All Dolled Up

For my twentieth birthday, my roommates threw me a surprise party.  I was dragged out of the house just long enough so that my two best friends could transform our kitchen into the inside of a pale pink, perfectly wrapped present.  I traveled through the typically monotonous main entrance of the home in astonishment to the pink runway that now accentuated our foyer.  To my right the kitchen table was littered with pink jewelry, princess tiaras, and the occasional large, faux diamond.  In between the layers of glitter stood multiple dolls complete with matching outfits and accessories, each Barbie bent like an Olympic gymnast across the table.   To my left, Pepto Bismol colored candy, napkins, cups, straws, and even Gatorade complemented the centerpiece: a massive Barbie-doll-head piñata.  Looming over the suspended, perfectly symmetrical paper mâché candy container was a string of gold letters reading, “C’mon Nealie Lets Go Party”.  Sure enough, I had an equally obnoxious pink bodycon dress hanging in my closet to tie together the surprise theme.  My roommates had thrown me, you guessed it, a Barbie themed birthday party.  

My pink-and-Barbie-loving-phase did not last very long, but people comparing me to the epitome of girliness did.  In the fifth grade, my dad encouraged me, with great force might I add, to participate in the club soccer team.  Infatuated by the idea of makeup, like many fifth grade-girls, I seized the opportunity to wear bright pink lip gloss to my first practice.  That’s how “MBB” started.  I flashed one large grin at my soccer coach in that lustrous pink gloss, and my soccer coach has called me Malibu Beach Barbie ever since.  

The comparisons of me to the token of femininity did not stop there.  I entered high school tan and smiley, not to mention six-feet tall.  To my surprise, my pink-and-Barbieness did not end at my appearances. Time and time again, people I met reflected on my similarities to Barbie.  Even people who knew me for years perceived me to be pink and plastic.  I embraced this, because Barbie was beautiful.  I dyed my hair blonde, and I accompanied my new look with the purchase of a rose gold laptop and a brand-new addiction to working out.  It did not matter that my agreeableness was perceived as impressionability, or that my tendency to be diplomatic was perceived as ditsy. It also did not matter that I was the blonde and brainless punch line in my physics classes, for a whopping two years in a row. To me, being Barbie was better than being anything less than ultimate perfection, optimum womanhood.