Unboxing Barbie
Love her or loathe her, Barbie endures. Now with boxed nostalgia! By Lori Carson.
My grandmother never cared much about Barbie. To be clear, whenever I was in my grandmother's care, which was a sizeable chunk of my preteen years, she never forbade me from playing with my Mattel doll collection. Judgment wasn't part of Grandma's modus operandi. A diversion was her tactic of choice.
“Rachel, put on some shoes and come give me a hand in the garden.”
There was a sing-song quality to her voice, like the calliope music on the merry-go-round at the state fair. It mingled with the aroma of freshly mown grass and floated through the screen door, sounding more like an irresistible invitation than a command.
I'd be sprawled on my stomach on the round braided rug in Grandma's living room while Barbie and her little sister Skipper selected outfits from their teeny couture collection. Miniature dresses in bold, psychedelic patterns hung from minuscule neon-colored hangers inside the bedroom closet of their collapsible Barbie house.
My ten-year-old self imagined living in a swanky place like Barbie's someday, one with wildly flowered walls and modern hot pink furniture and a kid sister or best friend for a roommate. Each time the house unfolded, it emitted a unique, vinyl smell that was as familiar and somehow as comforting as the scent of Grandma's Avon Honeysuckle perfume. The dollhouse could conveniently fold up like a suitcase, complete with an easy carry handle. It may not have been as fancy as the double-decker Barbie Dream House with a working elevator, but the little cottage was ideal for traveling to Grandma's house, or Dad's apartment, or back home to Mom's modest rental. Barbie and Grandma were reliable parts of the customary rotation.
Unlike the cadence of my grandmother's voice, Barbie's voice was my own, only more exotic. Camouflaged in a try-on tone I'd borrowed from my more mature sixth-grade cousin, my experimental pitch was peppered with phrases I'd snagged from television to use in Barbie's conversations with her boyfriend Ken.
At the time, my mirror image had much more in common with Skipper than Barbie. Like Skipper's, my corn silk hair was stick straight with a row of blunt cut bangs fringed across my forehead and my freckled face was a no-makeup zone. My Barbie envy centered on her voluminous curls, her blue eye shadow, her interactions with Ken, and her cool grown-upness. I don't recall any bosom jealousy. Not that Barbie's ta-tas weren't conspicuous, they just didn't register with a naive adolescent as an integral part of her allure.
I would slip bright blue satiny ball gowns over Barbie's thick head of poufy hair, fasten the Velcro at her impossibly skinny waist, and slide sparkly silver plastic stilettos onto her feet, which were permanently in the tiptoe position.
“Rachel!”
A final cue to slide my own bare feet into white Keds, leave a naked but unembarrassed Skipper laying on the floor, and scurry outside and down the porch steps.
Grandma looked nothing like Barbie. Her short, gray hair was pulled back from either side of her face, held in place by practical tortoiseshell combs. She wore loose cotton dresses with twin patch pockets reliably stocked with assorted old-fashioned hard candies. I'm guessing Grandma never owned a pair of stilettos. She opted for black lace-ups with sensible rubber soles, paired with tidy white ankle socks. Unlike Barbie's waist, which was the size of a spool of thread, Grandma's middle was wide, puffy like a marshmallow, and ideal for hugging.
While Barbie spent hours in her closet or her pink plastic convertible, Grandma preferred the dirt. Barbie may have achieved glamour girl cred, but my grandmother earned her own legendary status in our small Midwestern town. Notorious for her green thumb, she nurtured showy blooms that were the exclamation point of the neighborhood. Folks would come from down the street or miles away to gawk, take pictures, offer compliments, or beg for gardening advice.
Grandma's house was a stark departure from Barbie's cool crib, but it was welcoming and comfortable in all the secure, important ways. From a child's eye view, the two stories, and white clapboard on the corner of Lancaster Street and Broadwyn Alley seemed colossal and playfully spacious. A front porch with black wrought iron railings and hanging baskets brimming with hot pink geraniums ran along the entire front of the house, a space that doubled nicely as my fictional greenhouse and my imaginary flower shop. A narrow garden sidewalk ran along the side of Grandma's house. My baby footprints and my name, 'Rachel Ann', were inscribed on the cement slab that intersected with the main sidewalk, a special honor I likened to the celebrity footprints at Grauman's in Hollywood. In the yard beside the front porch, a collection of purple and pink tulips annually sprouted toward the sunshine. A raised bed, made of shiny, multicolor rectangular tiles, supported the tulips, and served as my personal circus tightrope. Arms outstretched to each side, like a plane ready for takeoff, I'd teeter with one foot in front of the other around its perimeter, perilously navigating the high wire above the astonished applause of my imagined audience below.
