Life is a whirlwind right now and our campaign is kicking into turbo. So many places to be, palms to press, faces to know, and lists to tick off – neverending impossibly long lists. It’s worth it though. Democracy is worth it.
But a girl’s gotta have a little self-care time too. This week, it was all about seeing Barbie.
Now before I get into this, it’s important you know I had a very complicated relationship with Barbie growing up. I’m a child of the 1970s & 1980s and my mother didn’t approve of the doll. She felt Barbie saddled little girls with unrealistic expectations about what their bodies should look like. I don’t necessarily disagree, but for me, it felt cruel she wouldn’t buy them for me. She gave me what she said was a better fashion doll for little girls – a version of the doll she loved as a child had just been re-released for a new generation and you could buy wardrobe pieces and accessories you carried around in a branded plastic case that looked like a house – no Dream House available for this gal. Her name was Ginny and if you’ve heard of her, you’ll be the first person I’ve run into who has. The thing I remember most about Ginny – she had a pot belly. No unrealistic expectations for sure!
This image is triggering for me.
Not everyone in the family knew my mother felt this way, so I’d get an occasional Barbie from someone and my father wouldn't let her take the gift away. I think I ended up with about three Barbies before I outgrew wanting to play with her, which at my house wasn't much fun anyway because I may have had the doll, but I never got extra outfits or accessories. I fashioned clothes for her out of fabric scraps, but they sucked – really, really sucked.
Barbie and I had a clandestine relationship – one where I would meet her at friends' homes and we could play freely with ALL the things and mother would never need to know. Thinking back on it I may have gotten some dopamine hits from the sneaking around. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Flash forward a decade or so and I’m a young mother with two little girls. I was in an oppressive relationship with an Evangelical man who was working to control my every move: what I could wear, who my friends were, where I was allowed to go, even when it was or wasn’t appropriate for me to speak. My politics or feelings about human rights and religion were never aligned with his – something I guess I thought would change. Figured I could flip him. I never did and he never has. I divorced him nine years and two little girls later.
Back to those little girls. The level of Barbiedom I surrounded them with was almost vulgar. Just a grotesque display of pink and ALL the things – the house, the cars, the Power Wheels (two matching pink Barbie corvettes) Barbies in every skin tone, and my favorite of all time – Becky. Becky was in a wheelchair and she was a reporter and photographer for her school newspaper (swwwooonnnn!)
I bought her just after I landed my first real Newspaper writing job for a paper that served a Naval Air Station in Central California. I had just moved up from Orange County to follow my first husband’s Naval career. The reporting job was empowering! I worked in an office with three older men – all salty ex-sailors. One was a poet, another a Jeopardy champion and then there was my editor – a big, bearded photographer who loved pugs and wine. They let me talk about whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. They loved my writing and they laughed at my jokes. But more than anything, they knew I had to leave the man I was with. They knew that the so-called spiritual leader of my home was using religious doctrine as an excuse to control and abuse me. They gave me, not just the courage to take my girls and leave, my editor found me a higher-paying reporting job so I could take better care of my kids. He gave me up to a bigger paper so I could realize my potential.
Enter Matt – a self-proclaimed feminist, new-age, gorgeous, natural blonde who loved the Ramones and rollerblading. You can probably see where this is going.
Matt was no chauvenist. We talked about ideas. We read books together. He changed my mind about things. I changed his mind about things. We fell in love. We were young and we were adorable. My assistant editor at my new paper, a woman, called us Barbie and Ken. That was just the first time. It stuck for a while when we were still young and cute.
Matt immediately took to the role of little-girl dad. And there were times at the beginning of my career he became their primary caretaker. He would put one of them on his shoulders and rollerblade them to and from school stopping to pick flowers to put in their hair. Yes, ladies, he’s real.
Those little girls are now 33 and 29 with children of their own and Matt and I have a child of our own, a young man who is now 17.
And while Matt didn’t rollerblade me to the theater to see the new Barbie movie, he did put on his best Malibu Ken Hawaiian shirt, load me and our 17-year-old son into our aging Subaru, and drove us all there – happily.
And let me tell you, as soon as the movie came up on the screen the waterworks started for me. Nothing all that embarrassing, like I wasn’t sobbing or anything but I was misty enough to soak through two dinner napkins during the film. The little girl sitting next to me kept looking over at me quizzically – she was about nine. I don’t think she got it. I hope she never has to.
You know the song, Killing Me Softly? That’s what Barbie Director Greta Gerwig did to me – I felt she’d found my letters and read each one out loud.
Here’s my proof. Take Matt. My real-life Ken of 24 years. He had to be a little uncomfortable sitting that long in the theatre. Two weeks ago he was beaching (because that’s what this man does. He beaches!) and he fell off his paddleboard in shallow water and hit the bottom head first. He’s still recovering. So the scene where Ken goes surfing on the plastic ocean and instead nearly breaks himself because there’s no actual water – yeah, something a little like that.
Enter the political Barbies – Barbies running things! All the things! Yes!
And the scenes where she’s rolling down the road on the way from and to Barbie Land listening to the Indigo Girl’s Closer I Am to Fine. Well, that’s my go-to-get-that-chin-up-get-over-it song. It’s the song that helped me realize I was going to be OK when I left my first husband. It’s a track on my campaign jukebox playlist. Download the playlist! It’s an empowering and thoughtful list of tunes, if I say so myself.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3H234Fzchn1CT4MWHGwuaW
Oh! Weird Barbie! My favorite part of the film and the most important character. You see, Weird Barbie is my friend Melissa Lukeson. I’ve written about her in other diaries. She is literal art – how she looks, how she lives, what she accomplishes – ALL art. She is a driving force behind my campaign. She is an activist, a community organizer, a humanitarian, and more often than not, the smartest person in the room.
So, here comes the next parallel and this is important – the thought, effort, and planning that went into taking back Barbieland from Kendom is exactly what I need to do in my race to flip my house district to blue. The incumbent and apparent Republican Christian Nationalist I am up against wants a Virginia that looks like Kendom – a Virginia where men rule and little ladies know their place. A Virginia where only traditional wives and families belong. A Virginia where birth could be forced on little girls. A Virginia where a Barbie like Midge wouldn’t be discontinued, she’d be the standard. A Virginia where a little boy caught playing with a Barbie at school would be reported to his parents. A Virginia where all women would be held to the ideal of a Proverbs Woman and where librarians are vilified.
Republican Incumbent Anne Ferrel Tata.
Thy Kendom come. Thy will be done.
The Virginia we have isn’t perfect, it can be better or it can be worse. We are the lone southern holdout when it comes to full reproductive rights – but that could change overnight and my opponent aches to be a part of ending abortion rights for Virginians and her friend, our Governor Glenn Youngkin, has said he will “gleefully” sign that bill.
I’m in the fight of my life. I’m in this fight for ALL of our lives.
I’m not trying to turn Virginia into Barbieland. I’m just trying to keep it from becoming Kendom.
Will you join me?
