,ztivtA,

k‘*k

Saturday, May 23

Dinner at Peking Restaurant and
miniature golf with Jewish Profes-
sional Singles. 8 p.m. Joel, (248)
398-3987.

Friday, May 29

Young Adult Shabbat Service and
Rekindling Shabbat outdoor din-
ner before services. Dinner at 6
p.m., services at 7:30 p.m. At
Mat Shalom Synagogue. Cost:
$10, please pay before Friday.
RSVP by May 25 to (248) 203-
1486.

JUNE

June 8-15, 22-29

Bicycling tour, Tuscany, Italy. with
Historical Cycling International.
Moderate ride, rolling terrain, 15-
39 miles per clay. (714) 499-0342,
E-mail: cycling@gte.net

Arne 16 26

-

Kenya, photo safari with Premier
Jewish Singles. Cost: $3,199.
(800) 444-9250.

JUne 19 21

-

New Glarus bike/Camping week.
end with Steppie Out, at New
Glarus, Wis. Cost: $170-190.
(773) 509-8595, E-mail: step-
pinCifhimet.com

June 20 27

-

Second annual national jewi
singles summer cruise. Sail
Mediterranean aboard Vision of
the Seas. Forbes Travel, (800)
345-2984,

JULY

/

July 3-5

Horseback riding, golfing, canoe-
ing, boating and more at a 1,000-
acre dude ranch, the Double B
Resort, Rothbury, Mich. Cost:
$335-375. (773) 509-8595, E-
mail: steppin@xnet.com

She Says

Barbies leave their old room for the harsh spotlight
of tell-all TV

I called my (red-headed) mother in
Michigan and requested she gather all
my childhood dolls and prepare them
for the journey East. My move from
rowing up the only girl in a
the Midwest to New York entailed a
big Midwest clan of boys, I
12-hour drive in a rented Chevy. But
was Mattel's best customer.
ABC
was giving my Barbies the star
I had 68 Barbies, one Ken,
treatment,
offering to pick them up
one G.I. Joe I stole from my brothers,
and fly them to the big city, first class.
12 Little Kiddies and 28 Dawn dolls
"Make sure you get the red-headed
so tiny that instead of changing their
one with her nose chopped off," I told
clothes, I switched their heads. To
my mother.
avoid my real family, I'd sit on my
"So you're going to trash your
pink carpet and play with 110 mem-
childhood
again?" she asked.
bers of my doll family, who resided
"No,
I'm
going to psychoanalyze
happily in Barbie's Dream House,
my
Barbie
obses-
with my mother's sanitary napkins
sion."
stacked as bunk beds.
"Go ahead," she
At 20, I left the dolls in my pink
said. "Tell the
childhood room and fled to Green-
whole world you
wich Village, N.Y., to become a con-
were in therapy."
fessional poet, in therapy and all black
The move was
clothes, who played with boys. One
traumatic.
Red-
Thanksgiving, I came home and was
headed
Barbie
lost
shocked to find my beloved dolls in a
a
pink
plastic
shoe.
box in the closet, naked, atop a
G.I. Joe lost his
mound of Barbie clothes. Could I
head. (Thank God
have abandoned them like that? Until
for Super Glue.)
4 a.m., I dressed them and carefully
My mother seemed
placed them on the shelf, where they
sad, as if she'd just
stared at me while I snuggled under
realized that her 37-year-old daughter
the pink canopy. When my boyfriend
didn't live at home anymore. I was
Aaron visited Michigan, he had night-
nervous to see all the old-fashioned
mares, spooked by the 220 beady eyes
faces in my East Eighth Street high-
glaring at him while he slept.
rise. Was there room?
Every few years my mother called
Moving them to their new home,
and mentioned some niece who asked
on a shelf in the foyer, I analyzed their
if she could have my Barbies. I said
deformities. A few years back, I'd met
no. So they lived eternally in my old
the sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer
room, a shrine to my girlhood. That
Kaplan at a party and told her about
was until my friend Nancy, a televi-
Barbie, Francie and G.I. Joe's Electra
sion producer, asked if I would appear
triangle and the doll mutilations. She
on an ABC special on Barbie. After I
said: "That's why you're healthy now.
accepted the offer, Nancy warned that
her program was a serious expose. Like You took out your aggression."
But I must have had false memory
Jerry Springer, she wanted me to dig
syndrome.
The red-headed Barbie,
up all the dirt: how I cut off red-head-
which
I
was
sure I butchered, was still
ed Barbies nose with scissors, twisted
pretty
and
perky
in her pink party
G.I. Joe's legs in a complete circle and
dress.
Yet
the
dark-haired
Francie (my
stuck Francie in my Susie Homemaker
nemesis) had her nose cut off, eyes
oven. G.I. Joe rescued her right before
lined with black felt-tip pen and hair
meltdown.
cut in zigzags.
I was also in a social quandary. I'd
Susan Shapiro recently completed a
recently started a new Barbie gang in
comic novel, "Tangle," which is set in
New York. After I'd published a Barbie
Michigan and New York.

SUSAN SHAPIRO
Special to The Jewish News

G

poem, one of my students bought me
a black Barbie, on a skateboard and her
soccer-playing Ken-look-alike friend.
For my birthday, my uptown col-
league Larry sent me the blond F.A.O.
Schwarz Barbie. A stand-up comic
friend gave me a doll with the head of
a hamburger. This motley-yet-hip clan
resided on my living room shelf, next
to books on Warhol and Mapplethor-
pe. When a friend married a toy-
industry analyst, they gave their guests
Wedding Barbie and Ken, in white
gown and tux, who fit right in.
Aaron and I got married, too.
When we moved
into the apart-
ment, I leaned
the dolls against a
window that I
didn't realize was
screenless. The
next day, the
black skateboard
Barbie disap-
peared. Aaron
detected a speck
five floors below
and said, "Your
dark self commit-
ted suicide." He paid one of the
porters $20 to retrieve her, which I
took as a good metaphor for marriage.
But, like in-laws from different cul-
tures, my New York City Barbies have
never met their suburban sisters. The
Midwest gals are a bit out of date, still
clad in psychedelic pant suits and
beauty parlor bouffants. They have
pointier breasts.
The downtown set is flatter, artier
and better dressed. Since I met them
after years of therapy, they are in bet-
ter physical and emotional shape. But
the Michigan dolls now have potential
fame and fortune on their side, not to
mention the cachet of airing dirty
laundry on national TV. I'll join both
parts of my life at the end of the
month, when we'll all watch the show
together — if we don't wind up on
the cutting room floor. ❑

This article first appeared in the New
York Times Magazine.

5/22
1998

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