Hello, Dolly!

“You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually.” – Cate Blanchett

"I love shopping!"

"Wanna have a pizza party?"

"Math class is tough!"
- Teen Talk Barbie

"In 1993 a group in the United States calling itself the "Barbie Liberation Organization" modified Barbie dolls by giving them the voice box of a talking G.I. Joe doll, and secretly returned the dolls to the shelves of toy stores. Parents and children were surprised when they purchased Barbie dolls that uttered phrases such as 'Eat lead, Cobra!' and 'Vengeance is mine.'" -Wikipedia

OK, I admit it. I loved Barbie.

I spent many engrossing childhood hours “playing Barbies” either alone or with friends.

As an adult woman with feminist leanings, I have trouble reconciling my passion for a fashion doll with over-applied makeup, an artificial tan, and an anatomically impossible figure with the person I am today. I find myself slightly embarrassed when admitting my childhood weakness for the plastic doll.

Yet the fact remains, I was a Barbie fan.

I got my first Barbie for my eighth birthday. It was actually a Skipper (Barbie’s younger sister), since Barbie herself was “too mature for young girls to play with” (per my mother). She had two sausage-like spirals of long blond curly hair. I was hooked.

As I got older, my collection evolved, primarily focused around the Malibu line. Tanning was trendy during the seventies, and the “California” perfectly tanned blonde with blue eyes was all the rage. My collection included three Malibus: P.J., Francie, and Skipper (actually, I had two Malibu Skippers, the first one having been vandalized by a never-identified schoolmate who chopped off her long blond hair and left a permanent dirt smudge on her cheek. Replacement Malibu Skipper assumed the role of Barbie’s fashionable younger sister, while original Malibu Skipper was forever relegated to being the “tomboy” twin with the boyish haircut).

All of my Barbies had distinct personalities - consistent names, ages, and character traits -throughout our years together. Because of the obvious family resemblance, my Malibu quartet became a family unit of four sisters. Typical story lines included some form of tragic death of both parents, resulting in the oldest sister, Jamie, raising her younger siblings alone. Jamie was 27 years old. Somehow, in my mind, 27 was the magical age where you were old enough to be an adult, but young enough to still be fun and adventurous.

In addition to the core group of sisters, Jamie had a close friend, Laura (a short-lived model known as Yellowstone Kelley), who had the same fantastic tan, but with auburn hair and brown eyes. A little diversity for the group. And I had not forgotten my original non-Malibu Skipper, who put in appearances as the pale-skinned best friend of the twins.

The main feminist criticism of Barbie dolls is that they objectify women and portray an impossible physical standard. I cannot argue with this. A standard Barbie doll is 11.5 inches tall, giving a height of 5 feet 9 inches at 1/6 scale. Barbie's vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips) (according to Wikipedia).

However, I take issue with the argument that the Barbies teach young girls that fashion and external beauty are the most important things in life. For me, Barbie provided much more.

For example, Barbie encouraged my creativity. Buttons and thimbles became plates and glasses. Swimming pools were giant lakes. Scraps of paper were transformed into tiny record albums and magazines. The backyard garden was a forest, the lawn was a prairie. Flip-flops (called “thongs” at the time) made fantastic cars – tiny one-seated convertibles one could drive around the house. Commandeering the guest bedroom to set up a Barbie mansion with secret rooms, multiple levels, and extensive integration of various household items could occupy us for hours, and was much more enjoyable than playing with the pre-fab Barbie Dream House.

Barbie taught me about disabilities. Due to the unfortunate fact that Barbie dolls hips are not designed for external rotation, I had several “amputee” Barbies as a result of trying to ride my collection of Johnny West horses. These ill-fated Barbies had to forevermore deal with the repercussions of being differently-abled.

Barbie taught me that the bonds of sisterhood would not be broken. As the youngest of three girls, I strongly identified with the youngest sister, “Jennifer” (aka replacement Malibu Skipper). Her butch but sensitive twin (aka vandalized Malibu Skipper), allowed me to explore all those anti-girly-girl tomboy feelings. The addition of best-friend-original-Skipper created the unstable triangle that always seems to occur in groups of three friends.

I won’t lie, I did enjoy the fashion aspect. The tiny outfits were cute, and choosing clothes to fit various scenarios and personalities was, well, fun. Did playing with Barbies contribute to the body-image issues I, like most American women, seem to be plagued with? Perhaps, but no more than magazine ads or television commercials (which feature actual human beings twisted and contorted into a “perfect” image).

