My Novel Taming Jaguars Is Finished!!!

 

Jasmine, Patsy, and Vera accompany me everywhere. They join me when I take a walk, help me do the dishes, cook baked ziti with me, and listen when I play the piano. After a handful of years, this is how I got to know them, and now that my fifth novel, "Taming Jaguars," is finished, it's time to send them off into the world. 

Jasmine is the "I" character in Taming Jaguars. It is summertime, and the story begins when at age forty-nine, she moves into the beach house owned by her new boyfriend, Rex, in the fictitious town of Cape Castle. Rex is Jasmine's first serious boyfriend since her marriage ended with a shocking confession over a decade ago. She is perpetually filled with anxiety that her relationship with Rex will not work out, so she spends the summer self-medicating with Chardonnay and through the healing scents of the ocean's sea salt. At first, Taming Jaguars was supposed to focus on Jasmine and Rex's burgeoning relationship, but after a year of outlines and sketches of my first few chapters, I realized I'd rather explore her friendship with two of my female characters, Patsy and Vera. I wanted to learn more about their personalities and histories because I found these unique and gutsy older women fascinating. 

Patsy is a blue-eyed blonde spending another summer living in her faded musician boyfriend's beach house. She is forty-four years old, and she ignores the ticking of her biological clock, preferring to focus on enjoying the hedonistic temptations in life. She brings her closest Cape Castle friend, Vera, into the mix who is a youthful seventy-nine-year-old with no qualms about wearing her bikini top every time she relaxes in the beach town. Throughout my novel, Vera sets out to help Patsy and Jasmine with their youthful dramas despite harboring a spicy secret of her own.

Now that the drafts are finished, my next step is spreading the word on social media. When I self-published my novels, Bliss, Bliss, Bliss  (2011) and Iggy Gorgess (2014), I connected with writers, editors, and indie publishers through Twitter, but now that Twitter is gone, I'm mostly on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and my Goodreads Author Page. Recently, I've discovered Substack, yet another website where writers can post notes and quotes from their novels.

Since Taming Jaguars is not yet a printed book, I am working on a one-page synopsis and author's bio to submit to independent publishers hoping to find someone who will help me get Jasmine, Patsy, and Vera into the hands and minds of readers.

Although Taming Jaguars mostly focuses on older women, my character Mel is an Instagram model in her early twenties, and the disdain Jasmine and Patsy have for her is often humorous. Here is a short excerpt that features Mel, Jasmine, and Patsy meeting Vera at the spa's indoor swimming pool:

            Mel changed from her white terrycloth robe into a skimpy, pink and tan bikini. I couldn't figure out where she had gotten a bikini?

            “Umm,” she said. “I should have told you both to bring bikinis today. I always carry one in my purse.”

            “That's resourceful,” Vera said.

            “But why would it be 'resourceful' to carry a bikini in your purse?” Patsy asked.

            “Because we are the inhabitants of a beach town.” 

            “It's silly,” Patsy said. “I always know when I'm going for a swim. I don't have many pop-up bikini moments to surprise me!”

            I laughed loudly, but Mel just shrugged.

           “Oh, don't be callous,” Vera said. “If you girls had carried bikinis in your purses today, you and Jasmine would be in the water with us right now instead of kicking your legs about at the edge of the pool! 

Thank you for reading a bit about my journey writing my fifth novel, Taming Jaguars. Stay tuned for more excerpts at the following links: 

https://www.facebook.com/chrissibliss/ 

https://www.instagram.com/christabelgorgess/?hl=en

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5232496.Chrissi_Sepe

https://substack.com/@chrissisepe?

Photo by Ralph Crane

 

Brooke Shields Saves The Day!

My Brooke Shields doll and two of my Brooke books

Do you believe in synchronicity? I do! Actress/Model/Wonderful Person, Brooke Shields, keeps popping up into my life. No, I've never met her in person. It's just that her pictures, books, and social media posts somehow repeatedly make their way into my life at the times I need her most.

