I’m going to talk about Barbie, not the best topic to write about for a girl whose only known readers are three males, so you guys might want to sit this one out, you know go grab a beer, watch a football game, scratch yourselves somewhere indecent. Unless of course you secretly played Barbies, and I’m not talking about G.I. Joe; he doesn’t count (unless he thought Barbie was hot, and she just teased him as a way to make Ken jealous).
I met my best friend the summer before third grade. We met in a vacant lot that separated our houses in a relatively new subdivision. Both of our fathers were officers in the Air Force, but that’s not what cemented our friendship. Yep, you got it, it was that eleven-inch, very scary, anatomically-molded piece of plastic with way too much blond hair. Jen had the Barbie Dream House, and I had Barbie’s yacht, but when we found out that we owned the exact same Barbie and Ken, we knew it was fate and we would one day raise our daughters together.
I will tell you right now that any girl who really knew how to play Barbies knew that the commercials on television were crap. Little blond girls, dressed nicely, giggling with each other and saying, “Barbie is going to the dance tonight…Ken thinks she looks so pretty.” No way. No Barbie game was ever narrated. You were Barbie, and you were Ken, and you didn’t drop your voice an octave to differentiate between the two because both of you just knew which one was talking by what they were saying. And who the hell even called their Barbies “Barbie” and “Ken”? I mean, did you ever go to school with anyone by those names? My Barbie’s name was Samantha (Sam, because she was just that cool) and Jen’s Barbie was Cyndi (although I couldn’t tell you if that’s how she would have spelled it). Ken’s name changed to whatever guy we had a crush on that week.
The part of Barbies that Jen and I are still most proud of this late in life were the plots we invented. Okay, admittedly, it was lame that we played “twins”. At eight, it didn’t seem that far-fetched that two twin sisters would fall for two twin brothers (give me a break…we were eight. At least I’m gagging as I write it now). And even though the plots were at times predictable, they might have given us a spot in a “Sweet Dreams” romance novel.
Plot #1: Shy girl (Jen’s Barbie) moves to new town and befriends very hip and rebellious girl (my Barbie). Shy girl likes football/basketball/band playing popular guy, but he has a really evil girlfriend who just makes shy girl’s life hell. Hip Barbie meanwhile fights non-stop with obnoxious but really good-intentioned guy who secretly loves her. All of this culminates at a dance where one of the Barbies sang “Hopelessly Devoted” from the Grease soundtrack and one of the Ken’s would answer back with Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” (even though none of our Barbies was ever named Mandy, when Ken sang, "You came and you gave without taking", it just seemed to say it all).
Plot #2: Barbies are both really high-powered career women who live in an apartment together. They are always in such a rush to get ready for work that they throw their clothes everywhere. Enter the Kens. They are maids (Yes, I can hear you guys groaning at this one). While they clean the apartment everyday, they complain incessantly about these two really horrible, slobby women whom they have never met. Each couple meets somewhere random, not knowing that they are linked by the messy apartment, fall in love and then later fight when the truth is revealed, making up just in time for the game to end.
And that’s always when the game ended. The games were long, spanning several days, and our parents were patient as we monopolized the downstairs bathrooms with our Barbie furniture (Barbie had a “rad” pool in the sink and her bedroom was on the toilette seat), but the minute the two couples kissed, the game was over. I think even at eight, we knew that after the sexual tension was realized and dealt with, the plot went downhill. We weren’t interested in Ken paying bills and cleaning out the gutters, or Barbie trying to juggle motherhood and a career, nagging Ken to take a more active role in the family and the household chores.
My daughter has Barbies now. They have changed; Barbie is probably quite relieved to realize that she no longer has really pointed breasts, and they have smoothed out her waist and widened her hips. I found this out not by looking, but by trying to dress the new her in some of my old Barbie clothes. Because yes, I am playing Barbies again. At 33, I plop on the floor next to my daughter and play the “Barbie commercial” equivalent of the Barbie game. I hope this doesn’t stunt my daughter’s ability to play a really cool game of Barbie later on with her friends, but I also don’t want to be the one to establish the pattern of romances for her Barbie dolls. I’m the Barbie now who suggests that they all (including Peter Pan…complete with tights) go out for ice cream, or on a camping trip to the mountains.
Sometimes, though, I’m tempted to sneak into her room and pull out her box of dolls while she sleeps. I’d dress the Barbie with the glossy hair in the tight jeans, baby-T and sneakers, and have her bump into Ken somewhere unexpected. They’d start out as friends until finally, after months of playing card games while drinking great micro-brews and going to art openings together, at some gathering where all of their friends are present, he’d tell her angrily that he was in love with her and had been for several months. She would look confused, and hurt, until finally it dawned on her that she too was in love with him, and that even though he drove her crazy, she couldn’t imagine her life without him. They would kiss as several of their friends cat-called and/or whistled, and the game would stop there. No arguments fueled by insecurities, no miscommunications, no chances to realize that they weren’t the right person for each other after all.
I’ve been single now for over four months. When the Barbie scenario written above begins to sound silly to me, maybe I’ll be ready to date again.
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