I'm a Barbie girl!

barbie turns 50 today! not that i keep track of how old she gets, but today on the news they got random females to relate their relation to barbie and i decided she deserved one from me...because even though I'm trudging in my twenties, i still have all my barbies neatly stacked away with their box full of clothes and accessories! i don't remember when i got my first barbie or who gave it...but i remember my last. i gifted myself one on my 14th birthday and that too coz i couldn't resist. she was just so pretty! and partly because i felt angry at them for launching such beautiful and varied types, when all through my tender years they were almost all alike! so currently resting in the attic are 3 barbies, 1 skipper(for the uninitiated, she's Barbie's younger sister), 2 Kelly(her youngest sister) and hold your breaths...1 Ken(her boyfriend-i have the 80s one, only he's blond)!


if you ask me, Ken is my most priced possession. not coz he's a tall, handsome, blue-eyed blond male(:P), but because i know that at least in India, not many would have it. i don't know when it was launched here, i don't know exactly when it was banned(thanks to people who considered a boyfriend as a corrupting influence on 'indianness'), but i do know they happened in quick succession and somehow in the middle of all that my mother put in all her efforts to get me one. all because i said i wanted one! so of all the girls i know of around me, family school and college, I'm the only who can claim to have one!

as Aqua very rightly put it,

life in plastic, it's fantastic!
you brush my hair, undress me everywhere
IMAGINATION, THAT IS YOUR CREATION!

the last line i think best symbolises what barbie, over generations, has stood for. personally it was a way into life...how i pictured life, what i visualised my future to be, how love between humans was far more important than the lap of luxury, how i answered for myself the million questions of life! objectively they were family in some western concept, to me they were mine...i got to play fairy god mother, you see! i owe a lot to barbie. it kept me involved all day long, day after day for years. she's lived in bed sheet tents, pillow sheds, a 2 floor brick doll mansion(bhai built it all by himself for me), plastic box doll houses and even a shelf in my almirah(when i was tall enough to see in it and play comfortably too!).

she's worn clothes so impeccably stitched my me that i wonder why i didn't pursue design...ken's entire wardrobe was hand-made, since they were never available ready made. a pair of blue denims for all, a wedding lehenga, heavy sari(ma made), a two button formal suit for ken, a silk night suit and nightdress for barbie n ken resp, and as ma never fails to remind me, made from my silk kurta...apparently i thought it unfair that i should have a silk night suit, not them? that's all the wardrobe i remember working on...accessories were far easier to procure!

earrings, i remember, were promptly stuck in their head with no worries of trying to screw them on. bangles came from the metal rings around bhai's pens while shoes, slightly more permanent, were varied colour tapes! one obsession i had for my dolls were belts and bags-one for each occasion, one for every dress. now when i look at them, i wish i had those! my barbies always had a bath-twice a year! they had to scrubbed clean after a soak in warm water, their laundry was spread out to dry(our garden would resemble Lilliput for a day!) and their hair washed, conditioned(now i wonder why?) and blow dried. then I'd spend another day making their hair before setting them on the dining table in their finery for all to admire!
god! i love my barbies!

ps: the last pic is the only i could find of the barbie ken magazine! i've read a few..though not so archaic ones