saturday games of tag because she had to go to Temple and who was not, we agreed, missed. Molly? He wanted to be with Molly?

Because that’s how it felt. As if he had chosen her over me. And why? "Because blondes have more fun," he said. Molly herself was dark, but her Barbie was blonde. My doll, a Barbie wanna-be named Susie, had dull brown hair, like me. We were seven. Maybe eight. I doubt we knew what the good folks at Clairol meant by "more fun," but believe me when I say that I wasn’t having it.

The Pink Dress

2009-12-02T19:31:00.003-05:00

The only time I ever stole, it was for Barbie. My family went, one Sunday afternoon, to visit our friends, the Beebees. They had moved from within Detroit’s city limits to a new, safer, antiseptic neighborhood in one of the suburbs, where all the houses looked alike and were set back the same exact distance from the clean cement streets where there were curbs but no sidewalks. The Beebees had one daughter, Debbie, a few years older than me. Debbie had long, dark brown hair, a blue bike that would one day be handed down to me (my first two-wheeler), and an extensive wardrobe for her Barbies. On the day of the theft, Debbie was really past the age when she found dolls amusing, but my family was there all afternoon and she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere else. Playing Barbies with me at least passed the time.

My eye went immediately to a doll clothed in a long, sleeveless dress a slightly darker pink than the inside of the big shell that my sister had told me you could hear the ocean in. The dress was plain, with no decoration beyond a small brown bow at the waist and a slightly flaring skirt that hit Barbie just above her trim ankles. My disappointment was deep, as deep as if I had witnessed the death of everything holy, when Debbie chose that doll to play with, plucking her casually from the pile of doll paraphernalia on her bedroom floor. Then, without even looking at the doll, Debbie unsnapped the halter strap and, in one careless motion, swept the dress from the doll’s body.

I scooped it up, almost before it could touch the ground. My trembling hands pressed the gorgeous confection to my heart. The pink material was soft beneath my fingers, soft and less slick than mass-manufactured Barbie clothes. It was also more elegant than many Barbie creations, although elegant was not a word I would have known to use then. With no sequins, spangles, or feathers, this was a dress I could imagine a real person wearing.

This was a dress I could imagine wearing.
I chose a doll at random – blonde, brunette, who can say? – and slowly, carefully, reverently, slid the rustly, whispery fabric over Barbie’s legs, hips, and chest, lifted her hair aside, and tenderly snapped the halter around her slender neck. She stood shyly before me, face raised hopefully, as if to say, How do I look?

Debbie looked up from dressing her doll in a mod orange and pink mini dress. "Oh, that," she said of the dress from heaven, "somebody made that for me. It doesn’t have any matching shoes." She jammed a white go-go boot on her Barbie’s foot.

"Never mind," I told the doll I held, "you look beautiful." I twitched the flare of the skirt into place and pawed through the collected shoes: sneakers, fluffy slippers, fragile heels in every shade not found in nature. I tried and discarded many shades of pink: rose, light pink, bright pink, neon pink, and a pink that matched the carnelian crayon in Crayola 64 box. None were worthy of the dress. I finally settled on a white pair of high heels, which at least didn’t clash, and as I slipped one over Barbie’s toes and nestled it onto her ankle, I suddenly thought of the prince placing the glass slipper on Lesley Ann Warren’s foot, transforming the lonely, mistreated but oh-so-worthy Cinderella into the Princess who would one day be Queen.

That glass slipper, symbol of a man’s approval, revealed Cinderella’s beauty and creativity to the world. Then everyone could see, at last, how truly special she was, and they not only wanted to be her, smiling radiantly from beneath her crown and upswept hair, they wished they’d been nicer to her when they had the chance.

I swept the Barbie through the wide, sweeping turns of a waltz, quietly humming:

    Ten minutes ago, I saw you,
    I looked up when you came through the door
    My head started reeling, you gave me the feeling
    The room had no ceiling or floor.*

It was me that Stuart Damon as the Prince sang to, me who had captured his heart by giving a thirsty traveler a drink of cool water from my family’s well, even through I had been told not to talk to strangers.

