poPReflection

2009 has one very important milestone, if nothing. It’s not that we *finally* got a new President, reached all new flooding records in certain states, or even that we’re on our last year we can wear the doofy glasses with the year’s zeros as eye holes. No… there is something far more important. Barbie is 50. This is a cause for a flashback blog! *cue smoke screen and trippy music*

Like every little girl, I too played with Barbies as a child. In fact, I still play with Barbies – both with my sister (who is 8) and the little girls I babysit (who are younger). They aren’t quite the same as I remember them. They actually look slightly more human, if you can believe.

The Barbies of the late 80′s/early 90′s were some of the most garish, most over the top, unrealistic looking dolls that could have been made. I had a ton; Rockstar Barbie (with the Q-tip hair), Doctor Barbie (with the cleavage baring dress), Wild’n'Style Barbie (with the hair you could Velcro back on after you cut the top layer off), and a whole slew of Disney based Barbies – including, but not limited to Ariel, Pocahontas, Belle, Esmeralda, and many of their little sidekicks. THEN… there were the Spice Girl dolls – which were not actually BARBIE, but pretty damn great. Whole ‘nother post, though.

As a younger child, I loved my dolls dearly. They built forts in my room and swam in my bathtub. They suffered willingly through my “beautifications” which always seemed to end with a lot less hair on their head, and a few new sharpie tattoos. Even Ken, back when he was Barbie’s main man, had that smile plastered on his face as I painstakingly drew mock Chinese symbols on his chest to make him a member of a boyband. Sadly, his album never charted and he was quickly dropped from KDB Records.

Barbie was more that just a toy; Barbie was an escape. In the apartment complex I lived in as a child, my friends who lived near by and I would haul ALL our Barbie materials out, and set up shop in the hallway. We had beach parties, kidnappings, weddings, babies, pop concerts, and daring escapes all before dinner. Regardless of what had happened only a few minutes before, Barbie was always ready for the next thing.

As time progressed, my interest in Barbie was slowly being lost – mostly because it wasn’t “cool” for a 9 year old to still play with dolls. Instead of looking like a glamor icon, they became archaic reminders of the fashion era we called the 80s. The hair and tattoos that I worked so painstakingly hard to perfect with my kid-safe scissors looked matted and gnarly. They soon were housed in a giant Tupperware box along with their plethora of accessories to be done away with. In spite of that assessment, I would still take them out from time to time and wish my friends still understood the appeal.

Where are my Barbie’s now? Most of them ended up decapitated, accidentally I swear, during my Tutor Dynasty phase. The ones that survived are now safely in my sister’s loving hands, where instead of being “beautified”, they are being housed in her giant castle. Even her interest is begining to wane, and I fear that soon they will be facing the tupperware again; Waiting, waiting, waiting, to be taken out and played with again.