Pretending was a common link between Barbie's world and Grandma's house. Like a magician's trick, pretend held elements of whimsy and wonder. It offered carefree abandon and opportunities to try out new stuff without embarrassment. In retrospect, we outgrow our toys, and pretend to get packed away with them somehow. Our participation in the magic snuffed out by gusts of reality and restrictions, our fearless experimentation suffocated by onslaughts of peer pressure and middle school anxiety. The unbridled joy slipping past us before we ever recognize its lamentable departure.
In the years since my childhood, Barbie's reputation has taken a hit. She became a poster girl for materialism and a controversial lightning rod for sexist symbolism. Lumped with the likes of cover girl supermodels and airbrushed celebrities she stood accused of peddling fictional, false ideals for generations of young girls. Penance rained down on Barbie's waterfall blond head as she endured retail slumps and as she watched a bevy of competitors who looked like they were going to dethrone her. Cabbage Patches, Beanie Babies, and American Girls were just a few with the intent on charming their way into her market share.
Eventually, Babs made strides toward redemption. She expanded her skin tones, crossed cultures, and traipsed her tip-toed heels into a variety of professional careers. Regardless of her advancements, she mostly resisted sacrificing her impossible figure, her penchant for fashion, or her unrealistically sculpted features. Throughout a variety of incarnations and public opinion, Barbie persevered.
Today, poised for her upcoming big screen debut in the feature film bearing her name, Barbie readies for her close-up and a new round of scrutiny. The highly anticipated movie has the potential to help define Barbie's place in the modern world. With Margot Robbie in the title role, an all-star supporting cast, and Greta Gerwig [Lady Bird, Little Women] directing, our girl Barbie is in capable hands.
Regardless of box office success, despite Barbie's history of noisy detractors, and even if I'm counted among the minority, I've decided to remain stubbornly perched in her corner. Since when are personal growth and evolution grounds for condemnation? Isn't embracing innovative ideas an admirable virtue? What if resistance to core change was Barbie being true to herself? Just Barbie being Barbie?
At the risk of having my feminist card revoked, I choose to cut Barbie slack, in the same way, I admired Grandma for honing gardening, cooking, and child-rearing skills amid a modern equality movement that assessed women's value based on their career achievement outside the home. Lucky me to have diverse, worthy female influencers, even before influencers were a thing. If Grandma never trash-talked Barbie and vice-versa, who am I to judge?
Grandma and Barbie looked nothing alike. Their wardrobes and houses were vastly different. Barbie mastered a variety of enviable careers. Grandma's talents involved growing things well, flowers, and children.
But Barbie and Grandma shared surprising similarities. Both were unapologetically faithful to who they were. Both seemed secure enough in themselves that I doubt either questioned their personal sense of self-worth. Both provided me with launch pads for pretending. And they each offered a panacea to angst-ridden adolescence, that impossible tug-of-war time that yanks us in opposite directions, rooting us in our familiar carefree childhood and simultaneously pulling us, along with our imaginations, toward the shiny possibilities of growing up.
I don't know what became of my Barbie doll collection. Barbie, Skipper, and all their belongings were stuffed into their suitcase cottage and donated to a charity, relocated to a neighbor girl, or sold at a random garage sale while I was away at college. I can't recall when we played together for the last time. But I could never jump onboard the Barbie-hater train. Give me a seat in the pink plastic convertible instead, please. Barbie and I were too tight for betrayal. How do you forsake your childhood ride-or-die in favor of suspect scapegoating?
Other unknown families have long since occupied Grandma's house on Lancaster Street. I live far away now but the last time I was in the area I stopped by, stalking the perimeter for a sentimental look-see. The tiled tulip bed, chipped and faded, was now a child's sandbox. The high wire act was permanently retired around the same time that circuses became obsolete. I lingered long enough to trot my high heels over the garden sidewalk. My baby footprints are barely discernible now, any stake of my claim diminished, along with the letters of my name, hardly readable and disintegrating into the aged cement. Time, like popular opinion, has an indiscriminate way with things.
My grandma died long before I began adulting. Each spring, with the first smell of freshly mown grass and whenever I'm digging in the dirt, tending to my own tulips, I feel her with me. The April breeze whispers her sage floriculture advice and carries an aromatic waft of Avon Honeysuckle. Sometimes I imagine Grandma and Barbie co-existing amicably in a celestial utopia with bold pink cottages and fragrant gardens. Grandma's assessments of my own, grown-up, Barbie-inspired fashion sense remain ambiguous. Judgment was never part of her modus operandi.
Lori Carson is a former freelance journalist and cable television host/producer. She lives in southern California.
“ …Barbie and Grandma shared surprising similarities. Both were unapologetically faithful to who they were. Both seemed secure enough in themselves that I doubt either questioned their personal sense of self-worth.”
Yepp. I grew up in one of those households where Barbies were banned. But even from afar I can see that that girl had been true to herself through all the generations. When it came to my own daughters I took Grandma’s approach: co exist without comment or judgment. There were Barbies in our house for a while. Like you, I remember them arriving and they seem to have left now, but I don’t remember when. More power to them, off in their new careers.