When Mrs. Beebee called us to dinner, I relinquished the dream slowly, setting Barbie down only to pick her back up and smooth the skirt once more. While the grownups talked about the Tigers’ chances at the World Series or asked Debbie what her favorite school subject was, I was still with the dress. The sound of silverware on dishes faded into the murmurs of a ballroom filled with beautifully dressed subjects who watched, enchanted, as I danced in the arms of the prince who smiled into my blushing eyes and sang:

    Do I love you because you’re beautiful
    Or are you beautiful because I love you?*

Did it matter?

I asked to be excused, and detoured by Debbie’s room on my way to the bathroom. In the light filtering into the room from the hall, I found the Barbie and the dress lying on top of a paper bag full of Barbie stuff.. The dress stared sadly ceiling-ward, lost and lonely and abandoned.

"Barbara, what’s taking you so long?" Mom’s voice, coming from the dining room. My stomach jumped. I tiptoed to the bathroom, eased the door shut, and flushed the toilet. I ran my fingers through a stream of cold water and then wiped the wetness against a fluffy white towel with a big gold "B" on it. As I slid back into my chair, Mom asked whether I’d washed my hands. I crossed my fingers and said yes.

I made many trips to the bathroom that night. Each time I looked at the dress I wanted it more. I knew that if it belonged to me, my own prince would find me beautiful and life would be a haze of happily ever after. And hadn’t Debbie said she didn’t even want the dress? I convinced myself she had. That she wouldn’t even notice it was gone. She certainly wouldn’t miss it.

Finally, certain my life would be empty without that pink dress, I decided to take it. I pulled gently on the straps of the halter. Froze as the snap separated with a tiny pop! Slid the dress, rustling, whispering, down over Barbie’s bosom, hips, legs. Jumped as I heard footsteps, a voice. "Who wants ice cream?" Mrs. Beebee, crossing from the living room, where everyone was watching Lassie, to the kitchen. I slid the pink dress down inside the paper bag and scurried back to my place on the living room floor.

Mom leaned from the couch to touch my forehead. "Are you feeling all right?" Your cheeks are all red."

My stomach all jumpy, I said I was fine. I thought about the dress, how close it was to being mine. I knew it was wrong to take it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing it again. I was sure that Debbie would never miss it, while I, I would love and cherish it forever. I couldn’t live without it, and stealing seemed the only way. Once more I excused myself and tiptoed down the now-familiar hall. I crept into Debbie’s room one careful footstep at a time, transferring all my weight to one foot before lifting the other from the floor. The bag crinkled as I slid my hand inside. I stopped, held my breath. Listened for voices and footsteps. I brought my hand out of the bag slowly, slowly, as if somehow, should someone suddenly appear, the very slowness of my actions would somehow deem me innocent. Just as slowly, I slid the dress into the pocket of my shorts.

The doll I had played with lay naked on the top of the bag. I needed to disguise her: one look at her and my crime would be found out. I rummaged through the remaining clothing and found another dress with which to conceal Barbie’s nakedness. Laid her back on top of the bag in the same position: face, chest, and open hands pointing skyward. Now if Debbie looked at the doll I had played with, she would see only this new, bland-by-comparison-with-glory dress. The pink perfection now in my pocket wouldn’t even cross her mind. But if it did, if she asked herself, "Wasn’t Barbara playing with the Barbie in the pink dress?" why, all she’d have to do is look and then she’d think, "Why, no, that Barbie wasn’t wearing the pink dress after all." Then I thought that maybe I shouldn’t leave any evidence of the Barbie I had played with at all, and buried her under several other dolls. Much better. Now there was no way Debbie would never notice.

The pink dress was almost mine. I took it from my pocket before it could get creased, unzipped my shorts, and placed it against my stomach, inside my panties. I zipped everything up and tiptoed out of Debbie’s room. The place had no allure for me now. I was ready to go home.

A few days later, Mom asked if I knew anything about a Barbie dress that Debbie Beebee was missing. I’m sure I prevaricated, never one to immediately blurt either confession or contrition upon imminent exposure of a crime. As much as I wanted that pink dress, I wanted even more not to get caught doing something wrong. I mumbled that Debbie had told me I could have it, but it was clear to a seasoned lie detector like my mom that I had, in fact, stolen the dress. When she called Mrs. Beebee to assure her that I would return it, Mrs. Beebee graciously suggested that I keep it. She said Debbie was getting too old for Barbies anyway.

