Growing Up with Barbie

 Greetings EN502!

On a Saturday at 9:30 AM I saw Barbie in a packed AMC. I did not dress in pink (an accident), but the rest of the theater showed up in style. There was not a seat empty. Small children, elderly couples, and twenty-somethings like me all sat in collective anticipation. I have not felt such unity in the theater since the Hunger Games franchise. 

Growing up, I was a Barbie Kid™. I owned pregnant Midge Hadley. I owned Allan. I knew all their lore. I read books on Barbie and went down Wikipedia rabbit holes to learn more about certain dolls. I had played with baby dolls and American Girl Dolls, but nothing stuck like Barbie. The dolls were the perfect size to build beds for out of packing puffs and extra fabric. I sewed clothes for them by hand and orchestrated epic, continuous plot lines. I was always a kid full of stories and Barbie was my favorite platform to enact them. 

My fictional Barbie world was a tough one to leave — one that I am still trying to learn to let go. I am lucky to have had a long childhood, but it makes my entrance into adulthood all the more painful. I am also intensely sentimental and terrified of change. I latch on to physical objects as if they are able to freeze some version of me in time. I struggle to donate clothes, books, and toys. I do not want to get rid of these objects, because it feels like I am getting rid of some younger version of myself. I hear over and over again “the only thing in life that stays the same is change” but how can I let go of the girl I was? Friends say they are protective of the younger versions of themselves, but what if the opposite is true for me? The more I grow, the more I feel protected by my younger self. She is leading me, making sure her dreams come true, but she is also providing me comfort. If I am feeling unsure about my future I can always listen to the song I liked at twelve, read the book I did a report on in fifth grade, talk to my mom about some memory. I feel grateful to be so connected to my childhood, something I know not everyone has the privilege to enjoy, but I also wonder if it is holding me back. 

This crisis was most recently exhibited with the bed debacle. I have slept in my great-grandmother’s twin bed for twenty-two years. She was born before women had the right to vote. (Can you tell my family might have a thing with sentimental objects?) It is a sturdy bed, with nice details in the wood. It matches my sister’s bed (also a twin) and it is the only bed I have ever called mine. At college I had beds that were technically mine, but they always felt too temporary to be home. This bed, sitting in the bedroom I have done all my growing in, knows everything about me. There is no more intimate relationship. However, I am twenty-two years old. And most kids my age are sleeping in a double bed. 

For me, moving home means turning a space filled with the weight of childhood into a space I feel adult in — a complicated task when I cannot seem to say goodbye to the kid I was. The simplest way to do this is to take the double bed frame my parents have up in our attic. Coincidentally it belonged to my other great-grandmother. I would be swapping one historical bed for another. But it is not my bed. It is not the bed I stuck Barbie stickers to and woke up in on Christmas morning. 

As I sat in the theater, watching Barbie come alive in the real world, I empathized with America Ferrera’s character. Like Ferrera’s Gloria, I am trying to navigate a stage of my life filled with unknowns. It is time to move on to a bigger bed, a change that feels like it should be so simple for a girl my age, and yet here I am seeing Barbie in theaters and thinking about those stickers. For as much we change, we also stay the same, and I am finding growing up to include a lot of navigating the in-between. 

With teeth and love, 

Michaela Blue

Oh also - The Pacific Northwest was gorgeous. Trees! Ocean! The best swimming hole I’ve ever been to. I thought this post would be about that trip, but then Barbie came out. (I am struggling with adding photos).