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Narrator: Barbie had anticipated many of the difficulties in her new life. Life was made of difficulties after all, along with changes and surprises, joys and disappointments and complications. So she coped with rush-hour traffic and chapped lips, and she knew enough to ask Gloria for help when her period started. When Gloria explained that this would happen for years and years, Barbie was horrified for a day before accepting it as the price of a real life.
Several difficulties, however, she had not anticipated.
***
“Say the word again?”
“Mansplaining.” Sasha’s voice dripped with satisfied disdain as she slammed her history textbook closed. Sasha did not appreciate homework, especially history, which she described as shit that white dudes decided. “It’s when men try to explain something to you that you know more about than they do.”
“Man. Explaining. Mansplaining.” Barbie wrote the unfamiliar word in her notebook. Gloria had suggested that she carry a notebook with her to write down anything she wanted to look up on the internet. It had been very useful, though she’d quickly learned the dangers of searching blindly. After she’d looked up CBT and found many results not about cognitive behavioral therapy, Sasha had turned on SafeSearch for her.
“Right,” Sasha said. “It’s like if you tried to teach Ken about beach.”
“But beach is his job!”
“Doesn’t matter. You think you know better just because you’re Barbie and he’s Ken.”
Barbie let that sink in for a second. “And men do this to women?”
“All the time.”
“It’s not that often,” Gloria interjected from the other side of the table, pushing her laptop away as if she wished she could slam it shut.
Sasha rolled her eyes. “Dad tried to explain Spanish pronouns to you after he hit a 100-day streak on Duolingo.”
Gloria sputtered for a moment and then conceded the point. “He was so proud of himself.”
Barbie’s notebook, lying on the kitchen table between laptop and textbook, was pink and sparkly, with fancy tape and stickers. It was technically called a bullet journal, which Gloria had described as a way to organize her life, and she loved it (once she understood what bullets had to do with it). Barbie didn’t have too much life to organize yet, but she did have a job at Mattel as a Product Director.
She wasn’t quite sure what her job was supposed to be. She wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer. Or an architect or an entomologist or a dolphin trainer or any of the other jobs Barbies had. As Stereotypical Barbie, her job was always whatever the girl playing with her wanted her to be. So she’d had all the jobs anyone could imagine, but somehow that really meant she’d had no jobs and no special skills.
As a Product Director, she sat in an office with a desk and a computer and some plants. When people walked by her door, she said hi to them, but usually no one stopped. A few times, someone from C-Suite walked down two sets of stairs to her office to ask her a question about Barbies, or whether an idea would make a good Barbie, or how she felt about Barbie’s cultural significance. And somehow, no matter what she said, the man (it was always a man) didn’t really listen to her.
She always offered to come all the way up and join the meetings, but no one seemed to hear that either.
***
Narrator: Now is perhaps not the time to discuss the unusual position Mattel plays in Barbie’s life, having served as both villain and deus ex machina in the film. Nor is it the time to deconstruct the ways in which capitalism and the patriarchy are entwined. Instead, let us sum up: Fuck those guys.
***
“I’m sorry,” Gloria said a few days later as they drove home from work. She’d taken one look at Barbie’s expression and deduced that she’d had a bad day. Barbie hadn’t figured out how to make her face stop doing that. It wasn’t always convenient to let everyone know how she was feeling.
“It’s not your fault.”
Her salary was nice, and she had a bank account. She had a room in Gloria’s house until she built up enough credit history to rent her own. She had several new outfits to wear to work. She had several comfortable pairs of flats, several tools that were now required to style her hair, several different shades of lipstick, and several books recommended by someone named Oprah.
She was so incredibly bored.
“It was my idea to get you a job there,” Gloria said.
“I had to have a job of some kind, and you said working at McDonald’s would be worse than death.”
“Did you ever talk to McDonald’s Barbie?”
“She smelled like French fries,” Barbie recalled, her nose wrinkling. But she’d been happy, like all the Barbies in Barbie Land. Doing what she was supposed to do. There wasn’t a place in the Real World for someone whose life used to involve nightly coordinated dance numbers—well, there was, but she had no desire to become a cheerleader or a Rockette. Or a stripper.
“I never asked you if you liked your job,” Barbie said. Maybe if Gloria got promoted, Barbie could have her job. At least she’d be closer to the room where all of the decisions were made.
“Of course, I do. Mostly.” Gloria fiddled with the radio. “Sometimes. I thought after everything that happened in Barbie Land that they might listen to me. Or any woman. Even though they’re making money off Ordinary Barbie, no one wants to hear what I have to say.”
“That’s exactly what’s happening to me. It’s like they pretended to listen to us when everyone was watching, but then they just kept doing whatever they wanted.”
***
Narrator: Seriously. Fuck those guys.
***
“I know I keep saying this, but you don’t have to work at Mattel. You could go to college,” Gloria suggested. “I loved being in school and learning things. I’m only four credit hours short of an MBA, actually.”
“Why haven’t you finished?”