To my surprise, Mom agreed. She knew, before I did, that each time I saw it I would be reminded of my theft. She also gave me the disappointment speech and the I don’t know whether I can trust you anymore speech, but their sting was negligible. Far worse was the loss of magic. The pink dress was no longer perfection personified but just a homemade Barbie dress. There was no waltzing, no singing of "Do I love you because you’re beautiful," no prince riding into my life on a snow white steed.

I didn’t stop watching for him, though. I knew he would come, someday. I just needed the right dress, the right shoes, the right hair, and he would love me because I was beautiful.

___________________________________________________
* Words and music © Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

She's Got Barbie Roberts Eyes

2009-11-24T07:05:00.001-05:00

To the uninitiated, a Barbie is a Barbie. To see one is to see them all. Collectors know better, and can recite the subtle variations in features that distinguish Barbie #2 ("brunette or blonde ponytail, blue irises, curved eyebrows") from 1967’s Twist N Turn Barbie ("bendable legs, twist waist, rooted eyelashes"). Other variations include eye shadow and lip color, and painted versus rooted eyelashes. Aside from iris color (Barbie #3 was the first to have colored irises), though, the eyes themselves remained the same.

But in 1971, twelve years after her introduction, Mattel made a more dramatic change to Barbie’s face – her eyes would now face forward, a change from her original more "demure sideways glance."

Demure? Really?

The original Barbie’s eyes are not demure. They are coy, sneaky, and just a touch contemptuous. "You think I’m the plaything," she seems to be saying, "but I’m the one in charge. Wait and see."

History would seem to have borne out that arrogant promise. Millions – perhaps billions – of dollars have been spent keeping Barbie happy. Little girls and their doting (or despairing) parents have showered her with houses, cars, thoroughbred horses, clothes, jewels, and enough shoes to make Imelda Marcos look deprived. She has been offered book deals and roles in made-for-her movies. Too busy being a star to make her own friends? No problem: Introducing Skipper and Midge, one too short to share her clothes and both less attractive than Barbie, in true sidekick fashion. When she was lonely, Mattel invented Ken, a pretty boy sexless enough to make no real demands on Barbie but no so pretty that he ever stepped on her shadow, let alone ventured out of it. He is the perfect companion: with no interests of his own, he is always available when Barbie needs him. Cleans up well and looks great in a tux.

Despite the numerous and varied degrees she surely must possess in order to have been physicist and pilot, vet and veteran, this "new" Barbie, the one who faces the world head-on, seems somehow clueless. Unaware that her very existence is the stuff of ridicule, she is the ultimate blonde joke. No, it was the original Barbie, the one with the "innocent" sideways glance, who had it – and us – goin’ on.

Desperately Seeking Curls

2009-11-24T07:02:00.000-05:00

I have spent my entire life – nearly five decades now – looking in the mirror and seeing what isn’t there. The ears that went unpierced, for example, because my mother wouldn’t give her permission and Leggett – the downtown department store that in the ’70s was the only place to get one’s ears pierced in my hometown – required parental permission for anyone under sixteen. I felt the sting of intact earlobes whenever my friends exchanged earrings for birthdays and at Christmas. "You’d look so cute with pierced ears," they’d say, and "Your mother doesn’t let you wear make-up?" for that was something else I never saw in the mirror.

In junior high, a girl in my PE class, a girl I didn’t even know, asked to borrow my eyebrow pencil. (Her brow color had apparently evaporated due to the rigors of badminton or volleyball or square dancing.) "I don’t wear eyebrow color," I had to say, thinking, "But I wear the shame of its lack every day."

One of my greatest disappointments was the lack of anything resembling the slightest deviation from the straight and narrow in my hair. Possibly this failure to curl was a learned deficiency or some sort of to-spite-my-face rebellion: my scalp still burns and my nose tingles when I think of being bent over the kitchen sink, towel covering my face, as my mother washed the harsh chemicals of a Toni Home Permanent out of my hair.

In the commercials, perky models with bright eyes demonstrated that with bouncy curls, even a brunette could have more fun. Every time I sat for hours as Mom wrapped tiny sections of hair around tiny curlers, snapping them tightly shut at my scalp, I imagined myself emerging from the damp, smelly kitchen with fetching ringlets. I hoped for glamour and acclaim, but I think Mom just hoped that a permanent wave would make my hair hold a curl long enough to get me to church.

