The Fine Art of Playing Barbies™️
How getting into the middle of the mess helps us lighten up a bit
My daughter is good friends with the girl who lives next door to us. Goldie is only a year older than her, and her family is sweetly and devoutly Catholic, which means on a scale of “little neighborhood punk” to “perfect child,” she behaviorally falls somewhere not near the punk side of things. She’s a good kid, and their friendship is a blessing, truly.
But one of the non-blessings(?) of this friendship has been the Barbie situation.
Last summer, one of my friends gifted Goldie this huge Barbie dream house thing that she found on the side of the road. When I say huge, what I mean is the house is almost as tall as I am, and I’m 5’7”.
When the neighbor girl discovered that Goldie was in possession of a Barbie house that was roughly the same proportions as a Volkswagen bug, she, in her infinite 9-year-old wisdom, and unbeknownst to us, decided to move all her Barbie stuff over to Goldie’s room so that she too could have access to the dream house. Hence, there is now a Barbie commune existing in my daughter’s room.
Before the Barbies decided to all move in together, Goldie possessed an extremely reasonable amount of them. Ian and I are Marie Kondo people—meaning we don’t believe in possessions overkill. We had bought her some Barbies, but not too many at all, and that was that. But once you add in a whole other household’s worth of Barbies…
Suffice it to say that these once innocuous toys have morphed into an 85 plasticated-person Kappa Delta sorority right before my eyes. The Barbies are officially out of control.
And you’d think the sorority would like to party in the 3-story dream house that attracted them here in the first place, but noooooo. They like to party on the large blue rug in the middle of my daughter’s floor. There are so many thumbnail sized pumps and tiny, mildly skanky frayed ball gowns littering the floor that I think the poor rug has begun to lose its identity—“Where does the plastic of the rug end and the plastic of the Barbie paraphernalia begin?” it asks me helplessly, it’s cries muffled under the expansive mountain of Barbie’s wardrobe.
To give you an idea, and this is no exaggeration, if Goldie wants to cross the room to get to her bed, all she has to do is wait for the next wave to come and surf there on a flotilla of communal Barbie flotsam.
Clutter raises cortisol in women, so you can imagine the anxiety this brings me every time I stand in her doorway and have to look at the Kappa Delta carnage that has become my daughter’s room. All they need is a burning car on a side street and some Barbie sized kegs, and I feel like I’m back at Chico State University. It’s uncanny.
But one day, about a week ago, instead of enjoying my cortisol high as I was standing at the doorway of her room, I decided to use my foot to shovel some buxom unclothed plastic bodies and their clothes aside so I could sit down on the poor blue rug.
This may have been a trauma response. A Stockholm syndrome “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” moment.
I absentmindedly picked a couple of nude bodies up and started to dress the things, for crying out loud. There were thousands, perhaps millions of outfit options within easy arms length of me anyway, so why not? Then I started to notice all the accessories at my disposal—headphones from the Skipper line, gaudy clip-on necklaces, tiny drink cups (all the Greek Chico State vibes) with rectangular handles to accommodate Barbie’s sharp, fused hands.
And suddenly, I was 9 or 10 years old again, sitting on the floor in my house with the handful of Barbies that my parents could afford for me, meditative in my decisions about pairing this skirt with that shirt because it goes with the shoes over there.
In a hilarious twist, looking at the Barbies on the rug has been one of the low points of my summer. Playing with those same Barbies while eye level with them, on the other hand, has turned out to be strangely calming and fun.
And weird, right?
Here I am in my early 40s, dressing Barbies on my daughter’s rug, and realizing that I’m getting more out of this regression into my childhood than I ever got from any of the pop things out there that are supposed to calm you down and help you be present. Deep breathing, cups of tea, ashwagandha—they are nothing compared to the strange, mesmerizing power of The Barbies.
The best part was when Goldie saw me doing this, she quietly sat down and began to play with the Barbies too, sort of easy like, so that she wouldn’t scare me away. The way you would treat a wild animal who has decided you are safe enough for a closer view. I could tell she was low-key blown away that her mom was sitting there in her world. If only she knew how blown away her mom was, too.
When I came to and realized I needed to leave Never Never Land because my adult responsibilities were calling me, I told Goldie that this was fun and that I had a great time playing Barbies with her. She told me I was always welcome to come back and play Barbies. 🥹
I don’t have a deep Christianeze spiritual meaning for this story. I don’t have a Bible verse to apply to my time on the blue rug dressing dolls as a middle-aged woman.
But maybe I do…
Sitting down on the rug in the middle of my daughter’s play world helped me understand her more. It gently convicted me of all the times I said snide remarks to her about cleaning up the pig pen that her room has become. It made me realize that Goldberry does not see anxiety when she sees her Barbie girls out at a sorority party—she sees imagination and the calming effect of working through outfit decisions so that Kappa Delta can go out for the night.
Sometimes we are so adult that we forget the bonding that can happen over Barbies. We are too comfortable on shore and cannot be bothered to hold our breath and dive deep into another person’s pool to see what their Little Mermaid heart is holding in high esteem these days. The famous scene where Ariel brushes her hair with a fork in her contraband magpie den of irrational, innocent dreams.
Anyway, I have softened up considerably to the fact that there are two household’s worth of Barbies that are now all under one roof raving.
And, to quote an Instagram post I saw from Andy Squyers, if that’s not trusting God, I don’t know what is.
If you guys liked the post I sent out over a month ago about a really lovely article that had to do with the postpartum body, I want to send out one more recommendation that flows along a similar vein. Actually, my post and the one I’m about to recommend to you were sent out within five days of each other. Crazy.
The post is by Elizabeth Berget, and if you have read my book, you’ll remember Elizabeth from the Hannah chapter where I quote another one of her essays as an important voice of reason in the “let’s religiously pressure moms and think it’s OK” chapter [spoiler: it’s NOT OK to religiously pressure moms].
Berget writes a lot about “the maternal love of God,” which, if you didn’t realize that God is not only masculine but also intentionally reveals His more feminine sides to us, then you haven’t read the writings of Isaiah.1 I believe Mrs. Berget has already sent off a book manuscript to a publisher about this very subject, so give her a follow so that you can keep up on her thoughtful writing and the progress of her book!
Anyway, here’s her article—love it.
In other news, I’m starting an online shop up again soon. I had an Etsy shop for a really long time—over ten years maybe?— and decided to close it down a couple years ago. But the truth is, I’m an artist. I like to make things. Creating—any sort of creating—is mental health mixed with calling for me. So I figure there’s no harm in regrouping and putting some of my stuff back up on the interwebs. I’ll have fine art, jewelry I’ve made, vintage stuff I’ve found at thrift stores. It’s gonna be fun, so stay tuned.
Toodaloo ya’ll, and look for me hopping back on here with more regularity now that school is getting back into session!
As always, thanks for being my amazing readers!!
Speaking of Isaiah 42:14, the esteemed scholar Kenneth Bailey writes, “Throughout Isaiah 40-66 the mother and the mother giving birth are positive images and symbols of salvation (cf. 49:15, 54:1, 62:4-5, 66:10-13)… God acts like a man in judgement and like a woman in salvation.” (Source, p.23, Emphasis his).