chapter 7

Barbie Person

My two oldest daughters, 17 & 19 years old, work at the local snow cone shop together. Their boss took the group of 20 girls out to dinner and then to see the Barbie movie opening night in the name of “employee appreciation”. I was too distracted by the math of such a kind gesture (holy shit $!$!$!) to fully appreciate or anticipate the significance of my kids’ reactions when they returned.

Side note: We are not Barbie people, although my oldest children might disagree. That said, I was not an anti-Barbie mom either, just kind of a mom who would rather we don’t. The unrealistic representation of female body for little girls is definitely part of it, but really- I just didn’t love seeing them tossed around the house, often in vulnerable positions, most with sticky weird haircuts, always naked and afraid. They were bummers to me. But my motto was, what the grandparents could infiltrate on Christmas morning or on birthdays could stay. Otherwise, we would not turn our cart down the Barbie aisle on our next Target run.

Little did I know that this kind of parenting lends itself to tendencies towards obsessing over whatever thing you think you’ve casually dodged. I didn’t know it at the time, but my kids were captains of insider Barbie-trading. They not only knew which friends had the Barbies, but knew which friends had parents that were so cool with Barbies that said friends didn’t value their legions of Barbies the same way kids with parents who were not cool with Barbies were (us), therefore allowing my daughters to borrow their Barbies for such extended amounts of time that I’m pretty sure I finally Goodwilled the last of those kids’ Barbies last year. Apologies to them and their cool parents. I would’ve kept a spreadsheet documenting whose belonged to who, but 1. my kids were so cagey about where they came from and 2. I’ve never made a spreadsheet in my life so it’s unlikely I’d have started with Barbie-borrowing.

I believe that grandparents ask kids not “what do you want for Christmas?” but rather “what do your parents not want you to have for Christmas?”, and so you can see how we amassed quite a few of these plastic ladies for a household I labeled ‘Not Barbie People’.

The way I distinguished Barbie folk from non-Barbie folk was not in quantity but in quality. I grew up with the spectrum of Barbie-having girls in my day, and I wouldn’t consider all of them ‘Barbie People’: anywhere from the ones who kept Barbie boxed and refused to let me even make eye contact with her to the ones who used poor Barbie as a sex ed tool. My kids fell somewhere in the middle, using Barbies to make bath time more fun or using them as harbingers of trouble to the other sister, taped up and dangling by yarn on their bedroom door by the angry sister. It seemed that in order to be considered a Barbie girl you had to respect the doll for who she was, not what she could do for you. So between my general disregard and their general disrespect, I officially declare us ‘Not Barbie People’.

Moving on.

After the movie, the girls walked into the house, both with puffy eyes. Neve, the 17 year old, walked past me and went straight to her room, almost as if she was mad at me. Fiona, 19, came in for a hug and said she loved me. Curious.

Upon investigation, I realized both kids felt things about me- mom, aka source of all the feelings, the giver of life, the ruiner of life, the one who played god with their Barbies- while watching the movie.

Neve’s fond nostalgic feelings for the doll surfaced, validated by the brief history at the beginning of the movie (as in, she was intended to be a symbol for empowerment to little girls during a time when baby dolls reinforced the role of motherhood and domesticity, only later being blamed for promoting an impossible beauty standard), and I am the Gen X internalized misogynist who just doesn’t get it. (My hyperbolic words, not her’s). And to be fair, I didn’t know the history of Barbie. I also had not yet seen the movie. I was just home minding my own business watching Righteous Gemstones in super comfy pants with a brownie when they walked in and harshed my mellow.

“Is Neve okay?”, I asked Fiona.

“Yeah, you can talk to her about it later. She had a different take-away from the movie than I did, and she’s just a little annoyed with you, but she’ll be okay.”

But truthfully, Neve was not okay. And Fiona didn’t care because she was feeling a completely different thing about me.

Fiona didn’t even want to go see the movie at first. She admittedly only went for the free dinner beforehand, but in no time was sucked in by Greta Gerwig’s brilliance. Maybe it was the fact that her expectations were so low going in that left her so impressed? I don’t know. But when I asked her how the movie was, she began to cry, told me she loved me, and then bent down for a hug. Curious.

“I want you to know, I understand you. I get you. This movie made me see what you’re all about.”

“What am I all about?”

I’ll spare you the longwinded conversation that played out like an archeological dig of suppressed feelings. The gist was something along the lines of me being brave for bucking societal constructs, not caring about conventional beauty as I age, and not falling victim to the male gaze.

“Did you just call me ugly?”, I wanted to ask.

A week later, I took Frankie (my 8 year old daughter) to see what all the Barbie hype was about myself. It should be noted that Frankie had inherited all of her sisters’ naked Barbies of yore (or their friends’ Barbies), and as third children go, she had no limits or restrictions. She was not burdened by aesthetics or curation. She was free to play with whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, as ugly as it gets. And as much as I’d love to chalk the philosophy of her upbringing up to learned lessons, it had far more to do with me being older and tired. And as luck or counteraction would have it, she had no interest in Barbies. None, zilch, zero.

As we watched the movie together, I began processing it through each of my daughters’ lens. Each child is so different, even though each child was raised in the same house with the same parents. Each kid has a different relationship to me and their father, even though I can honestly say I love each kid in equal and exceptional measure. Each daughter navigates their life with their own unique perspective, even though they were all born of the same weird breed (Terry & I). And this very pink movie brought it all into focus for me. Frankie leaned over a few times to ask me to explain things throughout the movie, but she equally surprised me by how much didn’t fly over her head. I guess having older sisters helped flatten the learning curve on matters of the patriarchy. And it was good. I really appreciated all of Greta Gerwig’s efforts, even at the cost of a lot of product placement, CEO-pocket-lining, Capitalism ickiness/necessary evils.

But did it make me a Barbie person? Not really. It just was a really nice reminder that being a woman is a privilege. And raising women is a privilege.

As we walked out of the packed theater, Frankie got caught holding the door for everyone behind us. I watched as bright pink outfits in every shape and size passed. After the last person left, she looked at me in my black super comfy pants and said, “You’re Goth Barbie”. I couldn’t think of anything funny on demand so I replied with, “Well, you’re Stinky Skipper.” We laughed and she admitted that Barbies aren’t so bad.