Tuesday, March 08, 2005

rockin' it barbie style


from www.myscene.com

so i've been hearing that mattel, the makers of barbie have decided to make a doll in the likeness of lindsay lohan. i'm not sure what she did to deserve her own barbie doll, but it seems kind of crazy to me. apparently, the doll will come with her own director's chair and velvet rope. i guess if you're really interested, you can buy it this summer.

when i was little, i hated barbie dolls. all of my friends wanted to play barbie all the time, and i couldn't stand it. i was a much bigger fan of jem, or my little ponies, or cabbage patch kids. i would go to birthday parties and my friends would end up getting tons of barbies. i wanted to make sure it didn't happen to me, so i went around telling everyone not to buy me barbies for my birthday. my mom found out and wasn't too happy that i'd been so demanding about it, but the plan worked. i only got one barbie that year...and if memory serves me right, it was actually skipper. i did have two barbies that were only played with by friends. one wore a white evening dress with diamond earrings and a diamond necklace and the other one was some type of exercise barbie. i could totally be making this up, but for some reason i'm thinking it came with my "get in shape girl" stuff. anyway, they were never played with, until quints came along. you know, the five little babies that came together. i had 2 different sets, the reddish/brown haired regular quints, and the blonde haired peeing quints. you could give them their bottles and then they'd pee in their pants. very strange that any child would want that as a toy, but i know for a fact that i wasn't the only one. but they had to have a mom, or a babysitter, or an adult figure, so barbie or skipper was used.

okay, back to my hatred for barbie. i really don't know why i didn't like playing with barbies. it could be the fact that i had all boy cousins and i liked playing with their gi joes better (although i was a very girly little girl), or it could be the fact that i think barbies are dumb.

my mom's best friend had a daughter, kristy, who was a year older than me. she was the type of bratty kid who would say things like "if you don't play with me, i'm not going to be your friend." she was constantly talking me into doing things that i knew i wasn't allowed to do, simply because i knew she wouldn't be my friend if i didn't do it. i was 4 at the time, and i quickly learned not to let people walk all over me or talk me into doing stuff. one night, kristy and her mom had come over to visit. our moms were upstairs talking and we were in the basement playing. kristy wanted to pretend that we were barbie and the rockers. i didn't...i wanted to pretend that we were jem and the holograms. she was bigger, and older, and she used the "i won't be your friend" trick. so we ended up playing barbie and the rockers. there we were standing on stools, rocking out for our pretend audience when my mom sees us. she yells "girls, get down off those stools before someone falls and busts their head open." i can still to this day remember exactly what it sounded like. kristy jumps off her stool, and when she does, her stool falls over into mine, knocking me over. i fell on the floor and my head hit the corner of the fireplace. i don't remember much after that...being 4 years old probably has something to do with that. i remember crying because there was blood on my favorite shirt. it was white and it had a little girl fishing on it. looking back on it, i have no idea why that was my favorite shirt...but that's another story. my mom and dad take me to the emergency room and kristy and her mom follow us. the only thing i really remember is kristy crying and telling my mom that it was her fault that she made me play barbie and the rockers. i got a popcicle from the male nurse and i left the hospital with 5 stitches in my head. to this day i have a one inch scar on my forehead that always reminds me of barbie and the rockers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Think what it would be like if you were the oppsite gender who just loved Barbies? You would be labled by most people as unmasculine, gay, or gender confused even though none of those are accurate. We are not carbon copies where all females love dolls or doll houses or males only action figures or model trains for example. I have no desire to be female nor wear female clothing though I am attracted to only females. Yet, because I had included dolls in my choice of toys which are considered male appropriate, people assume that these describe me without a personal knowledge of who I really am. Atleast nobody stopped you from playing with your cousins' toys. I wanted to date; get married; have children; and own my own home. Therefore barbies, baby dolls, and doll houses seemed the natural toys to play with or desire along with my other toys. If a parent buys a toy that the child hates is a waste of money. Why even buy that toy in the first place knowing that the child will only want to ignore, destroy, or discard it as wothless? Look at the little girls who played with dolls and as moms murdered their kids. Did giving them dolls as little girls guarantee they would be good mothers? T%oys are meant to be fun and engage the imagination. Barbies are only fantasy representations which are inferior to real living human females. There was no desire to spend time dressing or undressing them. I liked them just as they came in their box. Though I enjoyed combing their hair, I never desired to be a hair dresser nor a fashion designer. I love model planes and trains but have no desire to ever fly on one. The possessing of a GI Joe never made me inlist in military service.