Years ago, I dreamed I got a personal, handwritten letter in the mail from Brooke. I have no memory of what it said. Even when I first woke up, I couldn't remember. All I remember is that I woke up extremely upset and disappointed that it was only a dream. The feeling of longing was unmistakable, and it took a while to shake off the depression that she didn't actually write me. I felt sad thinking she never would. But something was going on in the universe that made me feel as though I should pay attention to Brooke.  

Photo from Reddit

The first time I saw Brooke Shields was on the cover of Time Magazine’s “Face of the 1980’s” issue. I was in my dad’s hospital room, a few days after he was diagnosed with cancer on my twelfth birthday. Brooke was almost sixteen, and she looked beautiful and glamorous in a pink dress that had a huge ruffle extending over the top of one shoulder. Looking at Brooke’s picture and reading the article about her model life allowed me to put my attention somewhere else for a moment. Fantasizing about her exciting life made me feel better because I desperately needed an escape, and she brought me comfort. Little did I know then that decades later, Brooke would provide me comfort as I faced other new chapters in my life.

Inspired by Brooke, I asked my mom if I could sign with 'Lil Stars Agency" when I was fourteen years old. This is one of my contact sheets used to choose a pic for my acting portfolio. I landed two extra jobs in two movies. One was as a camper in "Old Enough," and the other was as a student in "No Big Deal" starring Kevin Dillon.

During Brooke's heyday, I had posters of her on my bedroom wall. One was from her "Blue Lagoon" movie which I watched countless times on the only premium movie channel my family had called WHT. The channel streamed from a box which sat on the top of our TV, and the reason why it was our only movie channel is because my town didn't have cable lines yet! I don't have my posters anymore, but I still have a trade paperback book from that time period called "The Brooke Book," and of course, I still have my Brooke Shields doll. I treasure her even though her leg has now fallen out of its socket, held up only by her tights. She also doesn't have shoes anymore which my daughter probably lost when she was a kid.  

As the years rolled by, Brooke never left my mind. I remember her playing Rizzo in "Grease" on Broadway, and I watched every episode of her 1990's TV comedy show, "Suddenly Susan." Then, in the mid 2000's, the connection I felt with her in my dad's hospital room reappeared when she released a book called "Down Came the Rain" about her experience with postpartum depression. The book was released only months before I became a mom myself. I bought it shortly after I gave birth because I too suffered a bad case of postpartum depression. Again, she was there exactly when I needed her.

Photo from Woman's Day

Now, Brooke has a brand new book out called, “Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old.” It's about her experience of moving from adulthood into older adulthood, and I am amazed at how much I identify with it. Brooke has a largely positive view of getting older and isn't shy about revealing her own personal experiences. She is surprised about the benefits being an older woman brings which nobody tells us about, as I am too. It's as if society WANTS us to be miserable!  Here's a quote from her book's introduction: 

 “What I’ve come to realize – not only from my own lived experience but also from conversations with other women my age – is that these “later” years are all about coming into your own and pivoting in the directions you’ve always wanted to go. You can finally live the life you intended to, because you no longer have to act in accordance with external timelines, something that is part and parcel of being a woman.  I don’t have to get married by this date or have kids by this age or get a certain job before that milestone. My time is my own.”

                                                                 Photo credit - Alex Caley

I agree! We’ve all heard that midlife is supposed to be the end, especially for a woman. We are expected to be depressed about our changing looks and to be filled with regret of having our best years behind us. I would never want to return to my twenties and thirties. It's so freeing to know that I have reached all those milestones. Brooke has a theory of why she, and I, and countless others are finding ourselves to be way happier in this time of our lives than we ever expected to be:

“You start happy, you end happy, and somewhere in the middle things take a big dip. But that dip, for women, comes at age forty. From there, things start looking up! This era of forty-plus really is when things get easier, or maybe it’s just that we feel better equipped, but either way, happiness is on the upswing. For men, research shows, the bottom of the U comes at age fifty. Could it be that the narrative we’ve been fed of the irrelevant fifty-year-old woman is really just a product of men feeling their worst at this time? Might it be that they just assumed we’re bummed out, too, but never took the time to ask?”

 

I found this pic on Google which is of the exact same poster from "The Blue Lagoon" that I had on my bedroom wall!

