Last night I dreamed that I won a contest. My prize? I would be dressed by Barbie.

I went to her Dream House and rang the doorbell. She opened the door,
wearing that black-and-white striped bathing suit and those rickety
little slip-on heels - the same thing she was wearing when I first
received her, in my black-and-white checkered bedroom in Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania, early in the 1960s.

But Barbie wasn't the same doll as she was way back then. And neither was I. She seemed kind of
sad. I was a little awed, and awkward. There was no eye contact as she
opened the door and vaguely motioned me in, leaving me to close the door myself. She had already wandered off, studying all the different
pieces of clothing that were hung like portraits on the walls. It was
like she was pondering something. She'd stand there with one arm
crossing her ample chest, the other bent upwards, with her plastic hand
dusting her perfectly rouged cheek, her unreasonably blue eyes staring
up at a little A-line jacket with big, round buttons.

"Wow, you have some really cool clothes here." I had to say something, even if it was lame.

"Yes." Big sigh. "I've arrived at a place in my life when I can have
everything I've always wanted." She started walking around the room,
touching a fluffy pink fur stole, a red velvet cape and matching muff,
pulling them down off the walls, then hanging them back up. She finally
settled on a pair of gray slacks and handed them to me, while looking
towards the next item on the wall. "Here. Try these." She walked away.

I stood there and watched her delicately maneuver through the white shag
carpet, her toes permanently pointing downward through her tiny little
plastic slip-on heels. I don't know when she learned to stand on her
own two feet. The last time I saw her, if she needed to do anything or
go anywhere, somebody had to carry her there.

I didn't put on the slacks. Gray has never been my color. And Barbie just kind of faded
away, into another room, without ever looking at me, without completing
my outfit with a sweater. She didn't give me a pearl necklace, or a
clutch bag. Maybe she climbed into that Kleenex-box bed that I had
fashioned for her. I know she didn't hook up with Ken. He was long
gone. As far as I could tell, there was nobody left in Barbie's Dream
World.

As I check out the Barbie collector's website, I oh! and ah! as memories
of the glamorous ensembles appear before me. Except for a few obvious
dreams of my own, like Solo In The Spotlight,
it becomes very clear that it was primarily my mother who dressed my
Barbie. My Barbie was Jackie Kennedy. No. That wouldn't be right.
Jackie may have been American royalty, but she was a Democrat. My
mother was a Goldwater Republican.

No, my Barbie was Audrey
Hepburn, walking down Madison Avenue at dawn, in a fabulous dress,
barefoot. Her hair was drawn up into a French twist, and she adjusted
her sunglasses with an elegant, perfectly manicured long-fingered hand
that held the guilty secret of a cigarette in a tortoise-shell holder.

My (mother's) Barbie met her friends from the Republican Women at the
Eagle in the main hall of John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia. After
shopping, she met Ken at Bookbinder's
on Walnut Street for a dry martini before diving into one of their
famous five-pound lobsters. Later, she drove her midnight blue,
white-leather-upholstered Olds 98 convertible back to the suburbs in
time to tuck her children into bed. The shushing of her hose against
her skin-tight brocade Evening Splendour
cocktail dress announced her before she even opened my bedroom door.
She had the fur-trimmed coat flung over her shoulder. I could smell her
White Shoulders as her powdered cheek brushed mine, and her soft
cigarette-tinged breath whispered goodnight.

Ken took the train home.

I don't blame Barbie for being so distant with me in my dream. After all, I walked away from her years ago. I left her lying somewhere, half
dressed, with her arms up in the air, and more than a few hairs out of
place. I may have grown old enough to have unceremoniously placed Ken
on top of her, before I smirked and left my childhood fantasies behind.

I don't know why I expected anything more from my dream Barbie. Or why I
was surprised that she would disappoint me so much when she handed me
those dull, gray slacks. My mother wasn't around to guide her fashion
sense, so Barbie simply didn't have it in her.

And no matter if she was a blond, brunette or redhead, Barbie always gazed demurely off to the side, never directly at you.

It was the way Man made her.

(Images courtesy of eBay sellers motherg1950, boalch and 2_get_real. Go check them out, and buy a couple of memories.)