Do You Wanna Come Over and Play Barbies?

First off, I apologize for the weirdly-sized pics. I am in a love/hate relationship with Blogger and lately the hate part of it seems to be taking over. Could it BE any more annoying and slow? Seriously Blogger People, this is absolutely ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm a day late here. You still love me, right?

This MLM we are talking about our favorite childhood toys. I had three things to choose from: Barbies, Babysitter's Club Books or my Cabbage Patch Kids. I chose Barbie, of course. She always HAS been Miss Popularity.

Ah, Barbie. How I loved her with her poseable arms and legs and her Triple D Cups. We spent HOURS together. We loved together, we laughed together, we cried together.

My very first Barbie was Malibu Barbie, pictured to the left. Not the essence of coolness in the eyes of a 4 or 5 year old since Malibu Barbie only came with an ugly swimming suit. Since to "play Barbies" we spent the majority of our time deciding what our Barbie should wear, the swimming suit just didn't work.

My sisters and I had a TON of Barbie clothes. The envy of the neighborhood, even. We would seperate all our Barbie clothes into different categories (eveningwear, beachwear, sleepwear, play clothes, etc), then take turns choosing which ones would be added to our Barbie's wardrobe. We would name them things like "Jessica", "Claudia", "Amanda" or "Tiffany". My Grandma made big poofy dresses (like the one Malibu is wearing) for our Barbies to wear to prom and other black tie events (or pink and purple tie events, since Ken's tuxes were too cool for black ties). These were always the first things to go in the wardrobe shopping.

These little Nod-to-the-Eighties Outfits were usually my first choice. And you can't see in this picture, but Ken has a hole in his left earlobe. I poked a straight pin into it so that he had an earring. I'm sure my mom was excited about that.

Speaking of Ken, I once had a Ken with black hair. Yeah. I know. COOL. NO one had a black-haired Ken. Then one day my friend Stacy was trying to pull him out of the pink Barbie convertible and POP! His head popped right off. I was LIVID. Friendship-ending livid. I chased her out of the house and told her never to come back. HOW could she ever break my black-haired Ken? Did she not care about me at ALL? And I could just hear my mom when she found out, "This is why we don't have nice things!" I cried for DAYS. My mom finally talked me into accepting her apology but I'm not sure I ever let her touch my Barbies again.

This beat-up looking Barbie was the second one I ever owned. She has a short neck because her head was torn off as well, but since I was the one that did it I couldn't be too upset about the whole thing. She was the "pretty" Barbie before the beheading. Afterwards, the dorky Barbie. The one that always got the "ugly stepsister" rolls. Poor, poor Neckless Barbie. She is wearing of my favorite dresses that my grandma made. I picked it out myself and I thought it was BEAUTIFUL.

We had Barbie Cars, Barbie Furniture, even a big ole Barbie House. We played with Barbies every single day and loved it. Barbie was glamourous. After spending a while looking through all my old Barbies I realized something. There is a REASON we spent all our "playing Barbies" time trying to figure out what they were going to wear. It's because it takes HOURS to actually dress them! Maybe it is easier with small, nimble fingers but I doubt it. So if I learned anything from Barbie besides a skewed view of what a woman should look like: Hand-eye coordination, baby. At least that is something.