Sunday Newscape Magazine

It has come to my attention that Barbie and I are nearly the same age. She recently celebrated her 50^th birthday, and I’m not far from that particular milestone. But I am apparently more upset about this fact than Mattel’s plastic princess, even though she will get her AARP card before I get mine. Maybe that’s because all of Barbie’s bodyparts have remained toned and pleasingly perky through five decades, while mine have - well, that’s probably more information than you need.

The blond bombshell and I have had a roller-coaster relationship. When I was a little girl, I idolized her. My mother was concerned I’d grow up thinking the perfect woman was 12 inches tall with a four-inch bosom. But she needn’t have worried. I played with a whole bucket of Barbies, and my mind was never narrowed by doll dimensions. I grew up to dream of having a much larger bust measurement than that. Not that dreaming about it did me much good.

Eventually, my mother stopped worrying and grew quite fond of my Barbies. She made little outfits for the dolls that matched the ones she made for me. My favorite was a purple sheath mini-dress. I have a picture of myself in that dress, standing barefoot in the grass, my knobby knees sticking out under the hemline. In the picture, I’m holding a purple-sheathed Barbie in each hand.

Sadly, only one of the busty beauties in the photo has a head. That’s because my little brother had a disturbing desire to decapitate toyland’s most famous female, and he succeeded often enough that my dad became quite an experienced Barbie surgeon, with a specialty in head reattachment. The day that picture was taken, I apparently had only one intact doll left and was probably waiting impatiently for Dad to get home from work. 

I retaliated against my brother’s Barbie butchery by hiding his Legos in my mother’s underwear drawer, effectively depriving him of the toys forever. In his cootie-fearing mind, no amount of soap could erase the contamination of female undergarments.

After a while, I became embarrassed by the matching outfits, and my ardor for all things Barbie began to cool. By the time I was a teenager, I would sneer at her various manifestations - doctor, astronaut, teacher, military officer and Madame President, to name just a few. The purple dresses somehow disappeared, and now I have only that picture.

My children have their own Barbie memories. My daughter played with dolls of every color and career. And my son carried on the family tradition of dismemberment. I once found a whole family of my daughter’s dolls hanging naked and legless in one of our trees. That’s probably an issue that should have been addressed with my son in therapy, but it’s too late for that now. My kids have moved on from Barbie, just as I did.

Today, however, I have a new appreciation for the platinum icon. In her own perky way, she was a trailblazer. And at 50, she’s still going strong. In fact, she’s sporting tattoos and looking like - to use today’s terminology - a cougar. When I turn 50, I very likely will not be sporting any tattoos or reminding anyone of sexy, predatory felines. But that’s OK. I still wish Barbie the best. And I thank her for the memories.

© Jackie Papandrew All Rights Reserved www.jackiepapandrew.com.