Not Barbie’s Dream Life

Most women cherish the memories of their Barbie doll: brushing her hair, dressing her in pretty gowns, cruising around the park in a pink Cadillac and then pulling into the driveway of an exquisite dream house. Those were the days when beauty was effortless and girls were free to dream.

However, while I’m pretty sure I enjoyed playing with her, my Barbie did not experience the “traditional” Barbie life. My Barbie grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. She was never within a stone’s throw of the dream house. She lived in the projects – straight up, G. Her crib was nothing but a shack made entirely of Little Golden Books and it was all about survival in those days. The slightest breeze could send the walls of her complex crumbling to the ground. But Barbie was a resilient little soul. She always managed to pick up the pieces and move on.

Barbie’s life was probably less than extravagant because my parents tried to direct my attention towards purely educational toys. Alan and I had games like “Animal Yahtzee” and “Circulation.” We rarely sat down with a board game just for the pure enjoyment of it. To this day neither one of us is particularly competitive – probably because much of our play time was spent reciting animal trivia and learning about the central nervous system.

Now that I’m a teacher, I fully understand my parents’ reasoning. They wanted us to learn about electronics and architecture. They wanted us to use our hands to actually create something because those were the skills that would truly help us grow. Also, they never prioritized Barbie stuff because they wanted me to have a foundation for my education, not some superficial fantasy life played out by a perpetually smiling blonde in a double-D cup.

Actually, I’m kind of surprised Mom and Dad got me a Barbie at all, but they knew all the other girls in the neighborhood had them and I guess they didn’t want me to be totally friendless, so they sprung for a couple of dolls and a few outfits. They drew the line at Barbie accessories, though. Those were a “complete waste of money.” While my friends’ dolls were living in multi-level mansions and driving luxury automobiles, my Barbie had nothing but one lonely arm chair and an end table. (And it took many well-behaved Christmases to earn that measly amount of furniture, let me tell you.)

I did not allow my Barbie to feel short changed, though. I made sure she was fully integrated into the Barbie culture, even if it required a little ingenuity on my part. For example, though the pink convertible was completely out of reach, Barbie did manage to lease a used car that my brother constructed out of parts from his erector set. The car was made entirely out of aluminum plates and had four giant, red wheels screwed into the sides. Alan also used pieces of our electronics kit to fix a single, 40-watt light bulb to the front bumper. If you gingerly tapped two red wires together the bulb flashed intermittently while Barbie cruised down the streets of the ghetto. Unfortunately, her car didn’t have any seats in it so she had to lie down flat on the floor while she drove. Also, on one occasion the light bulb melted part of her left foot. But the car got her to work and back and she was thankful to have it.

Barbie’s apartment was about as spectacular as her vehicle. She did not have a bed. She slept in an old shoe box and had tissues for blankets. It didn’t matter anyway because her shoe box bed, the arm chair, and the end table were the only pieces of furniture that would fit in her 14-square-inch studio. The whole building was kind of a mess, actually. The landlord wanted out, but there was little or no chance for resale.

The entire neighborhood was just going down the toilet. At one point I tried to increase the property value by adding a hot tub that I made out of my mom’s stew pot. It was about five inches taller than Barbie and the water was always cold as ice so she rarely soaked in it. After the hot tub plan failed I thought I could attract more people to the neighborhood by opening a disco. I spared no expense. The disco ball was made from 100% aluminum foil. But, with no cover charge, it just turned into a dive bar. After one too many drunken brawls at last call, the police shut the place down and I boarded up the windows for good.

The worst part of my Barbie’s life was that, for a long time, she did not have a boyfriend. My parents refused to buy me a Ken doll because (ever the educators) they were afraid I would get confused by the little plastic “mound” that existed in place of his genitals. However, I never cared whether or not Ken had a penis. All I knew was my friends’ Barbies’ had boyfriends and my Barbie had no one. She was the proverbial third wheel on every other Barbie’s fantastic date. I felt so sorry for her, sitting in the back seat at the drive-in, gorging on a Jumbo popcorn while the “popular” Barbie and Ken made out in the front seat. It was positively heartbreaking.

