I was the typical girly girl who loved to play with Barbie dolls, makeup and dress-ups.
When I was alone, Barbies were my life. I would spend hours by myself playing with a large collection, including every single doll in my Barbie Soap Operas because I didn't want to "hurt their feelings" by leaving any out of the drama. And when I say drama, I mean
drama. My mom has told me that she would hear me yelling, "Oh mercy! Mercy!" and would rush up the steps to my room, only to discover that I was enthralled in a situation of Barbie running over Ken in her hot pink Corvette. This was a common occurrence. I can't recall if Barbie was a terrible driver, or if Ken just really deserved it.
What my mom didn't hear was the sensual side of Barbie and Ken- they were always "
doing it". Now granted, I had no clue what "
it" was until I was done playing with Barbies. But I remember making them hug (with their arms straight out) and smacking them into eachother a whole lot. Sometimes they were naked, sometimes fully clothed. For a very long time I had only one Ken doll and about 12 Barbie dolls; so Ken got around.
A lot. (That was probably the cause for most of his car "accidents" with Barbie.) Sometimes he would kidnap one of the girls and take her to a far away cave, where they would fall in love and get it on. Sometimes he had a large wedding with one lucky girl, and then he'd cheat on her with her bridesmaid(s). Sometimes he had split personalities, which was made his cheating more excusable. Some days he was into the typical blonde Barbie, but other days he wanted the spicy Mexican pageant winner. Most situations ended with either pregnancy or death. I don't how I thought of these things, but I'm sure a lot of it had to do with me watching the soap opera "Another World" with my mom whenever I could. Things improved in Barbie World as soon as I added another Ken doll to the mix, plus a Skipper doll to look after all the bastard children. I probably don't have to tell you that Ken had some statutory issues...
I also owned a massive collection of dresses, uniforms, pantsuits, dance outfits, and anything I could find made with sequins- most of which I still have in a Rubbermaid container up in my attic. It's pretty impressive, considering that I never took a single dance class and we rarely ever bought anything for my collection. I must have had a reputation amongst my mom's friends, who would happily donate their "trash" to become my treasure. I am eternally grateful. I will have to dedicate an entirely seperate post to my shoe collection/obsession...
My most prized dress-up piece was a delightful concoction of royal purple spandex, gold sequins, and white fringe. (My heart skips a beat just thinking about it.) It was a dance outfit that had belonged to my mom's friend's daughter. She must have had a ton of outfits because she took dance for several years, but I still can't believe that she was able to part with this amazing leotard. She must be a saint. I should add that the outfit was completed by 2 purple spandex arm things. I don't know their official name, but they were basically leg warmers for arms. Sometimes I wore them together, but I often went without the arms. The arms became usefuk=l as "casts" for when we pretended to break and arm or leg. Anyway, I called this particular leotard my "shimmy-shimmy" dress. My favorite thing was to get all decked out in bright blue eyeshadow, hot pink cream blush, and red lipstick, and head down to the dining room. Once in the dining room, I would figure out where the sun was able to hit the sequins just right so that there were hundreds of reflections on the walls and ceiling.
And then I would shimmy.
Oh, how I shimmied. White fringe would fly, sequins would sparkle, and I was a beautiful, tarted-up disco ball.
My mom used to babysit in our home to earn extra money. When I was in 3rd grade, one of her charges was Rachel, who was about 3-4 years younger/more impressionable than me. I took full advantage. One day I decided to tart her up and make her wear one of my less-appealing dress-ups. In my defense, she was mostly covered up in a winter coat. I whipped out the 110mm camera I had been given for Christmas. I had only 2 pictures left. I snapped one of her and handed her the camera. This is the photo that resulted:
We used to send our film away to some company called York. It was cheaper than taking it to a store, but it took what seemed like forever to get back. By the time we sent that roll of film, we had accumulated several rolls to send with it. A few of the rolls belonged to me. When a huge package of freshly developed photos was delievered, I began to get nervous. A lot of tme had gone by since the picture was taken, but I always kept its incriminating existence in the back of my mind. Somehow, I was able to get ahold of the picture before my mom saw it. To this day I don't think she has ever seen it. I don't know what I was afraid of exactly; I just knew my parents wouldn't be happy about it. (Afterall, they had no clue of the promiscuity of my Barbie dolls.)
When I rediscovered this photo recently, it caused me to wonder: is skankiness a learned behavior, or is it inherent? It's not like anyone taught me how to pose like that! (I would like to add in my defense that I never magnified my skankiness; it only went as far as my bedroom at age 9 with that picture and my Barbie playdates.)
The title I used "When she was 3, her Barbie's always did it on the first date..." is a line from a Barenaked Ladies song that inspired me to write this post, and I feel it was written specifically for me. I would love feedback on your playing habits with Barbies- am I alone here?
