Midnight Mutterings | Barbie redux

No doubt you have heard of two new movies: Oppenheimer and Barbie. I’ve talked to someone who saw them both. On the same day. I also know someone who read the book: Oppenheimer. Both people who saw or read Oppenheimer said it’s very worthwhile and I plan to read the book and see the film when it is shown where I can see it easily. I’ll likely give Barbie a pass. While I’ve known mildly who Oppenheimer was, probably from undergraduate classes in physics and chemistry, I knew Barbie personally.

My two young nieces had Barbie dolls and not long after I moved to New York City, I decided to make both Barbies wardrobes for Christmas presents. How hard could that be? I’d been sewing my own clothes for some years, inspired by a Home Ec class in eighth grade in which I learned to make a gathered skirt. The tiny Barbie clothes were almost impossible, even with the envelope of tissue patterns I bought. The fabrics had to be almost as thin as the tissue paper or the collars and other trim would have been shapeless lumps and the only fastenings had to be the the tiniest snaps. I ended up cutting up my own clothes for the fabric and after all my efforts, the tiny snaps were too awkward for young fingers to manipulate with ease.

Of course, years later, my own daughter wanted Barbie. I was reluctant, even though I wasn’t even considering making clothes again. There was a lot about Barbie for me to disapprove of, given her depiction of the ideal young woman’s unobtainable body. So I did the Mean Mother thing: that is waiting until just before she was likely to lose interest before buying Barbie. My evil plan was nixed when her aunt from her father’s side did an end run arriving from NYC with Barbie in hand. The three of them had a week of non-stop Barbie playing and appeared to be having the time of all of their lives. The aunt was a successful actor and singer and she and my daughter made up and produced plays and musicals in which Barbie was the star. I did overhear one short play called Barbie Meets Ken at the Motel in she had to choose her wardrobe for the occasion. All I could think to do was pretend I didn’t hear. And be glad Aunt Linda hadn’t chosen Growing Up Skipper, who was Barbie’s little sister. Skipper’s ‘growing up’ involved her ability that, if you lifted one arm, her breasts grew.. What actually happened was that the arm lift somehow made her waist smaller by having the waist plastic pieces slide over each other, thus making her chest larger in contrast. Speaking of the unattainable body image…

In any case, my daughter’s Barbie, Suntan Barbie, could be put in the sun wearing the bikini that came with her and her exposed skin would darken, leaving a bikini shaped paler image, which would fade overnight. And my dilemma about getting Barbie out of the house was solved by our dog, Benjamin, who stole and beheaded her in the yard. Relenting, I was horrified enough to offer to replace Suntan Barbie, but my daughter said, no, that Barbie wasn’t any fun without Auntie Linda.

Much easier than making tiny clothes was my year of tagging radioisotopes by hand to be injected into patients at Duke University nuclear medicine clinic in the early days of diagnostic nuclear scans. I worked peeking over a stack of lead bricks titrating drop by drop of chemicals in the tagging process using recipes I got by telephoning other institutes doing similar research. I was grateful I didn’t kill anybody. A half century later I thought of those days when my daughter’s participation in a clinical trial in preparation for stem cell transplant involved Iodine 131 tagged mouse antibodies. I have no idea of how that was done. My daughter’s experience was a big success in that she did not lose her hair. Nor did her mucus membranes become painfully inflamed and make her as miserable as the standard chemotherapy and high dose radiation used to destroy defective bone marrow. It did mean that she was isolated in a lead lined room for many days while the radioactivity cooled. No one could enter her room and she had to administer her own meds and do her own blood draws through a central line. She also had to stack up her dirty dishes and linens in her room while they cooled while as she did. Meanwhile we could peek at her through a small window at a distance from her. Probably more than you wanted to know, but her her bone marrow transplant was a big success and she had ten years of cancer free life with a pretty good quality of life before she died suddenly after surgery for an un-fixable complication. I don’t know if her transplant preparation has become standard practice, or if something even better is in use now. I do know that I am relieved each time someone chooses to have treatment at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle, given the quality and kindness of Amanda’s decade of treatment. Nuclear medicine is hardly related to nuclear bomb making beyond both involve unstable isotopes.

As for Barbie, she reappeared in my life a couple of decades ago when Cafe Olga listed a waitstaff job opening. I thought Barbie would be perfect for the job where some of my friends worked. To that end, I helped Barbie write a letter of application. She mentioned that she was taking a break from Ken and included her long list of schooling and work in other fields. I think it was her birthday and an article appeared somewhere about her work history. Barbie was ‘born’ in 1959. Of course she must have been about 20 years old already when she appeared, which makes her close to my age before the movie about her opened. Of course, she hasn’t aged like us mere mortals.

In Barbie’s application, she listed some of her characteristics that should make up for her lack of waitperson experience. She mentioned she could trot around all day in four inch heels without breaking a sweat, and that she didn’t need to a place to live as she could just retire to the box she came in to overnight in a corner somewhere. I have forgotten what else Barbie might have said on her own behalf. I signed for Barbie with my left hand and mailed the letter for her. I was surprised when I got a call a few days later as my name was nowhere on Barbie’s letter. In any case Barbie got the job and I was to fill in for her, starting immediately. When I asked why I was being called, the answer was that Barbie’s name was misspelled and my friends at Cafe Olga immediately thought of me as they knew of my poor spelling. And my silliness. In spite of our mutual lack of waitperson experience, Barbie would have been the better choice. I really wasn’t very good and wasn’t quick at all at learning all the various beers’ and wines’ names and characteristics. In addition, my left arm, which I had broken some years before still wasn’t up to carrying the heavy trays.

Last note: If you look up Barbie (full name: Barbara Millicent Roberts—not related to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, I presume) on Wikipedia, her write up which mostly consists of her lengthy list of family and friends, only some of which were made as dolls, rivals in length to that of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I’m not sure what to think about that. The person who saw both movies said they both deal with ethical decisions in different ways.

Anyway, see you at the movies.