Neither goal was ever satisfied.

As an adult, I spent more money than I care to count getting permed by the pros. Curly perm, spiral perm, body wave, I tried them all, my head, swathed in a plastic bag, filled with the same dreams I’d dreamt as a child. Despite the stylist’s prowess and liberal use of product, I generally emerged from the warm, hair spray-scented salon without the come-hither hair I’d hoped for. When my hair was long, I kept it perpetually permed, long after the ’80s had ended. The style was easy to maintain – I could just let it air-dry, a boon for someone born without the blow-dry gene – and the length removed all resemblance to Shirley or Annie.

Then, one of my dearest friends needed surgery: cancer. They took her uterus, both ovaries, and all hope of motherhood. As I drove home that evening, after spending the day in the waiting room with her husband and several other friends, I was struck by how profoundly and irrevocably her life had been altered. It did not seem fair that I return home unchanged. I swerved into the parking lot of a small salon I had passed daily for many years, asked if they took walk-ins, and paid them to remove every bit of curl from my hair. Trivial, meaningless, insignificant – unnecessary? Maybe, probably, yes. It was all I could think to do.

That was thirteen years ago, and while I have cut, colored, highlighted, and (occasionally) let the gray show, no curlers have touched my hair since. But a funny thing happened: my hair started to curl on its own. Who knew that, along with hot flashes and night sweats, mood swings and anxiety, the hormonal roller coaster of menopause could also bring naturally curly hair? When I look in the mirror now, I still see earring-less ears (I let the holes grow closed) and a face bare of make-up (too much trouble), but I finally have the curls I always wanted, by golly.

Barbie, Beautiful Barbie

2009-11-12T08:58:00.001-05:00

If you've read my profile, you know that I am working on a collection of essays about childhood and adolescence, called Never a Barbie. My aim is to update this blog once a week with Barbie bits and pieces that have not yet found a home in the longer works, but yesterday I ran across Barbie's first television commercial on You Tube, and just had to share. (Thanks to Barbie Collectors for posting.)

Last week I said that little girls were conditioned to identify with Barbie. Note the lyrics that follow the sales pitch:

Someday I'm gonna be exactly like you
'til then I know just what I'll do
Barbie, beautiful Barbie
I'll make believe that I am you.

I rest my case.

My Own Two Feet

2009-11-10T16:09:00.003-05:00

I always wanted to have Barbie’s feet.

Well, okay, maybe not the wires that run from her heels to her thighs and allow her knees to bend with that clickclickclick clickclickclick so dear to a child’s ear. When it comes to the inner workings of our legs and feet, I clearly got the better deal.

Ah, but the shape of them: slender, high-arched, delicate – while I tromp around on Fred Flintstone feet: flat, fat and with no discernible taper between calf and ankle. My feet always worked, and for that I am grateful, but transportation aside, they did little for me and certainly seemed to go out of their way to scuttle my desire to attain the twin pinnacles of adolescence – beauty and popularity.

When I was a kid, my shoe choices were limited not just by income (low to middle) and size (short and wide) but by my mother’s insistence that I was allergic to rubber. I’m not sure exactly what was this based on, except that the elastic in her bras made her itch and left deep red grooves in her white flesh each night. She said, "You’re allergic to rubber, just like me." So the allergic to rubber thing was always there – sort of like my little brother. If there was a time in my life when either of them didn’t exist, I don’t remember it.

What this mostly meant was no tennis shoes (or as Mom always called them, gym shoes).

Even in the early grades we were expected to wear gym shoes in the gym. No hard-soled shoes allowed. The only shoes I was allowed to wear were hard-soled. I spent a lot of time sliding around gym floors in my socks, and at the beginning of each year I had to tell a new teacher why I didn’t have my gym shoes on the day we were to produce them as proof of our parents’ understanding and support of the no-hard-soles rule. Once, when I was perhaps in first grade, the teacher didn’t believe me, and in front of the class implied – if not outright said – I was a liar. What a horrible accusation for a child devastated by the slightest of public reprimands. She wanted a note, "From a doctor, not your parents," to deliver me from the dreaded "E" (Detroit’s 1960s version of a failing grade). It’s possible she even asked whether we were too poor to buy gym shoes. (Well, yes, finding money for school clothes was often a challenge, not that it was any of her business.) Eventually the teacher was forced to accept a note from my parents, and I was left to the routine difficulties of playing dodgeball and volleyball and doing the Eraser Run portion of the Presidential Fitness Test in my socks.