Brooke has helped create her own hair products designed specifically for the particular needs of older women. These are a couple of her "Commence" products from inside my shower. They smell and work amazing! The pic below is the front and back of the postcard I get along with my Commence hair products packages

Brooke has saved the day for me many times throughout my life, and she's made me realize that women in midlife need each other now more than ever. Brooke even created an online community, originally called "Beginning is Now" and now renamed "Commence," which is a place where we women can share our stories and discuss our thoughts about subjects that only women in their forties, fifties, and sixties can truly understand because we are living this shared experience at the same time. I'm so grateful to Brooke for being so honest about her own personal experiences, opening the door for more of us to share things we may not have the courage to share about ourselves otherwise. I'm going to continue being a part of Brooke's community, and sometimes I wonder if the things we discuss in our women-in-midlife community are some of the things that were in that letter I dreamed about so many years ago?

 

Photo from Pinterest

 

Gimme Some Of That DIY, Feel-Good Writing!

The first time I saw a zine was in the late 1980's at Tower Records Bookstore in New York City. It was made of simple, white printer paper by a fan of Kate Bush. It had black and white pictures of Kate that were photocopied and stapled into the magazine. Although not as popular as they once were, DIY zines are still around, and this summer, I stumbled upon a bunch of them at the East Village Zine Fair on St. Mark's Place in NYC. As I checked out the many tables, my eyes caught sight of a particular table run by Quimby's Bookstore in Brooklyn. It had DIY zines that were reminiscent of the zines I used to love to buy so many years ago. Among the teeny-tiny mini zines, I saw a bunch of regular-sized zines by an artist named Jolie Ruin who I recognized because she sells artwork on Etsy. I even had one of her art collages in my Etsy favorites which was a small, art canvas decorated with colorful beads and a quote from a Juliana Hatfield song. I didn't even know she was a zinester and that she published Riot Grrrl-inspired zines!

The simplicity of zines reminds me of my Berklee College of Music days when we all made homemade cassette tapes of our original songs and played them for each other. Sometimes, someone would comment that the recordings of the vocals and instruments should be more slickly produced. I often disagreed. I'd say I rather listen to a guy strumming a guitar and singing lyrics that moved me than a demo of overproduced songs that say nothing and provide nothing original. The passion of three-chord grunge songs of the early 1990's touched so many people, and even today, as soon as you hear the first chords of a Nirvana song, you immediately know it's them.  

The SlutCake zines include not only Jolie Ruin's writing and art but also from a variety of contributors.  My story about my childhood crush on Barry Williams (Greg Brady of the TV show "The Brady Bunch"), and how I met him years later as an adult, is featured in SlutCake #18 - the Love and Crushes Issue

I've grown tired of reading traditional literary journals because so often the stories have shock value themes and an unusual number of tragic endings. I remember one short story - a contest winner -  entitled, "Ice Cream for Breakfast." The title made it sound like it was a pleasant, let's throw caution to the wind, story but instead it was about the mom regretting she hadn't permitted her little boy to have ice cream for breakfast because she was too busy searching for a cure while he was dying of a disease. What this story did for me was made me never want to read a story like that ever again. I believe that we readers can be inspired by stories with everyday, relatable, topics and don't need to have our worlds annihilated in order to be moved by a piece of writing! 

The "Jolie Ruin" zine section at Quimby's Bookstore in Brooklyn, NYC

Discovering Jolie Ruin's zines and art collages have added new excitement to my writing life. When my first order of zines from Etsy came in, I spent one Saturday afternoon on my bed drinking tea and reading Jolie's "The Escapist Artist" zines from cover to cover. I was intrigued by her journal entries from the early 2000's printed in the zines. She told honest, entertaining, and personal stories from when she was in her early twenties, and they took me back to my own early twenties and to those moments when I too saw indie bands perform at rock clubs and had those same feelings of excitement while watching live music and drinking beer with people my own age. 

