;)
June 9th, 2023
With the recent summertime announcement of a Barbie movie set to release in July, I stopped in my tracks filled with excitement. I cannot wait!
Growing up, my friends and I spent countless hours playing with Barbie dolls. We never slept at sleepovers; we stayed up all night playing with our Barbie dolls. We had the homes, the cars, the clothes, shoes, accessories, but most of all, we had endless hours of imagination time.
Back in the day, we didn’t have all the electronic gadgets the kids have now. At best, an Atari console to plug into a television and play Pong. We had to fill our time using our imagination. One of my favorite ways to fill time was playing Barbie. My friends and I made families. We assigned our Barbies jobs. We had storylines. If you had no friends around, no problem, you could continue to entertain yourself and play. You just update your friends with the latest storyline once you got together again with a Barbie visit conversation. We had different names for all of them. Cases upon cases of dolls, clothes, even furniture and a pool. My Grandmother made sure we had it all, many things she made by hand. This went on from the day I can remember until somehow a long time, at high school level we had to give them up. I am not embarrassed to honestly tell you that I secretly wanted to continue playing with my Barbies, or at the very least do their hair. Had the peer pressure to give up playing Barbies hadn’t gotten the better of me, I would probably still have mine today. Oh, the childhood memories. Summertime truly brings to surface these memories because we would stay up all night, gather on porches and really be able to put a lot of effort into our Barbie lives. We even had those heads. The ones from the shoulders up that you can do the hair and make-up. Barbie was an amazing gal.
I have three daughters, none of which liked dolls or Barbies. Therefore, I was unable to use them as an excuse to continue my fantasy world.
I chuckle a bit now as I look at my adult life. Barbie really influenced me. My love for girly stuff has never gone away. Shoes, check. Clothes, check. Accessories, check. Even homes and cars, check, check. I suppose all that time spent in our Barbie world influenced me more than I realized.
I am anxious to see the Barbie world portrayed in real life footage in comparison to my imagination. The one main movie on my list this summer is Barbie. Perhaps I won’t have anyone else who wants to go with me, but I don’t care, I will go to this one alone. This is my summer reunion with my childhood friend, Barbie.
Oh, and just for the record, to all those boys who played with GI Joe back in the day, I stand by my statement and the many times I argued with my brother and his friends, GI Joe was not an action figure. He was a doll. You know how I know this? When you weren’t looking, your GI Joes came to Barbie’s house. We had a pool party and a cookout!
Have a great summer all. What is your summertime movie pick for 2023?
