This is a literary response I wrote for my Short Stories class. Responses are informal pieces of writing we usually had a night or two to come up with. This one is one of my favorites because it blends a little bit of memoir into the literary analysis.
“Well I grew up with Barbie but I don't blame her for my strife.
Somehow how I played with Barbie mirrors my current life
'cause Barbie slept with Christy and Barbie slept with Midge
Sometimes Barbie slept with Ken she loved anyone she wished
And I'll love you if your femme and I'll love you if you're butch
Sometimes I like bois and trannys got a thing for androgynous
There's no patriarchy here
Well Barbie was a veggie she thought meat eating was wrong
And Barbie was a feminist she learned that from my mom
And she still wore pink and I like to wear pink
But there's not patriarchy here....
Well Barbie was a homemaker and Barbie was a wife but she owned her own business she led a varied Barbie life
And Barbie was a sex worker and Barbie was a dyke
So I grew up thinking I could do anything I liked I could love anyone I liked I could do anyone I liked..”
Moorea Mallat, “No Patriarchy Here”
There is footage of me sitting down to my home made birthday cake in a pleated dress, hair in pigtails with little ringlets curled into the bottom. The flames of my birthday candles are reflected off my giant 90’s glasses as my mother awkwardly zooms in with the video camera.
“Make a wish!” A youthful version of my mother says so loudly into the camera mic that it still crackles on aged film.
I shut my eyes, screw up my round pink face into a look of concentration, and channel the Birthday Deity, who for this one moment must listen to me. As it must listen to every kid on the moment they blow out their birthday candles. I wish….I wish….I open my eyes and stare into the camera.
“I am seven now,” I say reasoning to the unseen Birthday Deity, “So I wish I had seven Barbies!”
It is not on tape but I know my mother frowns just then. I remember that tight-lipped expressionless face she makes before she says those devastatingly indecisive words:
“We’ll see.”
My mother is undecided about Barbie. She is not a feminist. Sometimes she sits me down in my too-pretty Laura Ashley dresses and tells me feminism is about women wanting “special rights” and that God made men and women different. Separate but equal. Something about her daughter playing with naked plastic women seems unholy but on the other hand role playing is supposed to be good for children. What to do?
I have expressed my desire for Barbie Dolls to play with for several months now waiting patiently as my mother thinks about it. The issue resolves itself. My mother ends up being the only one at my party who did not bring me a Barbie Doll. Barbies are the currency of birthday parties; we gave them as we gave our peers pieces of ourselves asking for acceptance. I did not just end up with seven dolls I ended up with ten, erupting in squeals of delight after tearing off the glossy wrapping on each one.
“Mommy, look another Barbie!”
Sandra Cisneros captures this pivotal part of childhood. We did not play dolls, we played Barbies. Generic dolls would have been cheaper. In “Barbie-Q” the narrators family only provides one doll and one doll outfit per daughter “that’s all we can afford.” Barbie is a status symbol. Every girl wants at least one Barbie and every girl wants to play Barbies, and in doing so adopting Barbie as a stand in for herself.
Cisneros says of their role playing: “Every time the same story. Your Barbie is roommates with my Barbie, and my Barbie’s boyfriend comes over and your Barbie steals him, okay? Kiss kiss kiss. Then the two Barbies fight.” My parents’ compromise on the great Barbie Dilemma was to allow me to keep my Barbies but not permit me to play with Ken, for fear my friends and I might play-act having sex. Other families in my peer group adopted similar rules. Ken became the thing we all desired. The ideal. Ken was a prize to be won at all costs, even if it meant backstabbing the other Barbies. Some girls cut one Barbie’s hair into a crew cut and made her the designated Ken. I had one Disney Aladdin doll that came in a set with Jasmine so he maintained a harem of my dolls; they lived in a giant plastic tub-house and he rotated his time with each of the women and had many children with them. But at least we were not play acting monogamous heterosexual sex. That would have been too awful for our parents to comprehend.
Barbie is plastic. Barbie must compete for a mate, compete for attention. Barbie is the feminine ideal until the dog chews her or her head pops off or she is in anyway damaged. In Cisnero’s story there is a fire at a toy warehouse. All the Barbies are less-than-perfect and so they are sold cheap at the flea market. The girls in the story are able to buy the dolls because they are damaged: “So what if our Barbies smell like smoke when you hold them up to your nose even after you wash and wash and wash them.” Any collector will tell you Barbie is worth more in her original packaging, staring out from a cardboard cage perfect plastic smile, perfect outfit, and not a synthetic hair out of place. She is persevered forever at her peak. Barbie is a great metaphor for women. The more age and gravity affect a woman or Barbie the more her apparent worth to society goes down. While the girls in the story are delighted to have so many new dolls, they cover the melted left foot of Francine-cousin-of-Barbie under her dress and pretend it’s whole. They do not love the doll they have for what she is. They pretend just as they pretended to have a Ken doll to fight over. In playing with the dolls they are adopting the role themselves of someone who is a little “less” than her peers but who aspires to assimilate with them seamlessly.
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