How “Barbie” Triggered Me in the Most Unexpected Way
I love Barbie dolls all my life. For me, they symbolize precious, mysterious, happy, and in the end lost reality. Like my childhood.
My daughter, who is seventeen years old, came home after the “Barbie” premiere, delighted and excited. She, stood in front of me in her pink premiere outfit with an empty Barbie popcorn bucket, telling me about the movie, and how funny it is, determined to take me with her to see it. She even said: “There is a character of Mom that reminded me of you.”
Of course, I went to see the movie. When your seventeen-year-old daughter asks you to go somewhere with her after she taught you very precisely that most of the time you should be anywhere near her site, you go.
I am from Southern Europe, the Balkans precisely. I survived the Civil War when I was twelve years old. I don’t want to smuggle anyone with sad war stories, but to summarize, from twelve I have been a refugee. And no matter if I have a nice home and job now, I will always be a person without roots and home. It is an experience much bigger than reality that never leaves you alone.
In former Yugoslavia, in the 80s it wasn’t easy to buy a Barbie. We were a communist country, and Barbie, a doll with her Western capitalistic attributes, wasn’t available in our stores. But, to be honest, communism in Yugoslavia wasn’t even close to the repressive regimes in Eastern Europe. We could travel, we had money, and lived in some kind of communistic decadency. So Barbie wasn’t a rare possession in little girls' homes but surely was a precious one.
I had at least ten Barbies, a house, and a wardrobe that my creative mom had made for me. One Skipper, with a walkman and little tape that goes in it, and a Ken in a suit with a vest that had a little star on it that shined in the dark. Most of my Barbie dolls came from Germany, and some, from Italy, like Ken. That crowd was my biggest treasure. They had the honored place in my room. I played with them and lived with them in my preadolescence imaginative world.
The war begins. Civil war is always difficult to explain. My parents believed in the country they grew up in, and it wasn’t in their wildest dreams that it could fall apart. When the missiles started to fall on our heads, we escaped (for a while, as we thought), to the city fifty kilometers away, which very soon became another country, and never came back.
We didn’t bring anything with us, no clothes for winter (it was the end of summer), no pictures from our childhood and nice peaceful life (which is a whole different trauma), and for sure no Barbie. Not even one of them.
Years later when I had my daughter, I couldn’t wait to buy her a first Barbie. I believe she was still a little too young for it, but I definitely wasn’t too old. I couldn’t stop playing with it. My husband looked at me, so happy and infatuated, and said pretty confused, “I’m so glad that we bought this for you.”
I cried during the “Barbie” movie. The one and only person in the theater who cried like a baby. I was thrilled and proud in front of my daughter to know all those forgotten Barbie dolls, and Alen of course, and so deeply disturbed with the memories of my little treasure that I left behind in my lost home.
And buried all the sadness, because we left more important things, and saved heads on our shoulders.
I was deeply touched and overwhelmed with love because my daughter saw me in great mom played by that cutie America Ferrera. Sad, and righteous little girl in the grown woman's body.
But one thing is certain. That Barbie that I played with, after my Sofia was born, for sure had a hard time in Barbie land.
