OK, so maybe I don't think that's the greatest outfit or me, but maybe it is a great outfit for someone else. Someone like...
...the All-American Barbie doll. (Produced by Mattel, Inc. in 1991.)
I mean, look! It's almost as if someone saw the All-American Barbie and then tried to come up with a Polyvore set to recreate her outfit or something.
But the story I wanted to tell you was not of turquoise vs. coral, but of my first—and only—Barbie doll. And yes, it was the All-American Barbie doll.
I remember it like it was 24 years ago. It was my first real birthday after having arrived in the United States, and who can believe it, my parents decided to have my birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. Oh man, I must have been the happiest kid. I really liked ski ball and I loved the corn and croutons at the salad bar even more. (And Thousand Island dressing. I loooved Thousand Island dressing.) So celebrating my birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's? Mind blown.
It's funny, I can't really remember who came—maybe Grace? Thuy? Crystal? But I do remember that one of them got me an All-American Barbie. I couldn't believe it—my very own Barbie. I was so excited, I didn't even know what to do. (Actually, I probably actually didn't know what to do, because the concept of dolls was pretty foreign to me.) What was I supposed to do with it? Feed it? Take it out on walks? Take off its clothes and then realize that I had no other clothes to put on it?
What I ended up doing was cutting her hair so that it would be short like mine, only to learn that Barbie's hair doesn't grow back. Too bad for her. I guess it was fine either way, since I maintained my bowl cut until I entered middle school—so she actually did look like me, except she was blonde.
But you know what was funny? (Not this TV spot for the doll, though it's a pretty good candidate.) I wasn't an All-American kid. To this day, I'm not really sure what that means. (Remember Margaret Cho's "All-American Girl"? I rest my case. (Don't get me wrong, I love Margaret Cho—I'm talking more about the screwed-up-ness of the fact that it only ran for one season.)) In other words, what the hell was a kid like me—an immigrant kid with no interest in Barbie—doing with an All-American Barbie doll?
To be honest, I was really happy about getting that doll—and I was really grateful to my friend for giving it to me as my birthday present. Even though I didn't really get into the whole doll thing (I'm more of a Sylvanian Families type), I feel like I got a taste of what it was like being a commercially represented 7-year-old in the United States. And in some ways, that's probably the closest I'll ever get to being All-American.
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