I LOVE HER I HATE HER

From age four to probably eight or nine, I was strictly a Strawberry Shortcake girl. Thanks to Mom and Katrina, I owned every Strawberry Shortcake doll that was produced between 1980 and 1985. I had themed bedding and dishes. Even the canopy on my bed was made from material patterned with Strawberry Shortcake. It was a lot ridiculous, but sometimes I miss that canopy bed. I can remember loading up all the dolls into the giant, plastic, Strawberry case, grabbing a blanket and marching out to the pasture where I would spend hours making those dolls have all kinds of adventures.

I wasn’t much of a Barbie girl.

Look, I tried. I wanted to like Barbie. Really. I did. I had two or three Barbie dolls and two of those Barbie cases that held the dolls and all the clothing. I spent a lot of time organizing the ‘closet’ of my Barbie cases. Most of my readers just read that sentence and said to themselves “of course you did.” What? My Barbies had a lot of clothing thanks to a mom who sews and loves garage sales. There was plenty to organize. This is really all I did with my Barbies. They did not have adventures. They had closet clean out parties. While this post is not intended to go in this direction, I have to point out that this explains a whole lot about the person I have become.

Any way… Barbie… I wanted to love her. Even when I out grew her, I wanted to love her. For the longest time, I owned an Astronaut Barbie that I kept safe in the original box. I wanted to buy into this idea that women could be anything because, LOOK! Barbie’s an astronaut! Chris and I made almost weekly trips to Toys-R-Us to just browse. He’d roam off to the SciFy area and I would roam around the Barbie section debating the need for the Doctor Barbie or the Veterinarian Barbie. I felt that Doctor Barbie was pretty important because for years before they released this one, all the Mattel line had was a nurse Barbie. The first time I saw it, I wanted to fist pump the air and shout out “Yeah, that’s right! We can be doctors too! Boom!” Once I made it past the career path Barbies, I would be smack in the middle of all the stuff I hated about Barbie, the fashion plate unrealistic beauty standard Barbie.

These were the Barbies I had been given as a child to play with because those career path Barbies didn’t really exist yet. They were not doctors or lawyers. Their sole purpose was to be beautiful and have the tinniest waste imaginable with perfect tits. I did my best with them, spent time brushing their hair and changing their outfits, but it didn’t take long to get bored. They just did not represent anything realistic to me. I was not a fashion plate kind of girl and criticism about my weight told me I would never come close to attaining that kind of beauty. Over time I would eventually end up cutting the hair short on all of them. I painted on pubic hair and added a drop of red nail polish to their underwear. Some acquired extra piercings and a tattoo. They sold some shoes for books. My mother said that I ruined them, but I argued that I improved them. These Barbies said “We can do anything we want. Period. Fuck the patriarchy and the social construct horse they rode in on!”

I started writing this all before seeing the Barbie movie because I was already having thoughts on it that I didn’t want to lose. I was writing this during a week when I had one too many interactions with men who questioned my abilities because of my female parts. I had one man explain tape to me and that I could get tape at Home Depot. My friend Amanda said that she would not have been surprised if the man told me that I needed to have my husband go buy the tape for me. Then Sinead O’Connor’s death hit the news and I deflated. I remember the first time I saw her. It was in her video for Nothing Compares To You and I was struck by her beauty, both physically and musically. When you get a chance, listen to her rendition of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. An amazing artist and such a brave advocate, she was our Joan of Arc standing up for the abused and saying a firm “NO” to corporate music and the commercialization of her art.

I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace - Sinead O’Connor, Emperor’s New Clothes

I know now that when I altered my Barbies I was attempting to make them reflect a person I wanted to be. Cool. Tough. Brave. A warrior. I may have managed to be half of those things. We’re taking the Cabbage to see the Barbie Movie tonight and while I love and trust Greta Gerwig’s vision, I have a feeling I’m going to love/hate this Barbie as well. A Barbie who questions death and existence and who struggles with the idea of hurting Ken’s feelings even when he’s driving her crazy.

That kind of Barbie may be too relatable.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Two, maybe three (?), years ago I impulsively bought a skirt from the sale rack at Anthropologie without trying it on first. Big expensive mistake. A few days after the purchase, I put that skirt on to wear to work and the buttons strained across my belly. I got all of the buttons buttoned, but the one at the waist was nearly cutting me in two. The skirt was too small. I frowned and shoved the skirt into the back of a drawer. Yes, I realize that I probably should have returned the skirt, but I am not good a returns. Particularly if it was a sale item. I feel like I am pulling off a scam or cheating on a test. A few months ago, I bought a dress online (from the same place). It is too big, but I like it like that. When I put it on, Michael said “but…you have no shape.” I cheerfully responded “I know right?!? I love it!” and I do love it. It’s like wearing a soft tent.

Clearly I do not know my size or how to pick up a tape measure and measure my damn hips.

I am reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. It is about a group of people attending a somewhat radical wellness retreat that promises to change their lives. The ten day retreat begins with five days of ‘noble silence’. No cell phones, laptops, TVs. No talking or making eye contact with each other. Diets specialized to each person. Individualized daily schedules. Daily blood draws and blood pressure checks. Counseling, yoga and meditation. It sounds extreme. It sounds downright awful and challenging. It also sounds heavenly to me. One character in particular is attending the retreat to specifically lose weight. She’s desperate to get her body back into the shape it was before having four children. She is recently divorced for the old cliche reason of the husband wanting an upgraded model. This character dived full in to this retreat, without any complaints or objections. In her first counseling session, she asked several times if she had lost weight. The woman in charge never answers her because she doesn’t want this character’s life change to be just about her weight.

Women said they needed to “lose weight” with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they’d committed.

Every pound of fat that I have allowed to settle onto this body has made me feel shameful. This wasn’t always the case. In fact I have a very clear memory of the day and moment that my weight became something that made me feel ashamed of myself. Sometimes that memory gets pulled from the back of my brain and placed front and center. I see myself in my hand-me-down swimsuit inherited from my sister and my reflection in the mirror is wearing an expression of shock over not looking anything like my sister did in that swimsuit. I hear the words that came out of my mother; how those words made me curl up with shame. Now that memory makes me burst into flames of rage over how that moment, that one moment, had me wasting so many years trying to get this body to look like someone else’s standard. This week, I pulled out that skirt from the back of the dresser drawer and I tugged it up and over my hips. I buttoned all of the buttons. There was no straining or stretching of fabric. My waist was not being cut in two. The skirt fits. The skirt fits perfectly and I am hyper aware of just how much this body has changed in just a year’s time. Those changes are the side effects. I did not set out to change the landscape of my body. I set out to lower my cholesterol and prevent the Type II diabetes that is so prevalent in my family. I did not lose weight. I gained health.

I have created my own standards.