I did not go through a phase as a child where I resented not getting dolls as presents or where dolls represented a girl world I was cut off from. It wasn’t like that. First off, I got to play with some girls I was friends with, and some of that play involved dolls. Second, when I lost that, when we all became older and I no longer had a girlfriend or a best friend who was a girl, it wasn’t the playing with dolls that I missed.
I could do the thing where we say “let’s pretend” except those weren’t the words we used, it was more “Ok so then the Daddy comes homes, and you be…” we just made stuff up for our own entertainment. As adults we think of it as art, perhaps, when we still do it. Making stuff up. Making stuff. Being creative. As a kid, I didn’t think of it as something I aspired to, or worried if I was good enough at it, if I was talented. It definitely wasn’t competitive. Playing with other kids was generating our own entertainment, and it was fun in its own right, not some avenue for some other purpose, social success or whatever.
Having said that, yeah, I did see that there were a different set of superficial symbol things associated with the girls, like different clothes that they wore and makeup and playing with dolls and stuff. Boys had a different pattern, and I always found the overall sense of who we were to be unadmirable, right down to most of the superficial aesthetics. Like watching the Super Bowl right now would be a boy thing for instance. I remember as far back as third grade that it seemed ridiculous that other boys so often aspired to these things that were ascribed to us.
And yeah, I did wonder if I’d cope at least equally well if I were perceived as a female person and called girl, thought of as girl, including the superficial silly things, all the pink etc, you know? Not like “that’s what makes a girl a girl” but more “Yeah well that’s part of the experience, having that shit flung in your face as a definition of you”.
Being defined by other people. That’s what brought me to this table. I gravitated to the tables where other people had something to complain about as far as being defined by other people.
It’s not about my right to wear lipstick or my desire to wear lipstick, for me, It’s about thinking the lipstick expectations would have been something I could have coped with, along with much worse things. I’d have been an okay girl if those things had happened that way.
I did finally get around to watching the Barbie movie. I’m putting this up in lieu of an attempt at movie review because I don’t feel particularly coherent and yet I want to discuss the movie. Lack of coherency is because… well, I was expecting either a Barbie-seizing kind of PowerPuff-Girls thingie that was assertive about Barbie power or else a sophisticated wry mockery of Barbie as per Saturday Night Live sketches. Neither is how the movie hit me.
The plot, the storyline, felt like tossed-salad randomness of childlike play-with-barbie events, initially in a dollhouse and then in accessory plastic cars but would run directly into adult conspiracy thriller involving the political and economic maneuvers of Mattel, Inc and the general “outside” society and the dollworld she came from. They asked a lot of cool questions and basically left them on the sidewalk to move on to other things, so the serious content didn’t manifest to me.
I woke up the day after seeing it, with a different take on it. Something gelled while I was asleep.
I had this image of girls who were also adult women, the same self, playing with Margot Robbie… here at this moment positioning Barbie to face to other dolls and have a conversation about whether Barbie set women back fifty years, or instead that Barbie was an inspirational role model. And then second later, the girls/women playing with their Barbies drop them into a plastic car and, see, she’s driving over the bridge here…
Yeah, well done. Playing with Barbies wasn’t centric to my life but I do get it.
—————
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women’s Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It’s a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I’m still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women’s Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you’re interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
genderkitten 