This "mini" zine by Jolie Ruin contains raw and honest stories straight from her journal entries of 2005

I bought this issue of The Escapist Artist from Jolie Ruin's Etsy Shop, and she mailed it to me along with a bonus sticker and mini business card

Jolie's Riot Grrrl Press company that she runs with her husband Jamie makes T-shirts with quotes and designs that are clever and funny. After ordering the "Make Zines Not War" T-shirt, I answered the call for models to appear in the upcoming Delia*s-inspired Riot Grrrl Press T-Shirt Catalog!

Zinesters contribute more to pop culture than just printed stories. Jolie Ruin creates DIY art, patches, stickers, and even spoken word cassettes and music. I'd suggest giving zines a try even if you primarily read traditional literature. There's enough in the writing market for every taste and style, so like my t-shirt says: "Make Zines, Not War!" 

My very own Art Collage handmade by Jolie Ruin that I bought from her Ebay store. Some of Jolie Ruin's art collages are featured in the Netflix movie "Moxie!" 

https://www.ebay.com/usr/jolieruin

https://www.etsy.com/shop/JolieRuin

Was He Lucky Or Are We?

 

I was entertaining friends for lunch when late in the visit, we decided to turn on the TV. The footage of Trump being shot was shown over and over again. Once all the details came in, we said, 'this must be the luckiest person to have ever walked this earth.' Then, a week later, President Biden stepped down from the presidential race, and Kamala Harris was the new Democratic candidate-to-be. Suddenly, ALL these joyful people appeared! Within the first 24 hours of President Biden's announcement, $81 million dollars was raised for Harris' campaign - the largest amount of fundraising money ever raised in a 24 hour period. 40,000 new voters registered to vote within the first 48 hours of the emergence of Harris' campaign. Tons of T-shirts of Kamala Harris were printed, and excitement was spread all over social media. Just observing the excessively large numbers of attendees at the Harris-Walz rallies over the past week show how many people have come together. No matter what the outcome of the presidential race, there will remain many, many people bonded together through the Harris-Walz campaign.

Maybe the presidential race was not meant to be determined by one of the candidates being assassinated? Maybe the presidential race was to be determined by a collective need for joy, love, positivity, and democracy? A unity between human beings who were hiding in the shadows of doom and gloom until Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Maybe WE are actually the luckiest people in the world because we are meant to stand together in large numbers AGAINST Project 2025 and, in time, to join together as one country as we always were in the past, not two separate countries. I believe all of these happenings were meant to materialize the notion that there truly IS strength in numbers!

"A Little Magic, A Little Kindness" - How I Found My People Through Laura Nyro

Laura Nyro 

Everyone is talking about how amazing Joni Mitchell is because she performed at this year's Grammys at the age of eighty. I agree, but whenever I think of Joni Mitchell, I'm reminded of Laura Nyro, and this makes me sad. In the late 1960's, both Laura and Joni were successful singer/songwriters, and they were major influences on each other. But by the 1970's, Joni's fame and presence in people's minds completely eclipsed Laura's. I appreciate Joni Mitchell's talents, but it is Laura Nyro's music that speaks to me. Joni is more popular, but there are a select few of us who prefer the more primal, soulful and passionate Laura Nyro. 

Laura Nyro was discovered by David Geffen while he was working as a talent agent, a few years before he became a record industry mogul. He quit the talent agency to devote all his time to managing Laura's career. But after releasing a few albums, it was clear that Laura shunned the public life that came with success.  She created music primarily to please herself. She and David Geffen parted ways and sold her song catalog for $4.5 million dollars, each receiving half. The sale allowed David Geffen to start his own record label, and Laura was now free to do anything she wanted. What she wanted to do was "nest," so she bought a house in Connecticut and spent most of her time there raising her new baby son. 

Laura Nyro and David Geffen (from Pinterest)

I first heard of Laura Nyro in an unusual, and somewhat embarrassing, way. I was seventeen and seeing a guy in my neighborhood who I suspected was also seeing another woman in our neighborhood. The first picture I ever saw of Laura Nyro reminded me of this woman. I was obsessed with looking at Laura's picture in my book. I was jealous, but also oddly curious, and eventually I figured, "Since I'm always looking at her picture, why don't I just listen to her music?!"  

