I should begin to explain the level of Barbie-spoiled my childhood was. Up until my parents split, they were able to provide a pleasantly average yearly Christmas Barbie experience for me. I would say it was possible to “spoil” me without spending a lot of money, $20 provided a pretty powerful Barbie experience for a small girl in the late eighties, and they were able to manage. After that, I still got Barbies from my mom (and I would maintain that today Barbie is pretty cool because they offer a lot of not-awful lower budget options). Plus, I garage saled that shit like bananas. My mother would give me a few dollars to spend at a garage sale at my own will (teachin’ me all her skills) and I ended up with fifty-cent seventies RVs and horses and elaborate unfolding houses for $1. But that’s not why I was so spoiled.
Listen, I have four sisters born between 1974 and 1982, plus three girl cousins who were born between 1980 and 1986. I was the youngest girl in the whole family on either side, and I got everything. I got every fucking toy they ever had. I had the ORIGINAL Barbie Dream House, which was Rebel’s. I had Peaches and Cream Barbie, which was my cousin Mandi’s. I had the most enviable Barbie collection on the planet, next to maybe my (still!) best friend Stacy, whose crafty dad built her a lofted bed on top of an elaborate Barbie mansion. By the mid-nineties I was by all accounts “too old” to play with Barbies, but I was lucky to have a best friend who Didn’t Give Any Fucks. Plus, my mom’s best friend’s daughter was a few years younger than me and I think my summers with her really gave me a chance to hold on to that stuff longer than I would have otherwise. The mid-nineties were all about a weird glorified retro, and my sisters’ seventies Barbie clothes were straight-up covetable, even by my wealthier friends.
The best part of everything? All of it is in my niece’s room now. She’s maybe ten but is homeschooled, and it’s really important to Rebel to encourage her to play Barbies for, like, ever, plus Rebel’s not done having kids any time soon. By the time all my nieces and nephews are done with the toys I grew up with (some of which, Barbies notwithstanding, were our dad’s), I might have kids (who knows). Rebel is dedicated to storing and keeping all of that stuff for us forever, and that’s really meaningful to me.
The Dream House didn’t make it, but Rebel bought her the newer version of it for sentimental reasons. Next time I’m there, I wanna get in that collection and document it. (She even still plays with dresses I sewed for my Barbies when I was a kid, which, CREYS.)
(One day I will tell you my Barbie Folding Funhouse experience, which is actually probably among the four or five most personal and hard-to-recount stories I could possibly share. You know, along with sexual assaults and my mother’s suicide attempt when I was a kid, lol.)