I came, I saw, I Barbenheimer-ed. I'm literally a changed woman and I couldn't stop thinking about them. Playlists have been made, art has been drawn, thoughts have been... stewing. Hopefully this return to writing engages you as much as it's consumed me!
What started as a oneshot started to really blow up the more I explored Barbie's mind, and how much I loved her. I can't wait to start writing more once I get my Oppenheimer screenplay!
"Think I Wanna Twist the Plot This Time"
"I had an epiphany
I'm not gonna throw it all away this time."
— "Maradona" The Chainsmokers
"I think I might check in on Barbie Land tonight, see what the other Barbies and Kens are getting up to." The thought's impulsive; she says it as she's washing the dishes from Taco Tuesday. Something about a choreographed dance party with friends to escape the chaos of modern American living seems to be calling out to her, with sequined outfits and music simply being part of her existence. Barbie turns from the sudsy steel sink and glances over at Gloria, Sasha, and Ryan, shooting them a warm smile. "Anyone want to join in?"
The family, instead of having eyes on her, are all engrossed in their own bubbles: Sasha on her laptop as she scribbles notes furiously into her notebook, Gloria poured over sketches at the table, Ryan on his phone, the faint sound of the Duolingo bird chirping out his correct answers. Barbie blinks, then goes back to the dishes without another word. Usually they're a little more enthused about trips back to Barbie Land, the escapism from the escapism that is Los Angeles. She instead pretends like she never asked anything at all, just sighs and scrubs away at caked guacamole stains on the bowl she's washing. Maybe it's a terrible idea, she starts thinking. Better to just continue bingeing Bridgerton and The Crown while absently downing all the pink Starbursts in the bag she just picked up from CVS.
"Huh? Oh, sorry, Barbie." Gloria, per usual, speaks first. "Work wants me to finish these sketches ASAP for the new line. Turns out there's a huge market with Gen X and Millennials for Barbies going through a quarter life crisis and I'm thinking 'Theme Park Adult' might be right up their alley. And Sasha's still grounded from her little stunt in the cafeteria last week."
"Getting up on the table and announcing that lunch should be free to all students is simply me expressing my freedom of speech, Mom!" Even with her back turned, Barbie can feel Sasha's eyes rolling, and she gives a slight smirk as she finishes up the dishes. "Besides, I have to work on this this lame report on World War II. The teacher wants us to talk about those overrated white guys like MacArthur or Oppenheimer, but I'm writing about the Indigenous Code Talkers instead. Way more interesting."
With Sasha and Gloria declining, there's of course no way Ryan would join in the festivities without his family. Like clockwork, he looks up from his phone just as Barbie turns from the sink. "Those Duolingo lessons won't finish themselves!" he chuckles, but the smile fades. Barbie's pretty sure he's just read her downtrodden expression—she hasn't really gotten good at being more subtle with showing her feelings, which is apparently another one of those female paradoxes Gloria's gone on about.
Ryan looks to his wife and daughter, still immersed in their respective works, then gets up from his seat. "Thanks for doing the dishes, Barbie. I'll drive you to Venice."
Well, when he's offering to drive instead of asking her to Uber, how can she say no? Besides, a night out with the Barbies and Kens could bring her morale up to face the real world, something she's finding she might need more than just once a month now. Humans got fatigued from being out too long, hungry from going too long in between meals, anxious when things didn't always go as planned. And yet, thinking to that picture-perfect, pink life she'd left behind… this new life, with her new friends, always brought something unexpected, like the independent coffee shop and bookstore she and Sasha found one weekend in Culver City that had the perfect gingerbread latte, or when Gloria and Ryan took her to see Hadestown, where she bawled her eyes out—yet still wanted to experience it again to see if the ending would change. She craves that creative side of humanity, something the Barbies and Kens unfortunately will never understand. They don't really get to learn; they're programmed with occupations and expectations. Sure, some norms are breaking, but at the end of the day, President Barbie is still President, Writer Barbie always has her novels, and Ken was… well, he's wonderfully Ken. And that's perfectly fine, just not enough for her anymore.