My photocopy of the Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock article where I first saw Laura Nyro's picture 

I was never fortunate enough to meet Laura Nyro, but I attended her very rare, live concert at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, Massachusetts in 1989. Shortly after that, I got married, moved to Canada, and met my new aunt, Rose, who turned out to be a Laura Nyro fan. The first thing she said to me was, "Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Laura Nyro?" She said she was first introduced to Laura Nyro's music in elementary school. Her teacher, a priest, played Laura's "Eli and the Thirteeth Confession" album in class, pointing out some of the album's spiritual lyrics, such as: "I was walking on God's good side," and "Lucky's taking over and his clover shows. Devil can't get out of hand cause Lucky's taking over and what Lucky says goes." I hadn't considered "Eli" to be a spiritual album, as many of the songs are filled with anger and contain themes of feminism, poverty, and deep, passionate love. "Eli" is a fast-paced, energetic album, with musically complicated rhythms and powerful lyrics. Plus, this is the same album that has the song "The Confession" with the lyrics, "Oh I hate my winsome lover, tell him I've had others at my breast."  I'm doubtful Aunt Rose's teacher played that song in class!

Aunt Rose on the left, and me on the right - first meeting where she said I looked like Laura Nyro

As a newlywed living in Canada, I was nesting too. I listened to a lot of Laura Nyro's music, and since so many of her early songs were about living in New York City, I gained solace in the fact that even though I was homesick, I knew that Laura had also left New York City when she moved to Connecticut and had probably been a bit homesick too.  By this time, I mostly enjoyed the two albums she recorded in Connecticut, "Nesting" and "Smile." She sang about new things I was doing while nesting, like cooking. I often listened to her song, "Midnight Blue," and sang along to the lyrics: "There's smoke in the kitchen, shrimps curled." I watched a lot of Canadian TV, and one day I saw an acapella band called "The Nylons" performing Laura's song "Eli's Coming." Very soon afterward, while working at HMV Music Store in Toronto, Canada, I spotted one of The Nylons' singers, Micah Barnes, shopping for CDs.  I approached him and we chatted for a bit, mostly about Laura's "Nested" and "Smile" albums, agreeing how wonderful yet underrated they are. Meeting another Laura Nyro fan made me feel less alone and more at home in Canada. I imagined it was more special than meeting a Rolling Stones fan or a Joni Mitchell fan because a lot of people are fans of them, but when it comes to Laura Nyro, there are so few of us. I realized I was finding my people.

Laura Nyro (from Google)

In the mid-1990's, I moved back to New York City and worked in Manhattan as a legal secretary. My first boss, Murray, was an attorney who told me he used to have long hair and had attended the famous Woodstock festival in 1969. I was so impressed!  During the three years I worked for him, we had many conversations about music. When I told him how much I loved Laura Nyro, a memory was sparked in him. "I met her once!" he said. He told me that one night, he was hanging out with a friend who was friends with Laura Nyro before she was famous. The friend needed to briefly stop by her apartment in the Bronx, but when she greeted them at the door, she asked them to come inside. She wanted their feedback on a new song she wrote, so she sat at her piano and played it for them. He then asked me if he could borrow a couple of my Laura Nyro CDs. One afternoon, after typing my dictations of his letters by listening to his voice on the tapes he had recorded at home, I told him I heard Laura's music playing in the background. "No you didn't!" he answered shyly, but obviously I did!

Murray often said he and I weren't just boss and secretary, we were also friends. I let him read my "Iggy Gorgess" novel's manuscript over a decade before it was published in book form.  In fact, I changed the very last line of my novel because of his criticism, and I think it is better after taking his advice. Then, in 1998, I was devastated when Murray was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I never thought he would get cancer because he was already forty-six years old, and my experience of losing my dad at age fifteen convinced me that Murray was safe because he had already passed forty-one, the age my dad died of cancer. Murray was admitted to the hospital, and my firm sent me to the record store to buy a bunch of CDs he could listen to in his hospital room because I was the only one who knew exactly what music he liked. I visited him in the hospital and brought the huge pile of CDs I'd bought.  He passed away four years later. 

I stopped listening to Laura's music for several years after that. 

