Before Barbie Was An Astronaut . . . Or Even Synonymous With "Blonde"

Last night, I went over to my friend's apartment with two other mutual friends for a girls' night with expensive cheese, wine, and not-so-expensive Cadbury chocolate. The friend with the apartment brought her vintage Barbie game from home and a lot of wine-induced giggling ensued over the board's choices which included mid-century financial opportunities such as "Make silk flowers, earn $3" and "Write story for magazine, no payment." Also, if you were lucky enough to land on one of the four boyfriend squares (I got Ken, by the way), you were exempt from having to pay for your own soda fountain treats and football game tickets for the rest of the game (leaving you with enough cash to buy your prom dress).

With a mother born in 1951, I was raised to be nostalgic for the 1960s. Not the late, flower child, Vietnam war, disillusionment, The White Album '60s, but the early, Doris Day, pillbox hat, MLKJr., skinny Elvis '60s. My mom's older sister was a teenager and married woman by the time my mom turned 10, so the glamour of being a young woman at the time must have made a permanent impression on her (she taught me the correct way to do the twist for a school sock hop). I have Mom's Barbie and Ken dolls, and my own 35th Anniversary replica of the 1959 original doll. Even as a little girl, I regarded this pale, barely smiling beauty as something far more special than her dozens of tan, California blonde sisters with identical movie-star grins. None of their cheaply-manufactured pink clothes looked right on her. Her zebra stripe maillot and black mules did not suit any of them.

As recent graduates without careers or boyfriends, we laughed at the old-fashioned sexism of the game, even as we wryly acknowledged certain things that haven't changed, or haven't changed to our satisfaction. All of us would like to be writers (always a popular and naive ambition), possibly journalists, but how do you even begin to break into a field like that without connections or previous experience? When discussing my future plans to earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, my parents listen and then ask "But what do you want to do?" Um . . . write. Creatively. "There's quite a demand for business writers now." Um . . . yeah. "There was an article in the paper yesterday about this young man who does creative writing for Hallmark." Ok, ok, thanks. "Wait, just a second, I saved it." It's ok, I'll read it later. "No, wait, I know it's here somewhere." Ok, thanks. "Maybe your father put it in the recycling already." It's Oh. Kay. Mom. Really.

I'm already very sorry that I want to be a writer, not only because I have to tell people that I want to be a writer, but also because I end up going to the doctor about five times a year and I've been told I need health insurance.

As for Barbie and Ken, my group of single girlfriends is quickly dwindling. Two sorority sisters got married this summer, more are to follow, several have serious boyfriends. It seems to me, in my community, at least, that for young women my age, getting married immediately after graduation is regarded as a reasonable excuse to put off career-hunting, or at least, marriage substitutes nicely as one major life-changing decision for another. To be fair, most girls I know are doing both, and before anyone gets angry read the following:

My parents recently vetoed my request to do philanthropic work in a foreign country before settling into a career, but if I were getting married, they would expect to shell out several times the price of a plane ticket to pay for the wedding. What if I never get married? "Hey Mom, Dad, if I promise to never have a wedding, will you send me to Nepal?"

At least, like vintage Barbie, if your journalistic efforts fail to be lucrative and no one is asking you to go steady, you can still go shopping. In a fashion supposedly typical of women my age, I went into board game debt to buy the prom dress seen at the top of this post. $65 in Barbie money seems like a small price to pay for the glamour of being a young woman in the late 00s.