At some point during elementary school, maybe through the sheer force of Mom’s will – which was forceful, indeed – the proof of her assertion that I was allergic to rubber began to bubble to the surface, literally. Tiny blisters spread across the bottoms of my feet, making walking and other forms of mobility first painful and then impossible. I missed school in the fourth grade, the seventh grade, and the ninth grade. The doctors we saw "Never saw anything like it," and offered only semi-helpful suggestions until we stumbled across a combination of effective topical ointments. A patch test confirmed, yes, a mild allergy to rubber and maybe the glue holding the bodies and soles of mass-produced shoes together. And so, in junior high, just when it mattered most, my shoe selections narrowed to all-leather, hand-stitched, special-order, intended for adults, more expensive than multiple pairs of gym shoes shoes. Buying them was a sacrifice for my parents, and I should have appreciated their commitment to my foot health, but I was blinded by all that I couldn’t have: No Candies, no platform heels, no Earth shoes, no Barbie-pretty sandals fit for every outfit and occasion.

Still, for all that I felt constrained by my ugly feet and embarrassed by my even uglier shoes, I could usually count on them to hold me up. The same can’t be said for Barbie: Even at fifty, she remains unable to stand on her own two prettily-shod feet. But does that mean I can't wish mine were more attractive?

Just Like Barbie

2009-11-06T08:29:00.003-05:00

Just so you know: I am no conspiracy theorist. I fully believe that six million died in the Holocaust, that the photos of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon on September 11 were not staged, and that – through the miracle of then-modern technology and the generosity of a neighbor with color TV – I witnessed one giant step for mankind. I have no opinion on whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I don’t believe that H1N1 is an attempt by PETA, anti-immigrationists, anti-Catholics, or the manufacturers of surgical masks to further their goals, and I don’t believe that the conversion to digital TV is part of some massive government plot to control our thoughts.

But I do believe that little girls are programmed – or at least conditioned – to identify with Barbie.

That was, from the very beginning, the whole point.

When Ruth Handler – co-founder, along with her husband Elliott and Harold "Matt" Matson, of Mattel Creations in 1945 – watched her daughter play dress-up with paper dolls, she recognized a market opportunity: How could Mattel reach those girls – consumers – who were too old for Betsy Wetsy but still young enough for imaginative play? A trip to Germany provided the answer. Handler returned with several Bild Lilli dolls, tall, buxom things with blond ponytails and side-glancing eyes. Based on a cartoon character, the Lilli dolls were first sold in bars as gag gifts for adults, intended for those with a more prurient interest in toys than one would, ahem, like to associate with our girl Barbie. (Or so they say; I have no opinion on that, either.)

Lilli provided the measurements and Handler’s daughter – Barbara – provided the name for what became Mattel’s best-selling product. Now girls who didn’t want to play house could imagine a different adulthood, trying on careers along with the clothes, perhaps expressing their own dreams first in the voice of Barbie, and only then realizing that it was the desire of their own hearts that spoke. Not such a bad thing, to my way of thinking.

As for me, I was always going to be a writer. Just like Barbie.

Anything She Wanted

2009-10-29T10:40:00.002-04:00

I was born on October 1, 1960. Barbara Millicent Roberts – better known to billions as, merely, "Barbie" – was born on March 9, 1959. Although little more than eighteen months separate us, she emerged – like Athena from the forehead of Zeus – fully grown, and I have spent my entire life trying to catch up. When I was learning to walk, she was tripping the light fantastic in color-coordinated pumps and strappy sandals. When I was dealing with pimples and adolescent angst, she smiled, clear-skinned and unconcerned. You might say that when I married, at thirty-eight, I finally lapped her, since she, despite a long and sometimes turbulent relationship with Ken, has not. But she has far outstripped me on the career track.

