Life in Plastic

When I got to the University of Michigan, I learned in Psychology the concept of plasticity: the ability of the human brain to make rapid neural connections, adapting with experience and learning. I remember learning in my High School Chemistry class that most plastics are polymers, synthesized into a rigid and resilient product. How could two words that sound practically identical, 'plastic' and 'plasticity', hold two opposite meanings? I fiddled with an empty water bottle in my lecture hall and pondered this paradox.  As stagnant as a piece of plastic may seem, it has the transformative ability to shape into various states. The word “plastic” can mean either fixed or flexible—neither black nor white, the word is, rather, pink.  

 

Pink: the favorite color of the world’s most glorified piece of plastic, Barbie. Barbie has evolved through the years into different career paths and body types, and yet this cookie-cutter blonde has always managed to capture the interests of economists, surgeons, and six-year-olds alike.

 

Six years old marks the height of my pink phase: pink bedroom, pink clothes, and a pink backpack that I carried into my first grade class. I plopped down on the dreary blue carpet when my teacher asked our class that trite question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The girl two spots to my right wanted to be a doctor. The boy next to me wanted to be a lawyer. My turn. Six-year-old Nealie, with the entire professional world at her fingertips, wanted to be Barbie. My teacher chuckled at my seemingly superficial aspiration to embody this teaching tool of femininity. But it was not the influence of my “pink phase” that caused me to answer in this way. Rather, it was the idea that Barbie can be anything. A doll with over 150 careers—who broke the “Plastic Ceiling” when she flew to the moon in 1965 and ran for President in 2004—represents a multifaceted woman with limitless potential.

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At the height of my pink phase, I got into an argument with my older sister.  We were fighting over the last marshmallow at a campfire, like the sophisticated children we were, and I decided to take a leap of faith and swallow it whole.  With my pain points in mind, she ran upstairs, stole one of my Barbies, and maliciously threw it into the campfire.  I remember crying so hysterically that my dad reached in to the flames with his bare hands in an attempt to conserve her pristine condition.  But, he was too late to the Barbie-Q.  The doll's face was half melted off, slowly dripping down her disfigured, thin physique.  Her blonde hair was singed by the heat, making the doll practically unrecognizable.  

 

Suddenly, Barbie was more than an emblem of multiplicity.  She was tangibly malleable, taking on any physical shape.  Barbie had more autonomy and agency than ever before.  She could be bent and twisted until she formed any appearance, yet I wanted nothing to do with her.  I screamed at my sister, and I cried as my mom threw my Barbie into the trash can.  Although Barbie had more 'plasticity', I no longer wanted her.  This was because I desired Barbie to be free, but only so far as that freedom exists within a form of desirability.  The doll was unshackled from her very appearance with more potential to be free than ever before. But, she no longer had the capability to be beautiful or sexualized. That deemed her useless. 

 

I grew out of my pink-and-Barbie-loving phase, but a new preoccupancy replaced it.  My first day of college rolled around. Eighteen-year-old Nealie continued to grow and adapt to the ever-changing landscape that surrounds her. As I emerge into adulthood, I am eager to determine my wants and needs, and ultimately my purpose. And yet I am still plagued with that trite question from guidance counselors, job interviewers, and concerned parents alike: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

There is no cookie-cutter answer that will define my future. Rather, my future is full of exploration, possibility, and potential because I am akin to that of the pink and plastic beacon of multiplicity. Unfortunately, when you are six years old, no one tells you that.  Likewise, when you are eighteen years old no one tells you that.  Instead of tormenting yourself over the daunting exploration of that consequential life decision, you start to value other things to make yourself appear more desirable.  Things that you think you are supposed to be because they seem more tangible, more in your control.  The complex question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is replaced with the simple answer "How do you want to be seen?"