Every little girl had one-- Barbie, that anatomically incorrect freak of nature with
enough hair to choke a giraffe and a waist too small to menstruate, let alone bear the
stress of childbirth. Most girls had a whole army of Barbies, whom they dressed and
undressed at will, and whom they used to act out any girlish fantasy that came to mind.
When my friends and I were younger, our Barbies would play House and Office, and Ken
would teach karate in his little cardboard studio; as we got older, the thrill of traditional
Barbie play began to wane, and we spiced it up by having Barbie and Miko knock over
a 7-11, and then, after a boozy night in the red light district, killing Ken and chopping his
corpse up, flushing it piece by piece down the toilet. The effect was the same, with our
without the decapitation.
 
   And there was always that one Barbie that we, the collective Little Girl, would prey
on; whose hair was dyed blue and red with Mommy's eye-shadow and then
unceremoniously cut off; who wore Ken's clothes; whose head would spin around if you
pulled her arm this way; whose left leg just wouldn't stay on, no matter how much you
tried to force it. My friend Wendy had a Barbie who, ages ago, could blink; her eyelids,
however, had long since disappeared, and she was usually killed in a horrific Barbie
Ferarri crash towards the beginning of the story to make things easier on everyone. The
other Barbies laughed at her behind her back.
 
    What my friends and I didn't realize, as we forced little plastic shoes on Barbie's
rigid feet, was that we were the supreme beings in our Barbie's lives. We were Barbie's
God. Barbie existed only to serve our whims, did only what we wished her to. When I put
my Barbie into the Townhouse for the evening, it is conceivable that she said a little
prayer to me: "Oh, little girl, please don't decapitate me tomorrow, and let me wear the
Peaches and Cream dress instead of that bitch Skipper. Amen."
 
    Which, invariably, gets one to thinking: are we Barbies to someone else? Is there
a sadistic little girl somewhere who's dressing and undressing us at will? And how do we
avoid becoming that unfortunate Barbie with the unreliable Ferarri? Hell, I don't know. And
furthermore, I don't care, as long as I get to wear the Peaches and Cream dress and not
that bitch Skipper. Amen.