Barbies

We’ve always had Barbies in our house. It makes sense to me to have loads of them here. When my friend Natalie told me a few years ago that she had never owned a Barbie, I was shocked. She said that while babysitting a five-year-old girl, the little girl wanted to play Barbies, “I don’t know how to play Barbies. What do you do with them?” Natalie asked me.

Since playing Barbies is second nature to me, this comment shocked me even more. All you do to play Barbies is invent a character, and a story that, preferably, allows you to change the Barbie’s clothes often. First a character forms. The girl must have hobbies and talents; she also often has a social life that includes friends, roommates, sisters and a boyfriend. Usually gymnast, ballerina, and fashion model make the list of careers and hobbies. After the Barbie’s character has come together, she needs a name.

Now, you can’t have a Barbie named “Barbie.” Barbie is the name of the doll not the individual, the first thing a Barbie needs to transform from a Barbie to a character is a name. My friends and my sisters and I would labor over the names of our Barbies. Vanessa, Jessica, Charlotte, Emily…it can take time to find the one that fits. But when you light upon it you know it is the one. It just feels right. Her name somehow connects to her personality; there is some psychic invisible bond that connects the name to the person being imagined. From here it is easy to start to play. You may have to establish a context of where the Barbie lives, and negotiation with the person you are playing with may be necessary. But so long as you have the character the scene is set; now she can act, think, and talk.

Playing Barbies is just writing a story without a pen or acting without script and stage. It is the “playing pretend” that comes so easily to children. Perhaps for some this is a complicated process or a laborious chore, but for me that ability is still second nature, or maybe it is actually my first nature. Maybe who we were as children is actually more important that who we are as adults; maybe we are still just people playing pretend, but the game is more complicated now because it has heavier consequences.

As a child I played Barbies almost daily, that’s why it was inconceivable to me that my friend had never played with Barbies. I guess that proves that every girl’s childhood is different. Lydia, my younger sister, preferred to be the Dog of course. She approached the game of Barbies much differently than I did; she wanted to dictate the game rather than wait for it to unfold. One day, I was so sick of the dog being in charge I told Lydia she couldn’t play. We still all laugh about how she went crying to my mother, “They won’t let me be the dog!” Who would want to play the dog in the game? Surely the dog would have no say. Well that’s not how Lydia played it. “’Bark bark.’ I just said, ‘The house is on fire; now you run out and call 911.’ Then, ‘Bark growl Bark.’ I saved the baby. You say, ‘Good dog.’ Now the newspapers come and then they give me a medal.’” The humans couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I loved Lydia, but my older sister Elen was a more preferable Barbie companion. Our favorite game was “College Girls.” The context of the game was that our characters were college students. We made paper props for textbooks and homework assignments that we stuffed into small backpacks or displayed on makeshift tables. I do not know how we alighted upon the idea that we wanted to be college girls, but it became our favorite game. College was the ideal time of life.
It’s funny now to actually be in college and look back on Sunday afternoons with everyone napping except me and Elen, as we spread out baby blankets for rooms and hunted for pairs of tiny plastic high heels. And now in real life I am living those intricate games. I smile as I remember them because my real life as a college girl is just as good as I imagined it would be.