On This Day in History, 1959: The Barbie Doll Debuts*
It was only eleven years before I was born and it’s strange considering that it already seemed ancient in the early 70s, something from a completely distant era (which it was and wasn’t). But then, it was an old trope – fetishized very white women, not to be confused in any way with fetishized very non-white women who serve the same purpose for different people and vice versa. A woman’s idea of ideal and control: perfect form, perfect face and hair, perfectly silent. As if the air bubble above his head said “The way it was, the good old days” 50s people have no idea that by the 70s their era would already be fodder for nostalgia, not to mention sitcoms, this American yearning for things that can’t be recovered mostly because they never existed. At some point, some of us realize that each generation is not their own, pines for a reality, a fantasy about the frontier where a man can explore and claim unexpected expanses, assuming he doesn’t die of listeria along the way. Or mail-order brides for women, like the enterprising types who lined the railroad coast to coast, just in search of some opportunity they couldn’t name. Or when stalwarts die believing their faith keeps them safe in unregulated factories or trenches, always calling to war in different languages. The way a dad might watch an old movie or news clip or something he lets slip in a light moment and say They don’t act like them anymore.
(*On March 9, 1959, the first Barbie doll was exhibited at the American Toy Fair in New York City. At eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blonde hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features.)
When mothers and daughters don’t talk
It ultimately depends on the girls
Their mother tried to understand
Nature uses their equipped tools
With – and no matter how we resist,
Each of us is growing up every second.
Since time only moves in one direction,
Even when the moon is tired of talking
His love for the sea leads to the tide,
Which silently renews the world-
Because everything depends on this.
–
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