Happy Birthday with Barbie...And She's Blonde!?!?

It’s that yellow time of year again for me. March, my birthday month. I didn’t really expect Barbie to take any part in my celebrations, but there she was inside a box wrapped in pink paisley paper. My daughters got one for me so I could play with them. I haven’t gotten a Barbie in years but there she was, and my girls told me that they picked one out that looked like me. She was blonde.

I never really even knew I was blonde until a few years ago. I did grow up playing with Barbies, however, and had a whole huge boxful. Some I treasured, some I did mean things to, and others I played with until their heads fell off. My very favorites were Barbie and the Rockers. I had all of them and when I played with my friends or sister I was always this really gorgeous brunette with curly hair that I named Melissa. I could never really “be” any of the uber blonde Barbies even though I liked to play with them. They were either the friends or enemies of Melissa. They weren’t ever me.

Growing up, my mom and sister were the blonde ones. My hair was called honey or golden or was described at times in less pleasant terms. I felt like the different one for better or worse and I played accordingly. The up-side was that I never identified or concerned myself with dumb blonde jokes. I wasn’t blonde. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school and there was a class discussion about me being the only blonde in class that I really found out. It was strange. I never knew people saw me as having blonde hair. I guess I knew it was technically true but I still forget.

This may be the silliest blog entry I’ve written, but getting my blonde Barbie this week made me wonder at how different we see ourselves in comparison with how others see us. I don’t know if I’ll ever really see myself as blonde, but I think I’ll have fun playing with my new Barbie.