I was reunited with Laura's music through YouTube after I found out she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Bette Midler gave her a beautiful tribute, saying she was "the very essence of New York City: passionate, romantic, ethereal, eternal."  Her only child, Gil Bianchini, attended the ceremony and accepted her award. Through Laura's music, I learned to never hesitate to embrace the art I love even if it is different from what most people enjoy. Our passions draw us toward the people we are meant to meet, and I've found it's sweeter if that club has only a a handful of members. There are few things in life more beautiful than being bonded together by something rare and eternally special. 

I'm Bewitched

My need for escape is a constant in my life. I think it is for most artistic people. We're more dreamers than doers, and after we've done all the things we absolutely need to do, we spend the rest of our free time indulging in fantasy. In many people's minds, fantasizing sounds like a lazy luxury unless one has an abnormal amount of time to spare. During the pandemic, my escape was watching every single episode of the old black and white TV series, "Perry Mason." It consumed so much of my life that I made Perry the focus of my essay, "How I Survived 2020." After the pandemic, my essay was published and nominated for the Pushcart Prize so, ultimately, I believe my escape wasn't time wasted!

Now three years later, my escape is the classic TV series "Bewitched." It's a TV show starring Elizabeth Montgomery that aired in the late 1960's to early 1970's about an immortal witch named Samantha who marries a mortal human named Darrin. I regularly watched the reruns as a child, but as an adult, the only episode I could remember was one where Endora, Samantha's mom, puts a spell on Darrin that makes his ears grow to an enormous size every time he tells a lie. Recently, one morning, I was changing the channels on my TV and saw two children with weird-painted eyebrows, dressed in peasant clothes, and made to look like "Hansel and Gretel" from the children's story.  Samantha and Darrin's young daughter, Tabitha, has used her witch powers to trade places with Hansel and Gretel by taking them out of the storybook and into her bedroom, then leaving them there to deal with her puzzled parents while she jumps into the book herself. The premise is so funny, and the Hansel and Gretel kids look so goofy, that I started watching Bewitched every morning to have a laugh before I began my workday.

To feed my TV obsessions, I like to shop for things. During my Perry Mason stage, I found a mug for my desk that says, "Life Happens, Perry Helps." For my Bewitched obsession, I bought a cubic zirconia replica of the Pave Heart diamond necklace Samantha wears on the show so that I can wear it as I watch. 

I know it sounds crazy, but I find nothing wrong with having an escape that makes you feel good. Bewitched is a series that promotes positivity. Elizabeth Montgomery had a lot of influence on the show and in how the female characters were represented. Even older women were cast in major roles. Samantha's mother, Endora, played by Agnes Moorehead, appears in all eight seasons as a strong and self-assured woman in her mid sixties and early seventies.  Another older woman, Samantha's Aunt Clara played by actress Marion Lorne, was in her eighties at the time, and her character has boyfriends and she is shown very actively dating men. 

Samantha and her mom, Endora, hanging out in the garden

Another thing I love about Bewitched is that animals are portrayed as sentient beings. On Season 1, Episode 2,  “Ling Ling,” a cat who Samantha puts a spell on to temporarily turn her into a woman, decides she doesn't want to go back to being a cat because, in her words, “I like to be pampered and made a fuss over."  She tells Samantha that if she too had spent her life scrounging around alleys searching for scraps, she'd understand why she doesn't want to go back to being a cat.  She says, "from now on, it will be martinis and sardines all the way.”  On Season 2, Episode 25, "The Horse's Mouth," Samantha sees a horse wandering in the park and wants to know why, so she puts a spell on the horse so that she can talk with him or her.  The horse transforms into a tough, brunette-haired woman who tells Samantha that she just jumped off of a truck to flee her racetrack life because she was being neglected by her trainer and never wins any races.  I love these episodes because they embrace the belief that animals deserve respect and have emotions.

Elizabeth Montgomery was thirty-nine years old during the last season of Bewitched, and over its eight seasons, Samantha's character evolves from a just-married young woman wearing plain, housewife dresses in Season 1 to a freedom-loving woman decked out in short miniskirts and white knee-high socks. Part of this change was obviously influenced by the emerging women's movement and hippie revolution, but I like to think her change in identity has more to do with the fact that when we women approach age forty, we are liberated from a lot of the restrictions we had when we were younger.  We are wiser, confident, carefree, and not bothered and dragged down by the things that used to concern us needlessly. 

