Barbie and I were born the same year, 1959: she at a toy fair in New York, I in Portland, Ore. When I was 5, Barbie and friends appeared under the Christmas tree, becoming the center of my play life from that moment forward. Around 10, when I moved on to other things, my mother put her in a closet where she and her entourage remained undisturbed for more than 30 years. When my mother sold the house I grew up in, she shipped the box across the country to be stored in a closet of mine, until I finally decided to reclaim the space. Supposedly, these dolls were worth something; I decided to sell her on eBay, a quasi-public ritual of letting go.
I didn’t have enough characters available to me in my item headline — “Vintage Barbie Lot, 1964, dolls, clothes, car” — to enumerate the treasures hinted at therein, the fact that the Barbie was a platinum bubble-cut; that her friends, Midge and Allan, and little sister Skipper accompanied her (all in original swimsuits!); that the lot included a dressing case with drawers, floral wallpaper, and wardrobe hangers — and that the outfits were divine.
To bone up, I browsed other vintage Barbie items nearing their final bidding. Two rare outfits went high: the crisp Pan Am stewardess uniform ($678), and the Gay Parisienne ensemble, including rabbit stole, tulle net hat, gold velvet clutch, and opera gloves ($787). Another lot, “#1 Brunette Barbie with huge wardrobe,” was listed at $7,100.
But #1 was Ur-Barbie, the one with the topknot ponytail, and my own doll was fifth or sixth generation — five years after “Barbie the teen-age fashion model” hit the toy shelves in America and immediately soared into popularity. My research showed that my bubble-cut Barbie might go for anywhere from $60 to $100, all by herself.
She had no “green ear,” a horrible affliction that spread discoloration across the face from the cheap metal posts used in the Barbie pearl earrings. My Barbie never had earrings, though it’s possible I pined for them. No green ear, and no “chewies.” I have seen enough photos to know that one anxious gnawing session on a hand or foot often resulted in gross disfigurement, not to mention eroded nail paint. My Barbie had no “neck splits,” though I never figured out how those occurred in other people’s dolls. She had, I regret to report, a slightly loose left arm joint, though not to the point where I would have called it a “swingie.” Such an imperfection was dismaying, yet as I accurately reported in my ad, she remained able to lift the arm in question and hold a pose, which, for Barbie, was the main thing.
My Barbie was, in ad parlance, “gorgeous.” Those first Barbies had faces all their own, each hand-painted or stenciled, in the early days, by homeworkers in Japan. My Barbie’s expression, her face paint unmarred, was sultry and poised. Some of them pouted, some of them looked a little vacant, and some, with their peaked eyebrows, looked slightly irritated. Mine looked serene and sexual at the same time. This was undoubtedly lost on me at 5 but was quite apparent to me as an adult. She also didn’t smile, as the later Barbies and most other dolls do. My Midge smiled; Skipper smiled; even Allan smiled. But Barbie’s face reserved judgment. She glanced to the side with a trace of amusement but would not show her hand. She didn’t at all — and this was huge in a girl’s toy — seem eager to please.
She also didn’t dress for housework, although, judging by her evolving wardrobe, as Barbie scholars have noted, she became increasingly domesticated as the decades marched on: more smiley, and more homey. Early Barbie had her own agenda, for sure, striding straight-legged on her way to the first of the two hundred careers she would eventually tackle.
With that many jobs to do — my doll’s era included Fashion Editor Barbie, Nurse Barbie, Tennis Pro Barbie, Executive Barbie, and Astronaut Barbie — she couldn’t always be fussing with her hair, and my bubble-cut Barbie never had a bad hair day in her life. Its color was like the glowing tip of a flame.
During my college feminist awakening, I of course realized the discouraging cultural message embedded in Barbie’s grotesquely exaggerated bodily proportions (scalable to 39-21-33), but as a child, I was focused on other things.
Barbie granted me the pretend freedoms I longed to hurry up and have for real. That she was single I never questioned (for some reason Ken never showed up under the Christmas tree; I don’t believe I was ever remotely interested in him). Barbie in her career mode (Pan Am stewardess) and intrepid traveler mode (Gay Parisienne) suggested to me that life should be a marvelous adventure.
I possessed the original Barbie car, the Austin Healey peach convertible with aqua interior. It was my favorite accessory, despite the rug-burned knees that came from hours of pushing Barbie around in it, avoiding the giant calico cat that was keenly interested in prey of all kinds. Barbie could go places, anywhere she wanted, just like that other long-ago heroine of career-bound little girls, Nancy Drew (Nancy also with her entourage, her BF and BFF, and her convertible).
Selling Barbie should have simply been an exercise in nostalgia but turned out to feel more complicated. My best offer came in at just under $300. Not bad appreciation for a doll my mother probably bought at Bazaar or Villa Mart for around $2.99, the outfits on sale before Christmas at two for a dollar. My lot included the Knit Mix ‘n Match, which gave Barbie the option of wearing short shorts or a long skirt with the same top; a Jackie Kennedy-like turquoise sheath; the lovely “peachy fleecy” coat I’d like to have in my own size; a black satin dinner suit with bolero jacket and pillbox hat; and several other pieces in impeccable taste.
My Barbie would travel to her new owner in Georgia with tiny suitcases (two), an eight-track tape player (reels needing a spot of super glue), and, alas, only one remaining pair of the highly collectible pumps.
The buyer in Georgia emailed to say she was looking forward to adding the pieces to her collection, and I tried to pack the clothes in tissue paper in such a way that she’d feel like she was opening a gift. I hoped she really was a collector and not a dealer, and that she’d be dressing my Barbie for delight and display, easing straight arms in and out of sleeves, rather than posting the items piecemeal for resale.
Sometimes I think I should have sold the accoutrements (wardrobe case, car), and the smiling friends (for which I curiously had no feelings whatsoever), and kept Barbie for myself in her one-piece red Helenca swimsuit — along with the black satin dinner suit, which really was perfection itself.
The regret feels faint and sweet. Barbie is gone, but what, after all, would I have done with her? Long ago, I had treasured her beauty as an uncomplicated good, unlike some conflicted children whose legacies made their way to eBay bearing caveats like, “Both breasts have been pierced with a needle,” or “One breast has been smooshed,” or “Hair has been cut off, but could use body for spare parts or wear wig.”
No, never. I revered her as a woman of the world, free to exercise her own choices, and she helped me assume that I would grow up and be one too.
Suzanne Matson is the author of, most recently, Ultraviolet, a novel; she teaches at Boston College.