The drive to Venice stays relatively quiet, other than Ryan's occasional humming to the radio. He confesses he's trying to learn some of Sasha's favorite music to be more hip, but that he doesn't understand some of it. "I guess she likes a lot of music from Korea, so I added Korean to my Duolingo." Gosh, he tries. He's honestly one of the only genuinely great guys she's met here in the city.
"I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Barbie says, but really, she's not so sure, since Sasha seems to be in a funk where everything her parents do is "lame." If Barbie had parents like Ryan and Gloria, she doubts she would have ever acted up as a teenager.
Since Ryan can't exactly drive up to the beach, he stops about a block away. Even with the sun about to set, Venice is in its usual swing, surfers and skaters heading down to the sand for another night of fun. "You have your phone and wallet, right?" he asks, because yes, there have definitely been times she's forgotten them in a hurry or excitement.
Barbie nods, taking both out to confirm with Ryan before stuffing them back in the pockets of her jacket. "I may spend the night," she decides. Rest just comes to her easier in Barbie Land, dreaming basically nonexistent. No anxieties, no fears. Sure, Ken has kind of turned her old place into a bit of a Mojo Dojo Casa House, with its plentiful portraits of stallions and mares, but he's learned to cook for himself and keep the place clean for company. He even keeps nice pillows for the nights when she crashes, and every time she's there, she's grateful for their friendship, where they just talk about life and vent to each other, and everything just seems right. Mundane, but comfortable.
"Okay." Ryan grins, probably feeling assured that Barbie has her evening figured out. "You just text or call when you get back and we'll come get you."
It's in moments like these that Barbie wishes she could drive a real car. But real cars aren't Barbie Corvettes; they require pressure on pedals and knowing where all the right switches are. And in LA, everything looks like it should only take about twenty minutes to get around to any point of the county, but gridlock turns that twenty-minute drive into an hour. Gloria took Barbie around an empty parking lot once, and Barbie may have (did) gently tap a streetlight (okay, it caused a dent). They both quietly decided that maybe it'd be best to wait until Sasha got her permit, so they could learn at the same time. At least in the city proper, Barbie's Metro card works pretty reliably. At times like these, though, when the buses only run once an hour on the weekend, her own car sounds really nice. "I think I'll just grab an Uber; I don't want to inconvenience you all for everything you do to help me."
Ryan looks like he's about to rebuke her decision, but shrugs instead. "Barbie, you're part of the family now. I know how hard it is to get acclimated in this city—heck, without Gloria, I would probably still be running around like a chicken with its head cut off on Wilshire trying to find the Farmers Market. No one's expecting you to have it all together after only being here for just shy of a year. So still—whatever you need. We'll try and be there to help you out."
All this over a ride. Barbie grins, but really, she could cry for how wonderfully her new family treats her. "Well, thank you, again. I'll probably still get the Uber, but I'll text my route."
"That'll put us all at ease." Ryan leans over for a hug and Barbie melts into it, smelling the reassurance of home and lemon cleaner clinging to his jacket. "Have fun tonight, okay?"
"Always!" With that, Barbie steps out of the car (before someone starts honking at Ryan from behind), bounding toward the beach so she can change into her blades and make her way back to Barbie Land. There's something about Venice—the mix of sea salt and cannabis lingering in the air, the fun knockoff shops and vintage stores selling old boots for too much money. LA in Barbie World is simply glamor and Hollywood moviestardom, the LA Barbie imagines a lot of the world thinks it is. Really, it's diverse and colorful, people of all ages and walks of life trying to enjoy this west coast dream. She strides down the strip confidently now, not hesitant like when she and Ken first arrived on skates with insane expectations, and basks in the ocean breeze, grinning at the kid with tattoos decorating his entire chest. Sunsets, too, she'll never get over out here. Hues of pink and orange and yellow bleeding into purples as the sun descends into the ocean horizon.
Tonight is one of those nights, where Barbie struggles to keep her eyes averted from that sun as it blazes past the waves. Whenever the sky is pink like this, on a warm summer evening, she's reminded that sometimes Barbie Land can reflect in this real, messy, absolutely beautiful world. She sits on a concrete bench that hasn't yet been occupied, and starts to lace up her rollerblades—slowly, so she can still enjoy this part of the evening.