Samantha, played by actress Elizabeth Montgomery

Besides entertainment, there is a more important reason why we should have happy obsessions. A friend of mine once told me that a common thread in people who are depressed is that they have lost their ability to fantasize. They can't free themselves from their troubling thoughts and are unable to immerse themselves in another world. Considering this, I say we shouldn't feel guilty about sometimes indulging in fantasies and finding ourselves entranced by other realities.  The ability to escape from our ordinary lives from time to time may even be essential. 

Me and Samantha wearing the Pave Heart 

Barbie - She's Not Who You Think She Is

 

Our Barbie Dreamplane

Barbie Mania has arrived!  The new Barbie movie stars Margot Robbie as a Barbie doll who comes to life.  Although many have dismissed this movie as just another scheme for a large corporation to make money, I have a different take on it. 

The Barbie Doll was invented by a woman named Ruth Handler in 1959.  She named the doll after her young daughter, Barbara.  The very first Barbie doll was not only available as a blonde, she could also by purchased as a brunette, and her clothes were designed by a woman named Charlotte Johnson.  

When I was a kid, I wasn't a huge Barbie doll fan.  I preferred the soft feel of my cuddly, stuffed animals.   But when I was twelve, I suddenly wanted Barbie dolls at a time when most girls are about to give them up.  Maybe I was aware of my teen years approaching and was trying to cling onto the last vestiges of childhood?  

The Barbies I had were the typical ones everybody is familiar with - blonde hair, long legs, and the world's tiniest waist.  These attributes unfortunately reduced Barbie to not much more than an impossibly-proportioned fashion model.  But as an adult shopping for dolls with my daughter, I discovered the "I Can Be" Barbie dolls where Barbie now had a serious profession, such as being a doctor, engineer, or veterinarian.  Plus, while doing research for this blog entry, I was surprised to learn that these "I Can Be" Barbie dolls were not even the first Barbies to have admirable careers. As far back as 1965, one Barbie doll was working as an astronaut!  Apparently, Barbie was meant to be more than just a sex symbol who dated Ken.

Below is my Curvy Barbie Doll.  I put shorts on her.

In March 2018, just in time for International Women's Day, Mattel released their "Role Model" Barbie dolls.  There was as Amelia Earhart Barbie patterned after the famous aviator and a Patti Jenkins Barbie made in honor of the director of the Wonder Woman movies.  During the Covid pandemic of 2020, essential worker Barbies were created to pay homage to the nurses, doctors, and paramedics working on the hospitals' front lines.  As part of their "Thank You Heroes" program, Mattel donated $5 from each doll sold to a foundation set up to help the children of these first responders. 

A few weeks ago, my teenage daughter and I had dinner at the Malibu Barbie Cafe in downtown Manhattan.  As we entered, I saw women and girls of all ages.  Nearly all of us wore something pink or with the Barbie logo on it.  A few different groups of women in their twenties wore hot pink dresses and floor length gowns made of silk or satin.  Later, while eating dinner, I spotted a small group of moms and daughters entering the dining area, and one of the little girls wore a crown that said "Birthday Princess."  It warmed my heart to see so many women and girls decked out in pink and tiaras to commemorate the upcoming movie.  I realized that Barbie is something that unites us not only as we are now but also as the girls we once were.  The celebration of Barbie is something particularly for us.  

Today, Barbie dolls represent women of all races and body types.  My favorite Barbie doll is my Curvy Barbie.  She has realistic body proportions, and I say it's about time. The only Barbie doll missing now is "Mature Woman Barbie."  But she won't be Barbie's grandmother.  Instead, she will be a realistic Barbie who represents women in their forties and beyond.  Her face will have laugh lines and her hair a few gray streaks.  But best of all, she'll be a wiser, bolder, Barbie who will never be afraid to speak her mind no matter how unconventional her opinion may be! 

Me at the Malibu Barbie Cafe - South Street Seaport, NYC - July 2023