And Barbie gave me so much more than any advertising image ever could. My Barbies were proxies by which I navigated the emotional jungle of childhood and early adolescence. They allowed me to play out complex relationship scenarios without risk. And they exemplified women making it on their own (yes, I eventually obtained a Malibu Ken, but he made only rare appearances in the plot lines).

My Barbies discussed life, love, grief, and family values. They had fights, apologized, and made up. They had their hearts broken. They experienced rage, jealousy, and compassion. At the end of the day, they made it through everything unscathed.

Barbie turned 50 this year. But to me, she’ll never be a day over 27.

A Lyrical Tale

“I want to rewind every time
'Cause the words have so much meaning
They were there when nobody cared
Always knew what I was feeling”
-Sugar Ray

I’ve always loved song lyrics. From an early age I was fascinated with the way words and music can be combined to affect your emotions and thoughts.

During my teenage years, lyrics were of particularly importance. My friends and I kept so-called “poem books”, which were spiral-bound notebooks consisting primarily of song lyrics, along with fairly cheesy poems published in Teen magazine (“I do believe that God above created you for me to love. He picked you out from all the rest because He knew I’d love you best…”)

I fear that the whole song lyric experience is lost on today’s teenagers. And it’s sad.

Let’s go back to the early eighties. You hear a song on the radio in the car on the way home from school that catches your ear. You feel compelled to learn and record the lyrics for posterity. The first thing to do is to obtain a copy of the song on….yes, you guessed it….cassette tape. No ITunes to download the song to your MP3 player, no internet to look up the lyrics, and who has the money to run out and buy a full length record album that may or may not include the lyrics printed on the sleeve based on a single song you’ve heard only once?

So you pull out your cassette recorder, find a blank tape, and set the machine up with the microphone as close as possible to the speaker of your clock radio. Cassette recorder ready? Check. Clock radio on high volume? Check. Now you just need the radio station to play the song. You could just wait. If a song is popular enough, it will eventually be played on the radio again. But…there is another option: call the radio station.

Remember, this is the early eighties. There is no speed dial. The only phone in the house is attached to a cord that doesn’t quite reach your bedroom even when it is fully extended. So you resign yourself to spending several hours dialing (yes dialing on an actual rotary dial phone) the radio station phone number. You get a busy signal. You dial again. You ignore the blister on your finger. You ignore your parents who are insisting that they are expecting a phone call. And if you’re lucky, at last, after 100 or so tries, you get through to the local station. And if you’re really lucky, the DJ agrees to play your song.

Now that you’ve captured the recording, the real work begins. Some song lyrics are pretty straightforward. But take a song by someone like, say, REM or The Cure, and add in your somewhat interference-prone recording technique, and deciphering the lyrics becomes a puzzle akin to trying to distinguish David Cassidy and Scott Baio in 1980 while wearing dark sunglasses in a dimly lit room (which also might be enjoyable, but in a totally different way).

We spend countless hours playing and replaying portions of the song while writing out the lyrics by hand, one tedious line at a time. These papers are often a scribble of scratched out words, question marks, and possible alternatives to inaudible lyrics written in the margins. Finally, after many discussions and debates, the final lyrics are transposed carefully onto clean notebook paper.

The next day at school someone mentions the great new song they heard on the radio. You casually throw out the fact that you possess the lyrics to said song. If you really like the person (or want them to like you), you then might offer to make a copy of the lyrics for them (this involves a new sheet of notebook paper and your best handwriting – no computers, printers, or copy machines). They are eternally grateful. You are now at the beginning of a chain of copied lyrics that eventually make their way into poem books across the school. With lyrics come social power.

Contrast this memory with today. This morning I heard a song I liked on the radio. I came into work and within minutes of "Googling", I not only had the full set of lyrics to the song ready to print, I also knew the album name, the history of the band, when and where they are in concert next, and how to instantly download the song as a ringtone for my cell phone.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the internet. I love the convenience of being able to instantly answer nearly any question that comes up in daily life. I love the ability to find 365,472 recipes for rhubarb.

But I miss sitting on my bedroom floor with my best friend playing a song over and over again while debating whether “I miss the rains” or “I felt the rains” down in Africa makes more sense (neither was correct, as it turns out). I miss giggling hysterically over various possible misinterpretations (it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you, there’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do…”). I miss the feeling of accomplishment when the final copy was complete. And I feel sorry for today’s kids who might never have that experience.

When Mahatma Gandhi said “There is more to life than increasing its speed”, I’m sure he was referring to life as a whole: hastiness vs. depth of experience, efficiency vs. stopping to smell the roses.

