Posted by There’s no easy way to say this. The ’90s were a great time for conformists. And a bad time to be a little queer kid with sensory issues and curly hair that wouldn’t cooperate no matter what noxious chemicals the adults sprayed at your head, and occasionally in your eyes (by accident!).
Imagine this kid in elementary school with a flock of cute blonde girls with long straight hair who had the right clothes and the right erasers and the right brain chemistry to handle, you know, sitting in a circle and listening to the teacher read a story (I mean, why SHOULD I have to sit here if I already know how it ends! I HAVE THINGS TO DO), and imagine how lonely and weird and hopeless I could have felt— and yet I didn’t (well, not yet!), because none of the aforementioned weird things made me a weirdo in the eyes of my peers. Not the hair, not the glasses, not the aversion to clothing tags or inability to follow simple directions.
Nope, it was the fact that I didn’t have any Barbies.
“YOU don’t have any BARBIES?” all the little girls would shriek. No need to shout, I’m already running away from you!
I didn’t think it was that weird. I had dolls of Ariel and Belle and Jasmine and Pocahontas. I had a pull-string doll of Steve Urkel that had all the catchphrases and was so terrifying that he ended up becoming permanently wedged behind the clothes dryer. I was not lacking in the doll department.
Frankly, I preferred the woods. Who needs dolls when you have sticks?
I still love a good stick!
And yet, the fact that I didn’t have Barbies—and that my mom was staunchly against buying my sister or I any Barbies EVER—really bothered other kids. It bothered some of their moms, too—someone passive-aggressively bought my little sister a Barbie for Christmas one year. My mom looked like she wanted to dropkick that doll right at that person’s face.
That Barbie ended up with Steve Urkel. I don’t think she even made it out of the box.
So fast-forward how many years later and there’s this movie coming out on the same day as another movie. It looks cute but honestly I’m not emotionally invested at all because I never had a Barbie but THEN I see a trailer where Kate McKinnon offers Margot Robbie the choice between a high heel and a Birkenstock, Matrix pill-style and I. Am. In.
Stella and I saw Barbie in downtown Ann Arbor on opening day in a packed indie theater surrounded by all the genders in all the pink—EVERYONE was dressed up, including the college-age girl next to us who was wearing a bright pink dress, pink heels, and a long blonde wig. She was also holding an actual Barbie wearing a matching outfit on her lap the entire time.
I truly didn’t hear half of the dialogue, not because of some Nolan-esque sound mixing snafu, but because the audience was laughing and cheering so hard for every other line. It was so much fun my face actually hurt from smiling by the end of the movie.
And the fact that the Trinity Test went off in the theater next door during a quiet, emotional scene? Worth the price of the tickets. The entire theater was cracking up.
I thought, “I’m going to tell people Barbenheimer ended the pandemic.”
As soon as the credits rolled, the girl next to us jumped up, tossed off her wig, put on a fedora and a trench coat (with a matching one for Barbie!) and saluted us as she headed out.
“What is with these kids and doing Oppenheimer second?!” said Stella.
Not only did my entire family do Barbenheimer (with Barbie second!) but my MOM loved Barbie most of all! My mom, who told me that having a Barbie would make me bad at math (joke’s on her, I made myself at bad at math) has been signing her texts “Mom Barbie” and alerting visitors that my dad and their dog are napping with “Shh the patriarchy is asleep—human and canine patriarchy.”
She even wanted to see Barbie a second time!! In the THEATER!! On a beautiful sunny day!! My mom used to shame us for wanting to go the movie theater on a sunny day—”you’re really going to spend three hours inside? Watching a movie you’ve already seen?”
And yet, she was down to meet my sister and I for a matinee OF THE BARBIE MOVIE on a beautiful Sunday afternoon?
“I can’t believe this is happening,” said my sister, as we walked into the theater, ten minutes before the movie started.
“That guy who testified before Congress was right!” I said. “The aliens are already here!!”
We sauntered up to the big iPad that prints out your tickets so you don’t have to deal with a person—only to stab at the screen helplessly. Because our show? WAS SOLD OUT.
“How can it be sold out?” I said. “I thought there’d be nobody here!”
“The next show is sold out too!” said my sister. “What should we do?”
My mom texted us that she was looking for a parking spot. Our hearts sank. We knew we wouldn’t get this chance again. Mom Barbie would vanish like a temporal mirage made of glitter.
Just when we were about to give up, an elderly Chinese man came up to us.
“You want to see Barbie?” he said, holding out two paper tickets. They were for the third row, dead center, perfect seats for the show we wanted. My sister and I were too stunned to say anything. The man explained that he and his wife bought the tickets but “something came up” and they had to leave.
“Are you sure?” we said. He also explained to us that it was “National Movie Day” and all tickets were half-price—that’s why it was so crowded and why everything was sold out.
My sister just happened to have the perfect change for eight dollars—the man said “Enjoy!” and we thanked him profusely and he and his wife left the theater, headed to their next Mary Poppins-esque adventure of helping people with exactly what they need and promptly bouncing. I’m assuming!
My mom texted us that she had a parking spot and was walking in. The movie was starting in five minutes.
“This is unbelievable,” I said. “The universe really wants us to see Barbie again!”
“But we can’t get a third ticket,” said my sister. “I’ll go home and you guys can watch the movie.”
“Oh no. Not acceptable,” I said. “We’ve come too far. What’s the one movie that won’t be sold out?”
My instincts were correct. I snagged a ticket in the 30 seconds it took my mom to walk in from the car.
I haven’t snuck into a movie since high school with Stella. So I’m having a childhood flashback at the childhood flashback movie and my MOM is there? As Barbie would say, “I’m having a real Proustian flashback!”
“We can NOT tell Mom that you’re sneaking into Barbie with us,” said my sister, who is an adult, as am I. “We’ll tell her that the Chinese man gave us three tickets and you just pretend you’re going to the bathroom when they send you to Blue Beetle.”
Fortunately, the guy who ripped our tickets saw my Barbenheimer shirt and that my mom and sister were both wearing pink and he didn’t even look at our tickets—”Barbie’s right this way! Enjoy the show, ladies!”
We. Are. In. And the theater was only 50% full, probably because it was such a beautiful day, and we all got to sit together in perfect seats that even RECLINED (when trying to figure out the controls, my mom said “We need Physicist Barbie!! Oppenheimer Barbie!!”) and my mom cracked up at the “Nobel Prize for Horses” and then CRIED at the end, as did the random man sitting in front of her, and I wished I could thank both Greta Gerwig and that elderly Chinese man for giving me a moment that restored my faith in humanity and healed my relationship with my mom (AND brought back the cinematic dream ballet!).
And I never had to go near Blue Beetle, although I have to make peace with the fact that I contributed four dollars to their box office run.
“I just loved it, even more the second time,” said my mom as we walked out into the sunshine. “And I never purchased a Barbie, never endorsed anything she stands for!”
Barbie will heal this nation.
Elizabeth Barron 