I didn’t want my Barbie to die alone, so I decided to tap into the same sense of ingenuity that I used to refurbish her neighborhood. I had two Barbie dolls, so I took the older one (who was easy to sacrifice because she had only one bending knee), shaved her head, and drew hair on her chest with a black Sharpie. Finally, my Barbie had a boyfriend, ample-bosomed though he was. I dressed “transsexual Ken” in the only remotely masculine outfit my Barbie owned: a pair of navy bell bottoms and a psychadellic, multi-colored disco shirt.

Needless to say, when you add it all up, this was not Barbie’s dream life. The poor thing punched out at her dead-end job every day and drove home in some beat-up, erector set jalopy. With an armload of groceries, she passed by the abandoned, stewpot hot tub and somehow managed to drag her melted club foot up three flights of stairs to her government-subsidized apartment. She opened the door to find her “life mate,” Transsexual Ken, sacked out on the couch wearing nothing but his is bell bottoms. Watching Jeapordy. Belching. Potato chip crumbs sprinkled all over his make-shift chest hair. Barbie just sighed, turned her head up towards the ceiling and asked flatly, "Why me, God . . . Why me."

Looking back, Barbie’s lifestyle doesn’t seem particularly ideal, but for some reason it was more than acceptable to me. At six years old, I simply had no doubts about my ability to control the universe. If Barbie needed a home or a car, I simply assembled one. If she didn’t have a boyfriend, I created one. “Let there be life,” I told myself. Quality of life was never really part of equation. It was all about instant solutions.

Things just don’t work that way when you’re an adult. (If they did, all my girlfriends would probably back away slowly every time they saw me with a Sharpie and a hair trimmer.) The really distressing part is, even after we grow into adulthood, we still live by the same childish archetypes. Despite the numerous experiences that prove the contrary, we still think that the good guys will win and the beautiful girl will find her true love in the end. We’re still addicted to the stories, but now we’re too old and powerless to write them.

I was reflecting on this the other day when a random scene from “The Holiday” popped into my head. (In case you don’t remember, “The Holiday” is a totally stupid movie that came out last Christmas, which I only saw because Jude Law starred in it and because someone gave me a coupon for free popcorn.) Kate Winslet plays one of the heroines. She’s beautiful, smart, British, and alone. Broken-hearted, she decides to take a “holiday” in Los Angeles where she rents an enormous mansion and befriends a reputable but elderly movie producer.

At one point in the story, Kate Winslet is out to dinner with the movie producer and she’s trying to figure out why she’s still single because she’s just so smart and beautiful and blah blah blah and it’s all just so darn tragic. The movie producer turns to her and says something like, “Do you know what your problem is? You’re the heroine in your own life, but you keep playing ‘the friend.’”

That's exactly how I feel sometimes: like I was born to be a heroine, but without the ability to make casting decisions, I end up playing the ‘friend’ over and over again. My character occasionally appears on screen to make a quirky comment or to ferry a letter between two lovers, but she fades into the background during all the really important scenes. Not only that, but even if I do manage to maintain my heroine status for an extended period of time, I inevitably step onto the set of someone else’s story and (simply put) we can’t both have starring roles.

Barbie doesn’t have to face these kinds of conflicts. She was packed up and shipped off long ago. But I’m trying to stay optimistic without her. There’s still a little bit of that six-year-old ingenuity lurking in the recesses of my brain. Maybe I can create a new kind of heroine – one who gets to be the heroine and the friend at the same time.

And she doesn’t have to define herself by what kind of car she drives.

And maybe, instead of waiting around for the love of her life, she spends her time helping other people find theirs.

And because of that, she truly has it all. And then some.