I'm a little confused. I thought that my generation had collectively agreed that Barbie was kind of... um... Satan, rendered in vinyl with a 36 inch bust. I figured that by now Barbie would have gone gently into the night, existing strictly as a collector's item, rather than as a toy found in the bedroom of every girl under age 12.
I was wrong, as usual*. For example, I also thought that my generation had collectively decided that marriage was an archaic and unnecessary institution, and that we were all in it together on the matter of reproduction: accidents happen, but otherwise, for the love of god, why would you do that to yourself? Now look at me. One of the last of my immediate peer group who is unmarried. Friends without kids still outnumber the friends with kids, but the gap is narrowing quickly. I could be drinking for 4 or 5 right now, if I decided to. It wouldn't be right to say that I feel bad about my current circumstances or that they are the result of a belief that everyone else was going to be in the same situation, but then they all backed out on me. But still.
But Barbie. I just don't get it. Not that I'm all into the anti-Barbie crusade**. On the risk of sounding pretentious, I never got it.
I had one Barbie doll and one Ken doll when I was little. I requested these as gifts for my 7th or 8th birthday, under duress. The girls in my class, especially my next door neighbour/"best friend"*** Tina, wanted to play Barbies almost exclusively. I wasn't really into it****, but I didn't want to be a loner 100% of the time. If I wanted other girls to play with, I had to show up at their houses packing a Barbie.
Playing Barbies, without fail, always ended with Barbie hooking up with Ken and having babies. All the girls (but me) insisted that it work out this way. We would get our Barbies all hussied up for a date with Ken. Barbie and Ken would hit it off, there would be babies, and the rest of the game would be all about that. Baby's crying. Baby's hungry. Baby needs a change. As we got older, we started to include sex as part of the process. I don't think we understood what sex actually was or how it was connected to baby-making. We understood, from movies and television shows, that both parties getting naked was the end of a really good date. So we'd get our Barbies hussied up. Barbie and Ken would go on a date. Once Tina grew tired of their camping trip or whatever other pretext had thrown them into each other's company, she would get a crazed look in her eyes and announce that "it was time for them to get down to business". Meaning, we would take all of their clothes off, press their naked silicone bodies together a few times, and end scene. We'd silently put clothes back on them, and next thing, boom. They were a family. Baby's crying. Baby's hungry. Baby needs a change.
I would start with good intentions. I'd have dialogue, adventure and plot lines worked out in my head. I wasn't at all off-put by the idea of Barbie and Ken having a little fun along the way. Nor was I off-put by the idea of them having a little more fun, after a brief rest period. Then I wanted them to get back out there having adventures. But it was me against the rest of my grade four class. All the other girls wanted Ken and Barbie to have babies once the seduction was over, and that is how it had to happen. (Though, new mom with 18 inch waist? I think not.)
What I'm wondering is this:
Was the need for Ken and Barbie to procreate instinctual, or was it something that was learned? Either way, why didn't I see it that way? Why did we never pretend that Barbie went out with her friends, drank a lot of whiskey and to hell with Ken? Or maybe, make out with Ken a little bit but her regular life back the next morning? I'd like to say that we didn't understand what alcohol was, but that can't be the reason. We didn't understand what sex was, either.
*If anything, girls of today have more Barbies. When I was little, you didn't need more than one or two dolls. You'd get a couple then get different outfits for them. The whole point of playing Barbies with friends was that your friends would have different models, with different outfits. Nowadays, it seems that everyone has every possible variation. I urge the parents of these girls to get ahold of themselves. You keep buying the same doll over and over again. Is that really where you want your money to go?
**Although, giving it some thought, I guess I am part of the anti-Barbie crusade. The whole body-image thing aside, even. It's chilling that there were always multiple Barbies around, but we never bothered with more than one Ken. None of us tried to individualize our dolls as anything else than "Barbie". Once we got a lot of them together, we stopped referring to them by name at all. The unnamed clones were always out to win Ken's affection and have his babies, and nothing else.
**I don't put "best friend" in quotes for any derogatory reason, exactly. Tina and I were besties at a point in life where one's best friend was the person not related to you with whom you spent the most time with, playing. Playing didn't involve any particular personal connection. From what I've recently observed of young girls at play, they are playing "with" each other only in theory. It's more like they're both playing in the same room. I think there's a turning point in children's friendships, where they cross the line between being happy just to have someone else there and wanting to have someone to actually talk to. I remember in kindergarten being asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, and being tasked to draw a picture of it. Tina wanted to be a secretary: her mom was a secretary. I don't remember the illustration. I wanted to be a nurse. I knew that my mom had worked in the hospital at some point. My toddler mind reasoned that she must have been a nurse: what else would a woman working at a hospital do?
We had the same assignment every year. By grade 3, Tina still wanted to be a secretary. I wanted to be an archeologist, travelling the world, digging up bones and forgotten treasures.
****go ahead, call me a nerd. I preferred "playing school" over playing with Barbies any day. I liked to pretend that I was a pioneer, hacking a life for myself out of the wilds of my backyard, digging in the dirt, planting seeds, and building houses for myself out of ends of lumber. I liked to gather all of my stuffed animals onto my bed and pretend that we were all in a van on a roadtrip, with the chance of adventure at every roadside attraction.
Also, I had two brothers. I preferred to play He-Man or Star Wars or G.I. Joe. The action was always more interesting navigating Castle Grey Skull than it was with nothing but "let's go shopping. baby's hungry. baby needs a change."
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