Happy Belated Birthday, Barbie

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

 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 .”

Barbie's Dream House

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.

Growing Older, With or Without Grace

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...