Barbie invades conscious family’s home in the wilderness

It happened. Today, my 3 year old daughter asked me to pretend that she was “Barbie”.

We were listening to Dan Zanes and she began to dance around. Mid-twirl, she paused to look me in the eye and say, “Mommy, pretend you are the author of this song and tell me a story about it.” My mind churned momentarily to catch up with her and I began, “My name is Dan Zanes and I wrote this song one day while riding on top of pile of pumpkins in the back of a pick-up truck. I started thinking about my old friend and decided to write her a letter. This friend of mine…” and then was interrupted in the midst of my monologue. “Now, mommy, pretend that I’m Barbie,” she dared. Something inside my body fell clunckily down several floors. It felt like maybe my thymus had fallen down some cavernous elevator shaft and turned to stone on the way down. “MOMMY!! Please, pretend that I am Barbie,” she urged in frustration at my lack of response. “Barbie?,” I asked, “Who is Barbie?”. Still twirling and extending arm after arm in lovely interpretive response to the music she answered, “Barbie is a princess.” “Oh!”, I exclaimed. Barbie and princess had invaded my intentional household despite our collage supplies, book piles, building equipment, train sets, dump trucks, puppet theater, musical instruments, paint splattered easel, mini-kitchen, hot rod tricycle, kite, and wooden blocks? Despite our stance as conscientious feminist parents who approach the raising of our children as a spiritual practice?? There must have been some mix up. Barbie must be looking for a neighbor’s house or maybe she took wrong turn and ended up here in Petrolia by mistake. I’m happy to give her a one-way bus ticket out of town. Except that no buses come here. There’s not even television here. How did that blond, stereotype reinforcing, homophobic, gender-binding, helpless-seeming, appearance focused, and starving corporate mannequin get into my house out here in the wilderness??????

“Um, how about we pretend you are a firefighter, instead?” I offered. “Nooo, I want to be Barbie,” she whined mid-sashay. “Ok, I know, you could be a magical veterinarian!” I said excitedly. “NO, Barbie. I really want to be Barbie!” she replied. “Well, you could be a builder or a teacher or, I know, how about an elf!!”, I desperately suggested. The dancing stopped and she begged angrily with the hint of a developing sob, “MOMMY. I WANT TO BE BARBIE!!!! Pretend that I am BARBIE, pleeeaaasseee.” I saw in her despair that I was compounding the BARBIE problem by committing another infraction in my ill-timed censorship and repeated rejection of fantastic her creative impulse to create a story. We could talk about Barbie after the dance-story. “Ok,” I relented. “How do we do that?”, I inquired. Ecstatic and dancing bigger now than before, she stammered, “Mommy, say ‘Everyone, no matter how big or how small, can make a difference for this kingdom!” I did as I was told and her dancing magnified and her little face was so focused on seriously painting out the story with her body. “Ok mommy, now tell a story about that,” she instructed. I told stories about how Barbie and her friends took on the challenge of a dragon who was intimidating people and how Barbie was so strong and such a great horseback rider and how she built her own house and read lots of books and was kind. This went on for some time. There were pauses so that Ossian could give me more direction for the stories and also to do some choreography for her one-year old sister and her thirty-six year old mother. We had lots of costume changes as well. She was in heaven.

I still don’t know where she heard of Barbie. When I asked her, she said “Michael”. That is a boy at preschool she talks about multiple times each day and has done so for nearly 8 months.

I felt totally defeated and scared and sad when Barbie invaded. I knew we’d run into each other at some point in this child-rearing safari but I NEVER thought it would be at the nascent age of 3. My child is in the world and it is inspiring and awesome and even devastating sometimes, too.