Beyond Plastic

I'm told Barbie is a bad role model. I hear she's anti-feminist and a threat to women's progress in the world. Whatever. I'm smart, confident and capable and I love Barbie. Yup, I said it. Barbie's my girl.

I think I was about five or so when I got my first Barbie doll. Getting a Barbie was major, not like getting clothes or toys. Really. Because Barbie wasn't a toy - she was an investment. My little sister and I couldn't count on getting one every birthday. The birthdays when we did get them are among the ones I still remember very clearly.

My first Barbie was named Agnes, after the aunt who bought her for me. A couple of identity modifications later, and she's now known as Rachel. (She went through an Amy phase, but we don't like to talk about that.)

While some girls spent hours brushing Barbie's hair and keeping her dressed in the same old clothes for months, my sister and I had ambitious plans for our plastic posse. First of all, they had to have names. "Barbie" was like "Jane Doe" - each doll needed an identity, a background, a tortured past. We had the rich, upper crust family, the poor orphans, the adopted daugther, the cop, the fashion designer, the model, the scientist...we had a whole TV cast and they even lived in their own make-believe town. And yes, they all had their own personalities and individual styles.

Barbie clothes and accessories were expensive, and asking our mother to buy them, after spending so much on the dolls themselves, was unimaginable. So we got creative. We made them everything from Catholic school uniforms to wedding dresses. Each new Barbie game required a new wardrobe, and we became consummate costume designers. The stories we came up with were almost as fantastic as the clothes - we got so good at making our own versions of things that it extended to our own stuff. We can be recycle anything. We got creative in other ways, too - when we didn't have enough Kens to go around, we were open to cross dressing. When a Barbie found her way into the jaws of one of our dogs, we didn't write her off. We improvised. So we have Tyler, a combination of Cindy's head and Ken's body, Dawn, the one-legged reporter, and Sue, who has no legs left at all.

It is a little creepy that Mattel has gone to the extent of getting lawyers for Barbie and putting out public statements when she breaks up with Ken. She is, after all, just a doll. But, unrealistic physical proportions aside, she represents a whole lot to girls like me who grew up idolizing her. And no, I'm not just talking about impossible beauty ideals and absurd social expectations. She represents art, fun, hours of wonderful childhood memories, imagination and a spark of creative genius that, like her, never dies. Barbie pushed me to think outside the box because she was just too cool to wear one rhinestone covered jumpsuit all the way into the 90s. She had to have options, and I had to come up with them. She inspired me to come up with new ideas, new stories, new characters for her to portray. She still inspires me by reminding me how much fun it was to come up with a whole storyline, plot, characters and clothes in one day.

My Barbie collection has now taken up residence at the top of my closet, in a massive bag bulging with the clothes, shoes, accessories and props my sister and I designed over the years to make our games more interesting. I don't play the games anymore, but the stories never stopped coming. I may have traded the world of plastic dreams for the real world, but, thanks to all those hours of Barbie games, I have options, too.