Barbie World

When I was between the ages of about nine and twelve I was an avid Barbie player. My friend Miranda and I would always make up elaborate soap operaesque tales. There were two households. The Colbys, mine since I had determined that I was going to marry Jeremy Colby, and the Hendrix's since the plan was Miranda was going to marry Sean Hendrix. My Ken and Barbie husband and wife were both blahly blond. Miranda's were more progressive parents than mine, so although her husband Ken doll was also blah and blond, her wife Barbie was a magnificent black Barbie. Oooooh, I sat there jealous, in my suburban living room, our Barbie set all sprawled out to the hallway. Suburban sprawl was often a theme in our stories. I think it had something to do with hearing my dad swearing at the pump whenever the gas station attendant would come back with the Visa card swiper and have my dad sign the bill.

Miranda and I enjoyed playing Barbies at my house not because it had better feng shui or more space, but because my mom didn't make us clean them up. So we could go on these epic Barbie binges for weeks without having to interrupt the storyline because we had to pack up the set.

I owe my mom for most of my positive attributes. But I'm especially impressed she figured out that giving kids lots of freedom to make messes and explore and have unadulterated adult-unsupervised fun turns naturally inquisitive, creatively motivated kids into the same kind of adults. Sure, it takes a lot of energy for me to complete any task I'm asked to do that I don't like. But if I like it, I possess great stamina and become highly motivated to study a subject thoroughly. Push me and I'll stand still. Let me walk at my own pace and I'll keep moving forward.

The Barbies Hendrix had twelve children if I remember correctly. Many were even Skippers, which made Miranda's Barbie family seem more realistic since in real life most kids are shorter than their parents. I simply had to work it into my story that the Barbies Colby had a bunch of teenagers--quadruplets with their first birth, twins with their second and third births, and finally fraternal twins with that in utero complication where one of the twins takes more than her share of nutrients and grows much bigger than the other twin resulting in one large baby and one small baby. That way I could pair my one Skipper doll with a Barbie and say they were thirteen year old twins.

The Barbie, the large twin, I now realize represented me when I was young: very tall, early onset puberty, both with first menses and early breast development. I was much more physically mature than my peers, but much less emotionally mature in many ways. Just barely ten, I was confused when this rust colored stuff started coming out of me and sticking to my underpants. I kept taking them off, throwing them down the laundry shoot and putting on a fresh pair. I did this until I ran out of underpants and had to ask my mom to do a load. I remember feeling ashamed, like I kept wetting myself uncontrollably. Then it occurred to me that this was the “period” my sister Hazel and my mom had told me about and I was even further confused because I thought it would be just a dot of blood, like a period that ends a sentence.

Historical naval gazing shows me now that playing Barbies then helped me work out a lot of the stress I experienced from being physically mature but an emotional late bloomer. Playing Barbies was my first shrink. I could express my feelings of alienation and ugliness and weirdness by acting them out with the thirteen year old Barbie big twin. Putting words to feelings, even though I was pretending the story wasn’t autobiographical, comforted me in a complicated world at a time in which my already fractured sense of self and sexuality was becoming even more vulnerable. At the same time those three boys at recess would stare at my already adult sized boobs on my ten year old chest and chant “Sydney is a slut! Sydney is a slut!”

I’d pretend I didn’t hear them and continue playing with my friends. When we were let out at three o’clock, I’d rush home as fast as possible so I could have the maximum amount of time to spend playing Barbies before Mom would call me to dinner.

Playing Barbies wasn’t the only way Miranda and I acted out stories. We also loved to draw our future families. My fantasy family consisted of Jeremy Colby as a grown up (taller, with a beard) on the far left side of the drawing paper. Next to him I’d draw myself as a grown up (taller, bigger hips). Next to myself, in order of birth, stood our ten children. I wrote our names above each person’s head, our ages next to that. Our kids were always only one to two years apart. How my mom had her first four children before she divorced their dad, married my dad, and had me almost eight years after second-youngest Hazel. I missed that feeling of growing up in a pack. At age twelve, after all my siblings had moved out and left me with Mom who had a headache and a bad day at work, and Dad who was mad about everything, and no one appreciated that I made dinner or was making good grades at school when I showed up, I felt pack-less. Like a lonely dog on a chain. Sitting in the dirt. Hasn’t been noticed for days.

So I made my own big, close family in Barbie world. And the best thing of all? I had complete control over the story.