“Oh, you know. Kid. Work. Other kid.”
“Other kid?”
“Yeah, he’s 5’10”, light brown hair, answers to ‘Dad’…”
Barbie frowned. “He’s not your child.”
“Tell him that.”
It sounded like it was supposed to be a joke. Barbie was pretty sure her face was having an expression again, but luckily Gloria was busy merging into the exit lane and cursing at the man behind them in a Tesla. Gloria’s husband was nice enough, and he hadn’t protested when Gloria and Sasha returned from Barbie Land with an ex-Barbie in tow. He was there when they left for work, and he was there when they came back from work, and sometimes he made dinner for everyone—well, he ordered dinner from Grubhub, which Gloria had asked him not to do because money was a little tight. And he always seemed so proud of himself.
“Can’t you finish your college?”
“I don’t know. My husband—we depend on the income from my job. And the health insurance.”
“Why doesn’t he have a job?”
“That is a very good question with a very long answer. He’s tried a few different things, but none of them stuck. Turned out the world isn’t ready for a reggae Def Leppard tribute band. Right now he’s working on his next big idea.”
***
Narrator: Fuck him too.
***
Barbie hadn’t wanted to ask too many questions about Gloria’s marriage. It was none of her business, and Gloria had been so generous, making room for Barbie in her house and her life. But it seemed like Gloria did almost all of the work, and her husband spent all of his time doing whatever he wanted, which gave her flashbacks to Barbie Land under patriarchy.
“Not everyone gets to be at the top,” Gloria sighed, pulling into the driveway. “If everyone was in charge, then there’d be no one to do the work.”
She sounded so sad. Barbie hated it. Gloria had shined so brightly in Barbie Land—she was smart, funny, ambitious, and decisive. Sometimes it seemed like the Real World was poisoning women so slowly that they didn’t notice, and they got smaller and smaller until they forgot what it was like to be healthy.
They sat in the driveway for a moment, silent until Barbie said, “You know, the first thing Mattel did when they brought me to their headquarters was put me in a box. And now that I work there, they’ve put me in another one. And this one doesn’t even have a window.”
Gloria reached over and squeezed her hand, and her firm grasp made Barbie worry about her a little less. That was not the hand of a small, poisoned woman. “We definitely need to find you a new job.”
“But what about you?”
“What about me?” Gloria reached in the back for her briefcase and purse, slinging them on her shoulder as she opened the car door.
Barbie hurried around the car to Gloria’s side. “Could we make our own dolls? Not Barbies. That would be a trademark violation.”
“What? No. Why would we—” Gloria fit the key into the front door lock and elbowed her way forward. “There’s nothing wrong with Barbies. Even Sasha says that now.”
“Barbie isn’t the problem,” Barbie said, feeling her way through her thoughts. “Capitalism is.”
“You want to fix capitalism?”
Sasha charged into the living room. “Wait, what’s going on? Are we destroying capitalism? Because I want in.”
“We can’t destroy capitalism,” Gloria said, in the same tone of voice Barbie had heard her use when telling Sasha she wasn’t allowed to skip school to protest the school’s treatment of undocumented workers. Sympathetic, but firm.
“Mattel’s always going to do whatever earns them the most money,” Barbie said. “Money is more important to them than hiring women or making dolls that no one else makes. I loved being Barbie. But in the Real World there are so many other things a woman can be.”
Gloria got more excited. “Dolls who are sick, or ugly, or fat. Because it’s okay to be sick or ugly or fat. Or just fucking tired because you had a bad day.”
“Dolls who are disabled but aren't inspirational,” Sasha contributed.
“And lesbians. And non-binary.” Barbie pronounced the term carefully, having just learned it a few days ago.
“Do you think it could work, Mom?” Sasha looked eagerly at her mother.
Gloria was shining again. “Barbie just said it. There are so many things a woman can be.”
***
Narrator: Several things happened as a result of this conversation. Let’s pretend that this is a visual medium, and you can see the accompanying montage.
Gloria went back to school and finished her MBA.
Gloria walks across a stage and accepts her diploma. In the crowd, Barbie and Sasha cheer. Gloria’s husband is nowhere to be seen.
Gloria told her husband that he could either find a job or get out. Her husband did not believe her.
Gloria’s husband stands outside their house, staring confusedly at the front door.
Until she changed the locks.
Barbie and Gloria founded their own company. It is entirely woman-owned. A percentage of the profits go to domestic violence charities, and they established several scholarships for women and minorities.
Barbie and Gloria present a comically large check to a well-dressed woman, while the company’s employees applaud.
They have a mentorship program and equitable hiring practices.
Barbie sits at a desk with a young Hispanic woman. They are clearly studying something important. Barbie points to a piece of paper and nods, and understanding dawns on the young woman’s face.
They make dolls. Pretty dolls, ugly dolls, nondescript dolls with mousy brown hair, dolls with spina bifida and limb differences, dolls with stretch marks and birthmarks and even cellulite.
Each doll has its own name. The first one is called Sasha.