But I think these words of wisdom are just as aptly illustrated by a teenager, scribbling song lyrics in a spiral notebook, laughing with her best friend.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies...

“You know that we are living in a material world

And I am a material girl”
-Madonna

I like to order from catalogs. Catalog orders are convenient and bring with them their own special rewards. There’s the excitement of receiving a package, the delusion that you really didn’t spend any money (because you didn’t actually hand anyone any cash, did you?) and, my favorite, the thrill of the Free Shipping Coupon.

The problem is that once you dip your toe into the ocean of mail-order purchases, other catalog companies, smelling blood, circle like sharks. As a result, I often find myself on the receiving end of multiple catalogs each day, particularly around the holiday season (I have actually come to believe that they are not all originally sent to us, but that they multiply like bunny rabbits in our mailbox).

Most of the time, these unrequested catalogs are quickly browsed (or not) and end up in the recycle bin. But I find myself asking the same very basic question over and over again while in catalog browse mode: Who buys this stuff?

Take, for example, a recent catalog I received with the motto “Garden Décor that Leaves a Lasting Impression”. The nicest way to describe the collection of items would be “eclectic”. Less nice ways might include the terms “unusual”, “bizarre”, and “downright tacky”.

It’s not that there were no appealing items in the catalog. But the juxtaposition of the somewhat attractive items with the more…shall we say, unusual selections was just plain ridiculous.

Another striking oddity is that the marketer appears to be completely obsessed with the size of each and every item. Nearly every statue has a caption on the photo indicating the size of the item, complete with exclamation point (e.g., “Over three feet tall!” ). Bigger is Better must be the company’s secondary motto

On one page, we have a collection of classic statues for the garden. They include St. Francis, Jesus (nearly three feet tall!), Our Lady of Fatima (nearly five feet tall!), a Giant Buddha (four feet tall!), and….yes, you guessed it, rounding out this serious religious collection is…The Meerkat Gang (over two feet long!). Yes, you too can have three meerkats standing on their hind legs, “hand painted and authentically sculpted”, for only $85 plus shipping and handling.

On another page, we have the option to purchase a Tyrannosaurus Rex Dinosaur Garden Sculpture (Over three feet long!), which is “realistically sculpted” from “quality designer resin” with “rows of menacing teeth, a fearsome tail and scaly skin”. Realistically sculpted? T-Rex?

I could go on to describe Big Foot, the Garden Yeti (Over two feet tall!), several variations on the gargoyle theme, the Crocodile Skull Sculptural Artifact, and The Zombie of Montclaire Moors (Life-size!), but you get the idea.

Who buys this stuff?

I know that we live in a capitalistic society. Consumerism drives our economy, and if people aren’t buying, other people aren’t earning a living. Money makes the world go around. Buying things brings people a little joy in a cold world.

But here’s the thing that bothers me. Somewhere in the world, maybe in China, or Vietnam, there is a poor woman working long hours, possibly under unregulated conditions, hand-painting thousands of three foot resin T-Rex statues.

What does she think of us? This person who probably works for minimal pay that is barely sufficient to feed her family….she must shake her head in wonder. What kind of country is America where people have SO much money that they can spend $100 on a plastic statue? I imagine her describing her job to her neighbors and friends – those crazy Americans will buy anything, they must think. And maybe they are right.

Now, we are not blind followers of the advertising Pied Piper. Most of us know, deep in our hearts, that material goods don’t bring lasting happiness. Most of us try to live our lives with more important goals in mind. We struggle to find the perfect balance between time spent acquiring possessions and time spent building relationships. We navigate the tension between the material and the spiritual. But we are pitted against experts in psychology and human behavior whose goal – whose actual full time paying job – is to make us want to buy their product.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Materialism as: “The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.” I can’t think of a better way to describe the message promoted to our culture every day through advertising.

“Physical well-being and worldly possessions”. We all fall into the trap of spending too much time and money in this arena. Show me one TV commercial that isn’t centered around these themes. Show me one online, print, or radio ad that doesn’t focus on how we can look better, live longer, and be happier by buying some product.

And then, please, tell me how a plastic T-Rex in my garden is going to make the world a better place.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

"Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows Your name."
- Cheers Lyrics, by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo

I am addicted to Facebook.

This rather recent obsession started when several friends insisted I join, and even went so far as to set up my profile for me, including a hastily snapped digital photo. I was not at all interested and did not see the appeal, but I went along with them (because, well, I didn’t have a good reason not to).

