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Illustration by April Dela Noche Milne
My seven-year-old daughter is in a summer camp this week, away from her pink-filled room, and I’ve been using her absence to disappear hoarded restaurant crayons, Kinder rubbish, and dust coated stuffies. Her Barbies give me pause; although a part of me feels that chucking them would be an act of kindness, another part of me knows that Barbie is something more. I think of this summer’s mega-pink blockbuster that suggests an evolved Barbie, more fleshed-out than the plastic of my own childhood dolls, and I admit that I’m not quite ready to recycle her yet.
Barbie ninja’d her way into my home when I was eight years old. My sister and I had received bags of hand-me-down clothing from a family with three older daughters, along with boxes of toys. We oohed and aahed the moment we discovered a cache of Barbie loot: a pink convertible, a four-poster bed, dressers, and oodles of clothing and shoes. Ken showed up too, along with an entourage of his plastic squad. Our bedroom transformed into Barbieville, and I was the mayor.
This doll ownership seemed uncertain at first. My mother hadn’t opened the bags or boxes for inspection. She had just let us divide the goods amongst ourselves. When I saw her standing in the doorway of our room, hands on her hips and frown on her face, I knew that the dolls had never been in the original offer. My mind whirled with reasons why Barbie needed to stay with me, but when we tossed aside all the empty packages, my mum seemed resigned to the newcomers, and quietly left our room.
I knew the genesis of my mum’s frown because she had already explained that no woman looked like Barbie, nor should any woman try to look like Barbie. It was all fake. My brain said, “Of course, Mum. All toys are fake.” I rolled my eyes too. But I do remember looking at the body proportions and thinking that the hips sat enormously wider than the waist; that it was a struggle to pull up pants over such hips, even on slick, shiny plastic. And I observed that no women in the pool change rooms or at the beach had their breasts nestled just below their collar bone like Barbie did. My mother felt that Barbie didn’t have much to offer in the way of a positive role model.
As a child, I couldn’t appreciate why certain toys didn’t make the parental approval list. The more popular they were, the more my parents disapproved. Dolls born in a neglected cabbage patch, needing adoptive guardians who would spare them forced labour, were outright banned by my parents. The ensuing shopping riots that snatched up headline news in the 1980s did nothing to win my parents over either. Next up on the toy prohibition list: Barbie.
As a parent, I encountered the same uneasiness when my four-year old daughter received a Barbie playdough kitchen set. My husband argued that it was mainly about making playdough waffles and veggies. But why did Barbie still need to show up in a minidress that she barely squeezed into, with perfect hair and makeup, not to mention the body measurements? And why couldn’t Ken be the master of the kitchen? My husband never seemed troubled on that point.
Days later, my friend Felicia, a successful lawyer, shared how she had banned Barbie years ago, even though her daughter begged for a doll. Felicia argued that Barbie had no real career at the time. Barbie had no purpose for her existence and no real aspirations. It’s tough to know her motivations, her inner thoughts. She never stops smiling. Her eyes don’t even close.
Despite all my fretting about the playdough kitchen, it was nothing compared to the next arrival in our home. One day, my daughter’s friend Agnes proposed a toy trade, and we unsuspecting parents thought we provided adequate terms and conditions regarding the length of the trade and the promise to return all items to the rightful owner. Our kids negotiated that they were allowed to choose any two items from each other. Agnes chose our hedgehog accordion and a xylophone. I secretly thought she got the bad end of the deal. But I was unprepared for the full arsenal of Barbie paraphernalia that Agnes had on offer.
My first clue of the impending invasion should have been the dresser drawer that I spotted in Agnes’ room – legs, arms, heads, and scraggly hairdos jutted out in every direction, preventing the drawer from closing. In the corner of the room, my daughter rested her hand on a Barbie dollhouse her height, patted it, and looked me in the eye without saying anything. I explained that it wouldn’t even fit in our car. She agreed and said she needed more time to choose. By the end of the playdate, my daughter had chosen a Barbie food truck and an airplane, which she hugged to her chest. We smiled at Agnes and thanked her for her generosity in sharing such precious toys.
After we returned home, my daughter worked away in the living room to set up Barbie’s job sites. When my daughter called me to see the completed set-up, I did more than just wince at the vanishing living room; she’d stretched the terms and conditions of the “two-toy trade” into an exponential equation. I realized I’d never get a chance to repeat Felicia’s argument that Barbie had no career.
The Barbie food truck opened to two dolls working in a cooking and commercial space for their enterprise. A menu board advertised the all-American cuisine to another doll reclining in a chair. But worse, Barbie Airways didn’t turn out to be a humble airline. The dolls’ long legs couldn’t possibly fit in a smaller airplane. From wing tip to wing tip, the jet stretched wider than the length of an armchair. The Barbie jumbo jet opened to reveal three dolls securely fastened in their seats. My daughter showed me how the cabin luggage stowed away into convenient compartments. I suddenly wished we had the same stow-away magic in our home. Outside the jet, a refreshment cart stood with more little gadgets. By now it became clear to me that Barbie had established her dominion in the gastronomical business. She was also ruler over the living room.
While I listened to the enthusiastic explanations of Barbie’s ingenuity, I tried to see past all the trinkets and so much leg. I had to admit that Barbie acquired extensive skills throughout the years, much more than I had ever imagined as a child.
My daughter pointed to one very special doll dressed in a pink, sequined evening gown and said, “She’s my favourite. She’s a jazz singer flying to her concert. When she’s not singing, she’s a vet.”
Fair play, I thought, and quietly left the room.
Petra Mach Thiessen lives in Vancouver.