This humor essay originally appeared in the July 8, 2003, issue of Family Circle magazine (R.I.P). Helen Vetter of New York kept a copy of it on her fridge for 20 years, until the paper crumbled. On May 10, 2023, she asked me if I could help find her a copy of the original, so she could pass it along to her daughters, who now have daughters.  (I could and she did.) Her request came on a day when I needed to remember why I became a writer, but also to remember the incredible people I’d worked with at Family Circle and how they affected me and the generations of readers who learned something from the pages they crafted. (The text below is a slightly updated version.) Can a tweet last 20 years on a fridge? Don’t think so. P.S. The kids in this essay are all grown up and turned out just fine.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Barbie

By Cheryl Solimini

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In one of the first experiments to explore the influence of fashion dolls, an Oregon State University researcher has found that girls who play with Barbie dolls see fewer career options for themselves than for boys.

“Playing with Barbie has an effect on girls’ ideas about their place in the world,” said Aurora M. Sherman, an associate professor in the School of Psychological Science at OSU. “It creates a limit on the sense of what’s possible for their future. While it’s not a massive effect, it is a measurable and statistically significant effect.”

— Oregon State Web site, March 5, 2014

The Barbie Wars have been raging in our family for some time now. When my twin nieces were born, their mother decreed, under penalty of an icy stare, that no one, no one was to gift her daughters’ arrival or any significant occasion thereafter with a Barbie. She said something about how Mattel’s buxom girl toy sends the wrong message about womanhood.

Two years later the twins’ cousin Corinne arrived, but her mother failed to lay down a similar law. The result: Corinne has amassed a Barbie population that qualifies for its own zip code. Recently, she sent a couple to her Barbie-deprived cousins. Rachel and Sarah don’t seem any the worse for it, though they prefer Woody from Toy Story, a stuffed cowboy.

My stand on this issue is simple: I had a Barbie doll and I turned out just fine.  In fact, I’d say my success as a fully functioning adult is directly related to what I learned at Barbie’s bendable knee:

1. If you wear high heels, your feet will freeze that way. The fear that I might wake up one day perpetually en pointe has kept me in flats—from Earth shoes to Birkenstocks to Bass Weejuns—all my life.

2. Even if your body is totally out of proportion, you can still feel okay about yourself. I didn’t get a distorted body image from Barbie; I got it from my mother, from whom I inherited a Barbie-esque bosom. Unfortunately, mine is not as perky as Barbie’s and my waist is more in line with Chatty Cathy’s. But, like I said, I’m okay with it. Really.

3. Fried stuff isn’t good for you. It was a Saturday morning, the breakfast griddle was still hot and I wondered what would happen if I put a synthetic blonde ponytail on it. What I learned was that Barbie hair sizzles and melts into a hard mass when heated. I also learned about melting points—mainly, that my mom has a very low one.  She sent Barbie and me to our room without our pancakes.

4. Even when things look bleakest, joy is just around the corner. Not long after I fried the ponytail, Mattel offered a trade-in: Bring your old Barbie to any local toy store, and you’d get the new bendable-knee doll for just $1. How lucky was that! Besides a new Barbie with a new head of hair, I gained the knowledge that, when I get burned, a better deal is on the way.

5. Anything worth having is worth saving for. Every summer night of my childhood, my father handed over 15 cents (yeah, 15 cents; yeah, I’m that old) to buy a treat from the Good Humor truck cruising the neighborhood. But one year, he gave me another choice: I could spend the money on ice cream or I could save it to buy outfits for Barbie. Some nights the Chocolate Eclair Bar won, but more often I socked away that daily dime and nickel. By the end of the summer, Barbie had a wardrobe to rival Cher’s and my fiscal responsibility convinced my dad I could handle a year-round allowance.

6. It’s pointless to compare yourself to others. My best friend had more Barbie clothes than I did, plus she had a Skipper and a Midge. Jealousy threatened to tear us apart. Today, my friend is a chain-smoker whose mother nags her nonstop about visiting more often with the kids. She’s still a great person, don’t get me wrong, but I no longer wish I were her—or anyone else.

7. You are who you are. As a youngster, I favored Wranglers and Keds. But when I shopped for Barbie, I was a sucker for glamour: the rose taffeta ball gown (“Sophisticated Lady”), the slinky black-beaded sheath (“Solo in the Spotlight”), the flaming velvet coat and matching pillbox hat (“Red Flare”), the pink satin number with white-fur stole (“Enchanted Evening”). So much for the lasting, corrupting influence of 14 ounces of molded vinyl: Still no ball gowns for me—I haven’t changed out of sweatpants since 1991.

8. If you get in the game, you can be anything you want to be. “Barbie’s Keys to Fame,” the board game Mattel came up with in 1963, looked like a plastic roulette wheel, with eight circular slots that held round playing cards depicting various occupations. By spinning the center arrow, trading the cards, and collecting the golden keys, you could “Make Your Dream Career Come True.” Nearly all the choices were typical female “jobs” of the time: stewardess, ballerina, nurse, fashion designer, teacher, movie star, mother. Ah, but long before Sally Ride, you also had the chance to be an astronaut.  I found myself always scheming to end up at NASA. My career goals changed a few years later, but I’m still aiming for the stars.

9. You can have what you want without Ken. Sure, he looks good in a tux, but it’s obvious that Ken is just another accessory in Barbie’s suitcase. Nowhere in the TV ads did it say that she needed him to get her that fabulous Dreamhouse or the cute convertible.

10. But boys can be cool, too, especially if they support your fantasies. On Corinne’s last birthday, she enlisted her father and two uncles in a living-room improv that involved several Barbies. The three grown men posed the dolls as directed by Corinne and supplied various falsettos as needed. Gloria Steinem would have applauded.

Yep, Corinne will turn out just fine, too.