Barbie gave me a way to process a complicated childhood

I don’t remember many of my childhood Christmases, but I remember the year I got a Barbie Dreamhouse.

I was around 5 years old. I suspect my parents had splurged on a big present because they knew things were about to change for me.

Soon after I was born, my father left, and I spent my early years with my mom. But when I was 5, my parents decided to try to reconcile. So that Christmas morning, in my dad’s apartment in Lafayette Hill that he would soon give up, the three of us woke up in the same place for perhaps the first time in years. And next to the Christmas tree was a Barbie Dreamhouse.

I don’t remember any awkward moments from that morning, no tentative hugs or stiff silences. I just remember joy. I hadn’t expected such a big present, and I was so, so happy.

The house was a plastic A-frame with huge skylights and cutouts to create an open feel, in three sections that were light enough for me to move around. I moved them a lot, as my family changed homes three times in four years. The Dreamhouse — with its burnt orange roof, canary yellow doors, and white frame — always came with me.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with my parents growing up, as they both worked long hours, including nights and weekends, and were probably working on their relationship. I was a shy, sensitive kid, so while I loved my friends, I also needed long breaks to be by myself.

In those many, many hours alone, Barbie kept me company.

I crafted intricate story lines, with drama, conflict, and resolution. My Barbies had parties, went to nightclubs, and took trips. Sometimes I’d separate one from the crew and play with her alone, in comfortable silence, trying on clothes or rearranging furniture. Barbie liked her quiet time, too.

My childhood family was complicated, ever-changing. Barbie gave me a way to work out my feelings about that, by building a home where people communicate, everyone apologizes after a fight, and no one stops loving each other.

All of this may sound pretty sad. And I was a sad child, in some ways. But I wasn’t sad when I was playing with Barbie.

I’m now also raising an only child. She turned 5 just before COVID-19 hit, and spent almost one year out of school. After nine months of trying to do kindergarten and first grade over the computer, I bought her a Barbie Dreamhouse. It was both a reward for her hard work and a desperate attempt to give her something to do on her own, so I could get more of my work done.

Unlike my A-frame, the 2021 Barbie abode is almost all pink. It is also taller and thinner, more like a Philly rowhouse. (But that’s where the comparisons end, unless you know of a place in the city where you can take a slide from the third floor into a second-floor pool.)

At birthdays and Christmas, I slowly added to my daughter’s Barbie collection, and have been pleased to discover you can now get dolls with more realistic body types, from nonwhite backgrounds, and even with flat feet (!), no high heels allowed.

My kid, too, would spend hours in front of her Dreamhouse; I could hear her high-pitched voice doing both sides of dialogue, making up her own stories. It didn’t take a degree in child psychology to see what post-pandemic feelings she was trying to work out: Barbie got sick and went to the hospital, or organized a large social gathering, like a wedding or birthday party. Her Barbie would spend hours just getting ready to go grocery shopping.

So yeah, we’re going to the Barbie movie.

I didn’t want to see it at first — the marketing campaign has been aggressive, cloying, and annoying. It’s pink pink pink everywhere, promoted tweets and pop-up ads and posters on every surface. There’s even a Barbie burger at Burger King, with pink sauce.

Plus, as an adult, my feelings about Barbie are much more conflicted — how many women have wasted years feeling bad about themselves because they don’t look like a plastic doll?

But over time, the movie’s waterboard-like advertising started to work. Some of the clips made me laugh. I think the Billie Eilish song for the movie “What Was I Made For?” is hauntingly beautiful. I challenge anyone not to smile watching Ryan Gosling talk through his “top-ten Ken-sentials to tap into your Kenergy.”

My kid, now 9, doesn’t have any of the ambivalence about Barbie that I have — she’s just excited for the movie.

So I’m giving in. And when we talk about what the Barbie movie will be like, we aren’t thinking about wildfires, flash floods that drown children, or the gun violence that makes her ask me every time we go somewhere new: “Is it safe?”

Instead, for a few moments, we can roll down the car windows, blast Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” and pretend we’re driving a pink convertible.