And now I can’t stop.

That’s not completely true. I could stop whenever I wanted. But I don’t want to.

I’m in the infatuation stage. I can’t wait to log on each day and see who “friended” me, or who wrote on my “wall”. I stay up too late at night interacting, and then drag myself to work in the morning vowing to avoid logging in later that night (which I invariably do). Weekends supply many free hours to waste perusing profiles, playing Scramble and Sudoku, and posting answers to ridiculous questions (such as my porno name, which is the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on….yes, I am “Prissy Grandville”).

Like any relationship, I’m sure the infatuation will wear off, and then I will discover if this is something real or not. But I’m starting to suspect that it is. And of course, I want to understand why.

It’s partly the attention. It’s fun to think that the littlest mundane things in your life are actually of interest to someone. For some people, I think this is the whole appeal. They spend their time creating profiles that are seemingly advertisements for how full and happy their lives are, and how important they are to the world. Those profiles practically scream with insecurity. And the emptiness and sadness are right there, between the lines.

It’s partly the discovery. I’ve been friended by three people that I have had no contact with since I was a pre-teen. Others that I had lost track of over the years have also found me (or vice versa). It has been deeply rewarding catching up with these friends, many of whom I have wondered about for years. I’ve learned about everything from secret crushes to life-altering experiences. Many of my female friends are sneakily searching for their ex-boyfriends – not to friend them, but to see how their lives turned out (and sometimes hoping they are fat, bald, and unhappy).

But I think the most compelling feature of Facebook is the sense of community it gives you. I honestly feel, when I log on, that I am walking into a room where all my friends like to hang out. And I can learn with a quick mouse click who is already in the room, who was recently there, and what they have all been up to since my last check in.

It’s like having your own personal version of the TV show Cheers. You get to be where everybody knows your name.

It is hard to find that sense of place - that feeling of home - in society today. Many of us work far from where we live, spend most of our time away from home, and have friends and family scattered across the country. We live in small families in big houses. We interact with our gadgets more than each other. We miss the sense of connection that we had when our world was smaller and we could walk down the block to see our best friend every day after school.

No, I don’t think Facebook is the answer to world peace. And it is certainly not the ultimate solution to the loneliness and seclusion that seem to be seeping into our culture. But maybe it is a step in the right direction.

And if nothing else, you might get a good chuckle over the profile of the jerk who dumped you in high school.

Sticking it to "The Man"

"I am just an advertisement

For a version of myself"

- David Byrne

We are all in advertising. We advertise ourselves, all the time. What we wear, our body language, how we carry ourselves – they all advertise the person we are (or the person we believe that we are - or want others to think that we are).

This makes sense. We are visual beings. In tribal days, it was important to recognize a friend (who might help you hunt the wooly mammoth) or foe (planning to club you over the head). So we look for visual cues among those we meet.

Most of the time these visual clues are subtle. Other times, not so much (think Goth or Drag Queen). And speaking of non-subtle communications, I find it an endless source of fascination to observe the bits and pieces of information many people choose to display to the three or four hundred strangers they encounter on a daily basis.

I’m talking about bumper stickers.

According to Wikipedia, the first bumper stickers appeared shortly before World War II; they were flag-like, and attached to the bumper by wires. In the late 1940’s and early 50’s they eveolved into the more modern version of adhesive bumper stickers that we know and love today. I don’t imagine that "The Greatest Generation" envisioned the cultural and money-making phenomenon this would become (if you type “buy bumper stickers” into Google, you will get close to 13 million hits, as of this writing).

Trivial insertion: Bumper stickers are not unique to this country. In fact, in Israel, one of the most popular songs of all time is Shirat Hasticker ("The Sticker Song") by Hadag Nachash, a song composed entirely of bumper sticker slogans.

The main question that I find myself asking repeatedly while sitting at yet another red light behind yet another car full of words, phrases, and slogans is “Who Are Bumper Sticker People?”

I should clarify that I’m not talking about the people that have a single bumper sticker advertising the charity they support or the radio station they listen to. I’m referring to those who seemingly want total strangers to know everything about them, from their religious and political views to what middle school their above-average child attends.

What is their motivation?

Do they think of this as a way to make friends? “Gee honey look! That person loves her shih-tzu, has an honor student at Tappan Middle School, is into Wicca, and loves to knit! I think I’ll go introduce myself!”

Perhaps they think they are influencing other drivers. “Gosh, I’ve never really had an opinion about abortion, but seeing all those pro-life bumper stickers has really made me think!”

