This was my very first Barbie Doll
ever. She was given to me by my mother one Christmas in the 80s. I don’t
remember how old I was but I think we had already moved from Brooklyn to the
Bronx. I might have been eleven. She had given me Brooke Shields when I was
younger one previous Christmas in Brooklyn but the only concrete memory I have
of anticipating Brooke was sneaking to the place where my parents hid the
Christmas gifts the night before and sticking my finger in the box just so I
could touch her hair which was very soft and thick. That’s pretty much what I
liked about Brooke Shields. That’s the only first impression of that doll I can
remember.
“Shirelle,” as my first Barbie came
to be named by me, was my first ever Barbie doll. Looking back at old sale
photos of these now vintage dolls on ebay, I can see for the first time why my
first impression of Brooke was not as indelible for me as was Barbie. It was
all about the way that Barbie is marketed, namely in the context of sex. The Brooke Shields doll was not marketed this way. She may have been Brooke Shields but she was not Barbie. Their was nothing sexy about the Brooke Shields doll. I now know that this was fully intentional in both respects.
When my mom gave me my first Barbie, I
looked at her and saw a sassy, sophisticated, voluptuous black lady. She had hips and boobs and legs, red
heels, a sparkly red evening gown with a high slit on one side and jewelry to
match, plus a comb. All of my toys up until then were baby dolls and stuffed
toys or dolls that were little girls. Barbie was the first “woman” doll I had
ever held or owned. Her big eyes and puckered smiling lips seemed to say she
had it all and I couldn’t see where she would have much need for me. Unlike my
baby dolls and stuffed animals, Barbie didn’t evoke a need in me to take care of
her, or teach her or tell her what to do. In a nutshell, she intimidated me. Shirelle spent a lot of time on her
posing stand doing just that, posing and looking fabulous. I had no idea how to
integrate her with my other toys.
There were no friends for her or rather no toys that looked like her. I
actually didn’t play with her much at all. Her entrance into my world felt weird and misfitted, kind of
like when my godmother would give me handbags as gifts. I loved getting them but
I had nothing to put in them, hardly a lip-gloss let alone anything else I could
think of. I still shoved my money in my pants pockets. I had not really become
a “girl” in quite that way yet. I watched the artifice of it happening from
afar, in books and on television and I admired it to be sure but it wasn’t
really me. I was more of a bookworm, living in my imagination and projecting it
into play on toys that seemed malleable and adaptable to my adventures. I think
that the only toys my brother and I played with that already had a popular
preconceived narrative were our Star Wars toys. But because I loved the Star
Wars narrative and found it seamlessly relatable at the time, it was an easy
story to replay and alter and retell in my own way.
