A rousing game of Barbie!

What I'm Listening To: Paralyzed by Rock Kills Kid

It's Barbie's 50th anniversary this year. There's tons of stuff and nonsense about this exciting event all over the Internet, the paper and TV. Just read her wikipedia entry to get the gist of it all. You know, the scandal about her not having nipples, how she's been the subject of numerous lawsuits and controversies, how she's led little girls to hate their bodies and spawned the feminist revolution against being plastic, etc etc. Yet I can't name one female friend of mine that didn't play with Barbie as a girl. I certainly did. Hells yes! Let me tell you all about it!

Well, back in the dark ages, when there was no cable TV, no CDs, no Ipods, no computers, and no mobile phones, and you even had to change the TV channels by hand (gasp!), I was a little girl living in Shorewood, WI. Maybe I didn't have a lot of friends to play with. Maybe things were a little, let's just say, uh, hectic, at home. But I definitely had myself a Barbie. And I luuuuurrved my Barbie.

Now every girl played Barbies differently, but my Barbie, like her owner, was a solitary creature. Friends never came over to Barbie's house. Barbie did not really socialize, either. And family? Snort! Barbie doesn't need a stinkin' family, 'kay? As for menfolk, heck, Barbie didn't need Ken either. I mean, I had a Ken, of course. But Ken had one outfit -- a tuxedo, the stud muffin! -- and you couldn't do anything with that molded plastic hair. And, as all Barbie owners know, the best part of owning a Barbie is doing her hair. Combing it. Braiding it. Putting it in a pony tail. Taking it down. Cutting it. You get the picture. So Ken really just sat in the Barbie suitcase waiting for his day to come. Sigh, it never did.

When I played Barbie, of course my girl had to do something all day for a living. Duh, she had to earn money for cute clothes somehow! She was, get this, a model. But my Barbie always seems to be sitting in a waiting room waiting for her photo to be taken. And since I haven't played with Barbies for over 25 years now, I don't really remember doing any photo shoots with my Barbie either. I just remember her sitting around...a lot. Maybe that's because I only had one piece of Barbie furniture -- a wicker chair. So Barbie just sat there and looked pretty. Chua, that's a model's job!!

My Barbie may not have had a lot of furniture, but of course she had a car. I just want to state for the record that even as a kid I thought all the plastic Barbie accessories available at the time -- the Dream House, the Corvette, and even that huge scary afghan hound dog -- were just R-O-N-G wrong. My Barbie was waaaaaaaaay too classy for pink plastic and glitter. She was a working girl, dude. No, not that kind of working girl, but the parallels could be drawn. ha! Sitting around dressed to the nines and waiting all the time are the hallmarks of OTHER professions that we won't go into right now. Anyway, since I didn't have all of Barbie's accoutrements, Barbie drove around in a clog, uh, I mean, convertible. Just because it didn't have wheels didn't make it any less of a slick ride. Jeez, use your imagination people!! I had to! :)

Once in a very long while I would play Barbies with a friend. I had my friend Jenny come over to my house one time with all her Barbie gear. But Jenny didn't play Barbies right. I mean, she would thump her Barbie as she "walked" her over to my Barbie's house, and the thumping almost bent her Barbie's legs in half. Yikes! Also, it was Jenny who kept making Ken and Barbie "make love". But Jenny called it something worse that started with the letter "F". OMG. Uh, my Barbie, like her owner, was a innocent little lady. Not some hussy, Jenny! Yeah, needless to say Jenny wasn't invited back.

Some friends, though, knew how to play Barbies in the proper fashion. My next-door neighbor Marla had set up her Barbies in a bookshelf in her attic, kinda like a multi-level condo layout. So I'd bring all my stuff over and set up in the empty bookshelf next door. I just remember spending HOURS playing Duran Duran's "Rio" album up there in that stuffy attic, and pretending that our Barbies were going on dates with Simon Le Bon and John Taylor. Oh, did I happen to mention that Marla and I were 12 years old at the time? Yeah, maybe a little old to be playing Barbies, but we didn't care. Half the time we were talking about boys instead of playing Barbie anyway. Good times.

One year I got the Barbie Makeover head for Christmas. It was just Barbie's head, and you could really curl her hair and put makeup on her. Awesome!! Remember those little wires in her hair so it would hold a curl? And the cute makeup cases? I played with that thing so much her hair started to fall out. More good times. Wonder where that thing is now?

Oh, I hearted Barbie all right. I played Barbies so much that one time, when I mentioned to my mom that I didn't have anything to do, she suggested that I "play a rousing game of Barbie", which became an inside family joke for years to follow. I don't have my Barbies any more, but I'm sure if I did I would enjoy a game or two just for fun. Except now instead of modeling and driving around in a clog, Barbie would play stuff like "Barbie partying at the club" or "Barbie auditions for a modeling reality show" or "Barbie tries to quit smoking". Yeah, good times.

Do you still have any Barbies? Maybe we could get together?? Please?? Call me!