Are they egomaniacs? Are Bumper Sticker People the same individuals who wear those T-shirts with large print, not-so-funny quips? Are they the same people who play their music really LOUD so everyone knows how cool they are? Are they the same people who insist on entertaining their friends at parties with amazing stories of their athletic prowess?

I don't think so.

As a communication medium, the bumper sticker is really pretty subtle. You make your point, quietly, and to total strangers. No one complains, and generally speaking, no one confronts you. For messages so personal, it is, well, rather an impersonal delivery system.

And perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Bumper Sticker People are looking for a kinder, gentler way to make a statement. Without risk of confrontation. To total strangers.

Whether intentional or not, bumper stickers send a message about who a person is. And I wonder how often people actually think about what that message is.

In the last several years, a certain type of sticker has begun to appear in the back windows of pick-up trucks. This sticker is an outline of a cartoon figure of a little boy (who looks suspiciously like “Calvin” of Calvin and Hobbes), with his back to the viewer, urinating, while looking over his shoulder at the observer. On Dodge trucks, the sticker portrays the boy urinating on a Ford logo. Not surprisingly, on Ford trucks, the Dodge logo is the target. The look on the boy’s face is probably meant to be "impish", but I would describe it as akin to the face of Chucky the doll from the movie Child’s Play.

While I find these stickers mildly offensive, in a roll-your-eyes-and-sigh-in-disgust sort of way, I’ve never really paid much attention to them. But the other day, my husband and I parked behind a pickup truck displaying a new variation on this theme that caught my attention. The same nasty little boy was doing the same nasty little deed, but this time the target of his attention was a giant letter “U”.

It took me a minute to get it. Essentially, it was saying “Pi** On You”. To add insult to injury, the little boy was also flashing his middle finger toward the viewer.

My ever-questioning brain kicked into high gear. Who drives this truck? What kind of person wants their message to the world to be “screw you all, I hate everyone”? I mean, I’m all for free speech, and I don’t deny this person the right to express their opinion, but…..really? Is that the message you want to send to hundreds of strangers every day?

Of course, “Pi** On You” may be a perfectly nice person. We certainly don’t always walk the walk that our words (or bumper stickers) might imply.

It's a balmy Saturday morning. I'm driving along in the left lane on the freeway in fairly heavy traffic. Suddenly, and without warning, a speeding maniac zooms up behind me, tailgates me at less than 12 inches for about 5 seconds (before deciding I wasn’t going fast enough), then passes me on the right, barely wedging his car into the 6 foot space between me and the car in front of me.

I hit my brakes while uttering some decidedly non-Disney words. Then I see it. There is a Jesus Fish on his bumper.

Ummm...What Would Jesus Do? I'm not sure, but probably not that.

We all know that actions speak louder than words. When the rubber meets the road (pun intended), it’s not what you wear, the music you listen to, or even what you put on your bumper that tells the world who you really are. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say”. I love that quote.

Maybe I can get that on a T-shirt. Or a bumper sticker.

Why Blog?

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology
Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC - 399 BC)

I'm an analyst. I analyze. Everything. All the time. I analyze my life, my friends, my relationships, my pets, my self. Sometimes it makes my head hurt because I can't stop.

I have been this way as long as I can remember. Needless to say, this was not very popular among the instructors in my rather conservative religious high school. I got a lot of "some things are beyond our understanding" responses (not very satisfying).

It seems to be part of my wiring.
And, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an on/off switch.

This can be a good thing. For example, it lets me excel at my job (which, not surprisingly, involves data analysis). It also helps me think through the consequences of decisions very quickly and thoroughly. I'm great in emergencies. Unless there is a lot of blood.

Sometimes it is less so. It can make my friends and family slightly insane. And sometimes thinking through all the consequences results in much less interesting decisions.

My favorite kind of conversation is one that focuses on why...why something happened, why someone acts the way they do, why society is the way it is, how things came to be.

Just yesterday a friend and I had a long conversation about why it is that movie stars and rock stars have so much power in our society. (Our conclusion: Biologically speaking, it probably has to do with the fact that they have such widespread facial recognition. And we are "wired" to assume that people in the limelight have power, and are therefore important to us. Goes back to the tribal days.)

These are the kinds of things that occupy an ever-increasing amount of space in my brain. And I thought, just maybe, a blog like this would be a chance to clear some more space up there (because frankly, I'm running out of room to store things like new phone numbers and passwords). And maybe, just maybe, I'll find more crazy people like me who journey along the path of asking why.