It's funny now, how bright they are compared to her more muted wardrobe, with their neon, plasticky texture and almost blinding hot pink laces. She's just in faded jeans and a dusty rose bomber jacket. Sure, stylish is so fun every once in a while, but now that she has to dress herself and her clothes don't just magically appear when she wakes up in the morning, reaching for whatever doesn't smell at the top of the drawer is so much easier. Once Gloria introduced her to leggings, dressing up every day was officially over.
Barbie stands and skates absently, taking the road back she knows so well as the sun disappears. At some point on her way back, her clothes will simply change as the magic of Barbie Land starts to take over, probably themed to whatever bodacious era is being celebrated tonight.
But something catches the corner of her eye as she's about to get on her snowmobile. She remembers seeing that horse-drawn buggy the last few times she's gone between the real world and Barbie Land, but not so much the first. Wouldn't Ken have gone bonkers had he known there was potential horse travel?
Barbie recalls the conversation she had with Gymnast Barbie (of course, she used to be "Weird" Barbie but the Barbies would only call her that behind her back and to her face), where she brought this up on one of her more recent ventures.
"What happens if I use the horse and carriage instead?" she'd asked, just before getting in her Corvette to make the journey back to LA. "It looks like you can either use the roller blades as the last step to the real world, or that."
"Oh, yeah, that, see that's pretty interesting," said Gymnast Barbie, getting in her usual splits position by using Barbie's Corvette as a way to stretch her legs. "Tried to find the kid who played with me by using it, back in the 80s. Ended up in Miami with a face full of sand and a criminal record. Maybe it wasn't sand…"
"Wait, wait." Barbie held up a hand, interrupting Gymnast Barbie's current train of thought. "It can take you… to different times?" Sasha had shown Barbie some time travel movies, like Back to the Future and The Terminator. But in those movies, time travel always had to be achieved with science, with electric trails and monologues about Flux Capacitors or moving through a quantum realm. She couldn't help but chuckle; was it really that easy for a Barbie to go through time?
"Whenever and wherever you want to go, Sweetcakes." Gymnast Barbie moved to do her splits on the ground, allowing Barbie to get into her Corvette. "Your clothes will change to keep up with the time. Just remember where you parked the horse and try not to get into too much trouble."
Well, there's the buggy now. The horse, a gorgeous white mare with pink streaks in her mane, stares at Barbie with her big eyes, inviting her over. In this moment she starts to see why Ken loves horses so much; they're majestic, but so gentle, especially when she steps over to the mare and pats her nose gently and she leans into it with a soft neigh.
She can take the snowmobile and all her other modes of transportation back to Barbie Land. She can swim with Mermaid Barbie and discuss all the new things she's learned with President Barbie and be comfortable with everything she knows, then go back to LA and watch Vanderpump Rules with Gloria tomorrow morning. If she goes to Barbie Land, nothing changes. It's a safe cocoon, wrapping her in a warm blanket of comfort, of everything she knows.
Isn't that part of why she became human in the first place, to venture out into those uncomfortable territories? To learn everything about creating and making her own path? What's the harm of seeing the world as it used to be, just for a night? Dance with someone new, lose herself and see how the past can shape her future? Besides, she loves the leg warmers from the 80s, the jumpsuits from the 70s, the big hair from the 60s. Can she go to a time… before Barbie, even?
Before she can think herself out of it, Barbie steps up to drive the buggy, and the mare takes off with a calm snort. Barbie notices her clothes shift to gladiator heels and a blazer after a minute, and thinks about where she should stop. She's lived through all these styles, the Juicy Couture sweats and low rise jeans. She can keep going, so she lets her mind wander. She likes this drive, against cool pink brick, the mare's rhythmic footsteps luring her into a state of tranquility.
Barbie thinks about Sasha, how her report is going. She once tried to read about this war she's studying, World War II, but started crying the moment she read just how many people were herded up and killed by an evil man, how many evil atrocities people from all sides committed. It's another one of those painful truths she's had to swallow about the real world, that make existence oh so complicated. She even wipes a tear from her eye just thinking about how she once thought about it.