I have never been a vet, an actress, a teacher, a model or a flight attendant. I have never been a member of any of the armed services, let alone all four of them. (I’m not entirely sure she hasn’t served in other countries, as well.) I have not been a lawyer, though I considered it for a while in college. ("You’re too sensitive to be a lawyer/social worker/actress," my father said.) I was not athletic enough to be a circus star, a ballerina, an Olympic skater. I will never go to space. I have never run for president.

It would never have occurred to me that I could be president. (Or vice-president.)

But Barbie, she could be anything she wanted.

You can bet that Barbie’s mother never told her to pipe down or shut up, that she was too sensitive, or that she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and today Rock Star Barbie comes with glitz and glitter and her own microphone, with boas and feathers and high-heeled boots, with sequins and a confident smile – all standard, and yours for only $9.99. Would that real-life Barbie-wannabes and the Barbaras who will never be Barbies could so easily purchase Barbie’s confidence. For does she really have talent, or does she possess, instead, belief?

In the Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and is suspended in midair by the lack of awareness that what he’s doing is impossible. Urban myth would have us believe that, according to the principles of aerodynamics, bumblebees cannot fly, and yet they do. If bumblebees looked down, would they fall to the grass with little thuds, starving to death so close to the nectar that sustains them?

If never told that we couldn’t fly, would we Barbaras also soar freely?

By Any Other Name

2009-10-28T10:31:00.001-04:00

I wasn’t always Barbara. The name was too grown-up for a baby, my parents and siblings thought, and so they called me Susie.

I was perfectly happy being Susie. Until I started kindergarten, where the teacher said that my real name was Barbara. "In school," she said, "we use real names." Right off the bat I was a stranger to myself, answering to a name that, while technically mine, I had never claimed, and it was in was in kindergarten that I learned that Barbara means "stranger."

I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor, my folded hands pressing my dress into the hollow of my lap like a good girl, as the teacher told us the meaning of our names: "Stranger" didn’t sound too bad, but something changed when she told the class that Barbara also means "barbarian." Although I was surrounded by other children, it felt as if I were suddenly alone, as if everyone else had moved back and left me in the middle of a large open space ringed by laughing, pointing faces. These were the same kids who ate paste and couldn’t be trusted with pointy scissors, and yet their laughter made me feel that I was, in fact, a stranger and outsider. As if not even following all the rules would protect me from being different. It was too late, I thought, to go back to being Susie. I would have to be Barbara for the rest of my life.

Don't Call Me Barbie

2009-10-27T14:32:00.003-04:00

Don’t call me Barbie.

Of all the permutations of Barbara, it’s the one name I will not answer to. Call me Barb if you must, though if we don’t know each other well, I would prefer that you didn’t. I might respond to Babs—if it's offered with affection and humor—but I won’t come if you call me Barbie.

A boy whose name I’ve long forgotten called me Barbie on the playground one morning.

"Barbie, Barbie, Barbie, Barbara is a Barbie doll."

"Shut up! Don’t call me that, shut up."

He danced around me, just out of reach, singing, "Barbie, Barbie, Barbie." I stomped my foot. Shut up, shut up, shut up. He laughed and ran away when, fueled by a humiliated rage that scorched my memory, I charged at him, too young to realize that my violent response was fuel for his teasing—and that I was drawing more attention to myself by attempting to silence him.

I didn’t have the words in second grade to explain this terrible transgression to the teacher who asked what the boy had done. Gulping through shameful tears, I told her that he had called me Barbie.

"But that’s your name."

"No, my name is Barbara."

Even at the age of eight I hated the name Barbie.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to be Barbie.

Barbie had long shiny hair and long fancy dresses of pink and red, with matching heels and gloves that went all the way to her elbows. She drove her own car, a convertible, even, in the days when all the grownups I knew drove sedans and station wagons. She lived in her own house, where no one told her what to do. She could read all night if she wanted, but she never did. She was too busy going to plays and movies and out to dinner with Ken and all her other boyfriends.

She could be anything she wanted.

She was pretty.

All we had in common was a name.

Normally I didn’t mind when a boy teased me—when I was four, my older sister had told me that when a boy teased a girl it meant he liked her—but this was different. Even at the age of almost-eight, I knew I didn’t want to be compared to Barbie. But what I don’t know is this: was it because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was a shallow, clothes-obsessed bimbo? Or was it because, even at eight, I knew I would never have the allure, popularity or beauty of a teenage fashion doll?