A Doll's House
This Barbie is Driving a Mini-van 🎀
Surprise dispatch! Hitting your inbox today with a faint whiff of coconut sunblock and pink glitter.
First: I’m sorry to report that I still haven’t turned in my overdue homework. I promised a post-digital nomad wrap-up “sometime after Easter,” and then I watched that deadline whizz past.
Call it unwavering support of the WGA strike, or call it what it was: Writer’s block and some good, old fashioned existential overwhelm. But if anything can temporarily pull me out of a slump, it’s the sparkling pink frenzy that the Barbie marketing team has whipped us into.
So here I am, humbly hitching my neon roller skates to the Barbie bandwagon and celebrating opening weekend with an homage to the Barbies that dominated my free time circa 1999.
As a kid, I kept my Barbies the same way I currently spend my weekends at home alone as an adult: half-dressed and sporting various levels of deconstructed ponytails.
This was back in the days before I had any sort of disposable income, so my Barbie collection was built slowly on the backs of birthdays and Christmas presents, plus one Barbie windfall when I had my tonsils removed in Kindergarten. (Sometimes I wonder if this is what I’ll have to resort to again if I stay a spinster and never have a wedding registry.)
My sister had a luxurious, two-story Barbie Dream house and a purple Barbie convertible. My mother claims that this was mostly because her birthday fell right after the post-Christmas toy sales.
I had a summer birthday - which meant I got a used hot pink Barbie minivan from a consignment sale???
This clear discrepancy in our Barbie’s socioeconomic status led to some very creative childhood playtime.
My sister would unfold her Barbie mansion in one center of her room. She’d scatter her children around the yard and prop her Ken doll up against the kitchen wall, where he’d stay for the entirety of our playtime - presumably preparing an elegant all-candy meal for his family.
(In reality, he had to stay still because his arms had a tendency to pop off at the shoulders. Even rich Barbie had problems money couldn’t solve.)
Meanwhile, in the hallway outside of the room, I would carefully construct a house of hand-me-downs. It was clear, even then, that our Barbies were in different tax brackets and the HOA wanted me gone.
I had acid green, yellow, and brown striped inflatable Barbie furniture from my mom’s Barbie days in the ‘70s. I’d lay a scarf on top of a large book, creating my own ranch house with eclectic wall-to-wall carpeting.
My Barbies didn’t have closet space, so I’d stack their clothing in the corner of the living room. They didn’t have a bed. Barbie slept on the inflatable couch and Ken planked on the coffee table like a gentleman.
As we had no kitchen, my sister graciously hosted most meals in her Dream house kitchen.
My sister’s Barbie would drive her convertible back and forth between the store – a large bucket filled with velcro clothing and mismatched shoes – and “soccer practice,” which is what we called it when we’d hide our Barbie children in the closet and let our Barbies have some “me time.”
While flashy, the purple convertible proved an unreliable option for a Barbie with several children. I often had to strap on my pink metallic power suit and run the carpool in my minivan, as her backseat was filled with ballgowns.
She had matching blonde Barbie children, with color-coordinated Barbie kid clothing. (Canonically, I think Tommy and Kelly are supposed to be Ken and Barbie’s younger siblings? Lifetime movie family dynamics at play…)
My children, like my inflatable furniture, were hand-me-downs.
There was Bethany – my daughter who wasn’t actually a Barbie. Bethany was a doll from the ‘70s with much more realistic proportions, and therefore, enormous in comparison to the rest of her family. She often had to walk behind the minivan, because she couldn’t fit through the moon roof. 😔
There was also Biff. He was rescued from a drain pipe in army base housing by my grandfather in the ‘60s, so he had patches of greenish-blue skin where the metal inside his rubber arms and legs had rusted and discolored him. He had a Barbie kid-sized head but a very tiny body.
This band of misfits was led by a Barbie who, though crippled by the tooth marks in her feet after my cousin tried to chew them off over Christmas, never gave up appearances.
Her friends never sensed her financial ruin because she wore formal evening gowns to playdates and chic Parisian capri pants on coffee runs.
Now I look back fondly at the retro furniture. Bony Barbie butt cheeks on a hard plastic Dream house couch? No, thanks. That hallway ranch house had more character AND more room for dance parties. (And now I’m trying to buy a 70’s ranch house in real life. Coincidence?)
Driving a used Barbie minivan didn’t hold her back from becoming a veterinarian-slash-actress. Maybe it only made her more relatable. “Celebs. They’re just like us.”
And my Barbie must have still been a good catch, even though I’d once brushed out her curls and instantly regretted it - because my Barbie was happily married to “Better Ken,” whose arms didn’t fall off.
Despite her dismal credit rating, her messy hair, her disorganized 70’s living room, and her bulky van parked out back – playtime always began with fifteen minutes of hunting down a matching shoe.
And it always ended the same way: With our rich Barbies and our poor Barbies side-by-side, laying naked in a heap, abandoned in favor of the television.
Happy Barbenheimer, everyone!