Instead, Barbie focuses on something happier: how over the summer, Ryan and Gloria drove her and Sasha up the California coast to San Francisco, stopping along the way in Monterey Bay, Cambria, Santa Cruz. She and Sasha must have ridden the old, wooden roller coaster at the pier a dozen times, screaming their heads off down every hill. In the city proper, Barbie took in the ringing of the old trolleys, the smell of clam chowder and sourdough from Pier 39. How the chocolate in Ghirardelli Square melted seamlessly on her tongue. The Golden Gate Bridge, towering over it all. Gloria printed out the family picture they took overlooking the bridge, and now it's hanging up in the house, right before the staircase. The highs and happiness on that one trip topple every perfect day she's ever had in Barbie Land.
Looking down, Barbie takes in her new wardrobe and gasps, bringing her buggy to an abrupt stop. She's never really worn anything like this before on the daily: stockings and t-strap pink heels, a pink swing skirt instead of her jeans and Birkenstocks. She's even wearing dainty pink gloves. Oh God. She's probably gone too far, after being so lost in thought.
Should she turn around? Try to find another decade that's more comfortable, where she has a few passing memories? Swallowing, Barbie instead dismounts the buggy, patting the mare on her nose a few times so they both calm down. She did this, put herself here for the chance at something new. If it's really that awful, she can turn around and go home. She at least has that comforting thought, tucked away in the back of her mind.
Barbie steps out from her venturing world into the real world of this time, noting the alleyway. She looks up, taking in the crossroads. When she reaches into the pocket of her now double breasted pink coat, she sighs in relief to find her phone is still her phone. No signal, of course, but she takes down the street names in her Notes app so she won't forget it, then quickly stuffs it away. Barbie also takes out her wallet, smiling when she sees her bills have changed to reflect the time, so she can get something to eat, perhaps. Now… when exactly is she?
It's nighttime, stars littering the black sky in ways she can't fathom, having lived in LA for a year. Barbie Land stars look like glowing lights twinkling in rhythmic patterns against a black ceiling. LA stars shine for the Little Dipper, Orion's Belt, and anything else that looks like a star ends up being a plane instead as it blinks across the sky. There's more here—probably not too much more since the plentiful buildings around her tell her she's in a city—but enough to see a few more constellations. The twinkling, less rhythmic and more arbitrary, with some stars brighter, some barely discernible. Barbie shifts her gaze to the street, walking out into public. Couples line the hilled streets dressed in nice coats, women in stockings, men with hats. But she's seen these hills before, this building, even. It still exists, years from now, with its art deco windows cascading floors up and down the block. And just in the distance past the hills, towering over the water: The Golden Gate Bridge.
She'd been thinking about San Francisco, and here she stands. Barbie watches someone throw a newspaper into a nearby trash can, and she dashes toward it. She plucks it out, but before she reads the headline, she manages to catch a glimpse of herself fully in a window under a street lamp.
Barbie's hair, instead of haphazardly flung over her shoulders and falling limply down her back, is curled in perfect finger waves, effortlessly cascading. Her makeup is perfect and set in place, and not just two coats of mascara and balm quickly swiped over her eyes and lips. She's got that double breasted pink coat draped over her shoulders, her pink gloves holding the newspaper. Underneath, she's wearing a gorgeous pink button down with puffed sleeves, the notch collar embroidered with delicate pink flowers. A pink belt holds her pink skirt to her waist, flowing nicely in the breeze. Her stockings have pink stitching lining the back of her calves. Though she's been acclimated to her flat feet, now she's wearing pink t-strap heels, and Barbie remembers just how nicely they compliment her legs.
She feels like Barbie again.
Faintly, she hears the allure of jazz music coming from the doorway about fifty feet in front of her as someone stumbles out. The neon light above reads "The Dawn Club."
Barbie finally looks down at the newspaper, reading the date.
July 21, 1942.
Fun fact: that day in history really was a Tuesday.
Also fun fact: Gloria's husband doesn't have a name in Barbie, so I just used America Ferrera's husband's actual name.
As always, reviews and favorites are greatly appreciated.