Barbie, My Old Friend

Excerpts from my Barbie journal. This has nothing to do with the movie.

I recently dug up my old Barbie journals, which contained stories in this vein, mostly where I cast Barbie as a dumb pink-obsessed bimbo:

In case you were wondering, the Nude Post Service was part of our recurring cast. This was a Barbie who we didn’t bother to dress, but delivered packages to advance a storyline. (The joke, of course, was that Ken was always REALLY eager to answer the door whenever she showed up.)

Armless Joe was a Ken doll who was missing an arm, and also got his own story at one point, though it remained unfinished.

I don’t know if there’s a lesson with these stories, other than that as a kid I did find them sources for joy and amusement, and that I struggled coming up with endings from a young age, same as I do now (WHAT HAPPENED WHEN ARMLESS JOE’S FRIENDS SAW HIS NEW ARM?!?!?!).

“Playing Babies is not a babish [sic] habit like people say it is,” I had written in another entry, perhaps not as convincingly as I would have hoped—I was twelve, and the last of my friends to outgrow them. “You get to know (and love) your Barbies.”