This Barbie is mentally ill
Tales from Barbieland - part one
Content warning and a note. This letter is about the Barbie movie and womanhood and mental illness. It became long so I’ll post it in three parts.
I drove to San Francisco to meet up with my two younger siblings to watch the Barbie movie. I told them all to wear something pink. Most of my clothes ended up being blue but at least my shirt was pink.
I parked outside of my sister’s apartment and waited in the car for our younger brother to arrive. Using the rearview mirror, I swiped pink lipstick onto my lips. I called my sister and asked if she could bring down snacks to eat in the car. I needed to take some pain medication (never take ibuprofen on an empty stomach).
“How about some cherries?” She said. “I have four cherries.”
“Yes please,” I said.
“How about a whole thing of prosciutto from Trader Joe’s.”
“That sounds good but not all of it,” I said.
“Okay I’ll bring you two slices of prosciutto.”
“Ha ha, thank you.”
“How about a strawberry muffin?” She said.
“Yes please.”
“One strawberry muffin.”
I hung up. A few minutes later my sister climbed into the passenger seat dressed in pink leggings with vibrant pink eyeshadow on her eyelids, and handed me snacks on a pink plate to melt my heart.
While I ate and we sat there in our glamor, my sister said she had new information about severe mental illness in our family lineage.
“Did you know, F’s grandmother also killed herself?” She said.
I opened my mouth slightly in shock, but I wasn’t surprised by the topic. We’d been talking about mental health a lot lately. “Really?” I said.
“Yes, our cousin on that side told me. I was asking him questions.”
“Jesus,” I said.
The expression on her face said she knew what I was thinking. This would mean our grandfather’s sister, and his grandmother, both killed themselves. If we thought about it with superstition, then skipping a generation each time would make us next in line.
Maybe our conversation about this news should’ve been more dramatic, shrouded in melancholy and pouring rain, with grief you could outwardly see, rather than the almost dead-pan face of a hungry woman in lipstick. But alas, I am a realist.
Due to effort on my part, the in-between moments of mental illness have become mundane, a normal part of life, like cutting my toenails. And over time, the grief of loss has become detached to protect myself, even though it’s always there, sneaking in and through me like smoke.
“Well, that information actually makes me feel less crazy,” I said, thinking about the lows of depression I’d experienced the previous month. She nodded her head in agreement. My sister and I are probably the first generation of women in our family to talk about mental illness with one another casually, like it wasn’t taboo. Still, it’s a new habit for us, and for me especially. I’m an unreliable narrator; I was raised in a Barbie world and so I want to be perfect. Opening up about it is frightening.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve heard stories passed down about family behaving in extreme ways and I’m like, that’s a symptom of mental illness.”
“Well, I better tell my therapist.” I laughed, but I wasn’t really joking.
“I know right,” my sister said.
I finished the salty prosciutto and spit out all the cherry pits. As I swallowed the ibuprofen with water, I hoped the chemical properties would kick in by the time I’d sit in the theater chair.
I thought about how good I was doing this month compared to last. Better than ever, actually. And with this knowledge I re-committed myself to care, joy, and honesty. I would continue to do all I could to support myself, my family and friends, and you.
I am a student of life’s absurdity. My strongest defense is humor. One catastrophe is tragic but more than one is a joke. So, let me tell the joke. I don’t want to be a punchline.
*
Later, while in the theater watching the Barbie movie, I thought about the ways irony could be a vessel for understanding. Just a few minutes earlier, my sister and I were playing out the, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” scene in real life, contemplating our risks of dying with our pink glamor faces on.
If I learned one thing from today, it’s that womanhood is ironic and can’t be defined by one attitude…
Part two of this letter is about Barbie hypocrisy, material worship, and sexuality. Part three of this letter is a collection of AI generated images of Barbie dolls in a state of irony, because I stayed up all night fulfilling a wild idea I had.
Read part two: This Barbie is horny
Read part three: This Barbie was played with too hard
Wow so well written and love being taken on your journey