When Denise Stewart and I talked about how we felt about Barbies, it was clear we fell into different camps.
Denise was a Barbie girl. I was not. I wasnít really a baby doll girl either, though. For some reason, it was stuffed animals rather than dolls that fired my imagination.
I remember playing Barbies with one of my friends in kindergarten, or trying to. We would dress her up in the gorgeous gowns that my friendís mom sewed for her.
I admired the dresses, but Babs herself ó a stiff hunk of plastic with a PVC head ó mystified me. I often found myself wondering why I didnít ěgetî Barbie when so many of my friends were so jacked up about her. She was just so rigid, so frosty and self-possessed, despite the fact that she couldnít really do a whole lot.
Barbieís body defied nature ó all she could do was turn her arms like a windmill and splay her legs out in a forward split. She couldnít even sit in a chair and have her feet on the floor, since she didnít have a knee joint, for goodnessí sake. How could she possibly drive the Barbie Ferrari? To go up the stairs of her dream house, she would have to hop on those stiff, skinny legs, like a bird.
It did not escape my attention that my brotherís GI Joe doll ó oops, sorry Mattell, ěaction figureî ó was made to actually move and do things. He even had jointed wrists so that he could salute snappily or wield his white billy club if some drunken sailor got out of line.
I donít remember him playing with his GI Joe much, but I do remember his love for Betsy Wetsy, a doll that would wet herself after fluid was poured in her mouth.
He actually asked for one for Christmas when he was pretty young.
My father had a cow. (Well, in actual point of fact, he had lots of cows since we lived on a farm.)
I think he wanted to put his foot down, but my mother prevailed on this issue. She saw nothing wrong with her son having a baby doll, and the Betsy Wetsy under the tree that year wasnít for me; it was for my brother.
I think he played with her for a while and then moved on, of his own accord, to father-approved items like toy Oliver and John Deere tractors and other farm machinery, Matchbox toys, and HotWheels (which we often played together).
Iím entirely sure Betsy didnít inflict any damage to his masculinity, and it might in fact have eventually made him a better father, one with a heads up about a babyís shocking lack of bladder control.
My own girls had plenty of baby dolls and played with them here and there, with marginal enthusiasm.
The only doll that saw extended action in our house was a Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kid, whose battery-operated jaws could eat a tiny plastic carrot or French fry ó which could then be retrieved, unscathed by digestive juices, so that it could go down the Kidís gullet again and again ó until the battery died. I think the doll was later recalled because it chewed a 7-year-oldís hair right down to the roots.
My girls voiced the opinion that this little girl was not very bright, now was she?
Since ěfun first, safety secondî was our motto, we did not return our Snacktime Kid for a refund.
I didnít buy any Barbies for my kids but vowed to myself that I would if they ever came begging for them.
I would not, I told myself, sacrifice their potential playtime fun at my personal altar of political correctness. They never asked, so we remained blissfully Barbie-free until an aunt intervened ó worried about our householdís nefarious lack of Barbies, a consequence of my radical feminist views, no doubt.
Tennessee Barbie, in an orange and white cheerleader outfit, made her way into our house through the U.S. Mail. She was an appropriate choice, since we had lived in Knoxville and my husband had worked for the University of Tennessee.
Despite her big 80s hair and tanning salon hue, Tennessee Barbie was not particularly respected in our house, and I do recall she came to a rather unfortunate end in our backyard, naked and decapitated. I spotted our dog Seamus trotting around with her bony body in his mouth one day while her PVC head languished in another location entirely, still smiling, like the perky-to-the-end cheerleader she was.
Could GI Joe with the billy club in his bendable wrist have saved her from such a fate?
I suspect not.
As little affection as I had for Barbie, I didnít condone the particularly heinous crime perpetrated against her, so we all sat down and had a talk about giving away toys that donít appeal to us, rather than using them to orchestrate CSI scenes.
Itís a little early, I guess, but I sometimes think about the granddaughters I hope will be in my future and wonder: will they be Barbie girls? Will I find myself at a store, a small, smooth hand tugging at my old wrinkled one, directing my attention to a skinny plastic teenager?
I canít wait to find out.
Contact Katie Scarvey at kscarvey@salisburypost.com.