44.

BARBIE MOM

A half-naked princess was hiding behind the china cabinet in our dining room. I found her there twenty minutes ago. Naked royalty was the last thing I thought I’d be dealing with on this busy, busy day, but I did what any mother would do. I dropped all plans I had for the afternoon, tore through the house until I found a box of clothes, dumped hundreds of tops, bottoms, gowns, cloaks, tiaras, and possibly a thousand pairs of shoes on the dining room floor and got that young lady properly dressed.

Before I could stop myself, I rummaged through other cupboards and pulled out another box. And another. In minutes, I was back sitting on the dining room floor with fifteen other princesses laid out in front of me. Some with less clothing than the first. Some amputees. Some bald, some with faces mauled from when our dog mistook them for chew toys years ago. Some perfect, as if they were just freed from the Barbie package I learned to rip open with my teeth at thirty-five miles per hour for the impatient little princess in the back seat of my car. By the day we bought my daughter’s eighth Barbie, I could free the doll, her stitched-down hair, and half a dozen tiny accessories twist-tied to the package, and partially set up Barbie’s Pet Care Center on the pull-down cup holder between the seats, all while maintaining perfect eye contact with the road.

Motherhood takes us lots of places we don’t expect, that’s all I can say . . .

Today, for instance. Instead of rushing around town efficiently checking accomplishments off my to-do list, I’m sitting on the floor of the dining room trying to wriggle Astronaut Barbie back into her silver spandex space suit.

For a beautiful minute, I pause to appreciate something I almost never, ever have: zero inner conflict.

These dolls, with their ridiculous figures, flawless faces, and unattainable hair . . . their obsession with fashion, parties, and matching accessories . . . their inexplicable fixation on a grinning blond surfer dude named Ken who was always sitting in a pink convertible on the side of my daughter’s bedroom . . . These beloved, all-wrong role model dolls helped create some of my daughter’s and my favorite memories with each other, some of the very sweetest times of my life. I love these girls.

For several more beautiful minutes, I’m back where I used to be when my daughter was six years old—right back in the happy middle of my two personas: Trailblazing Career Woman by day, Barbie Mom by night. My daughter would greet me at the front door after work with a fistful of dolls and, before I could change out of my office clothes, I’d be on my hands and knees in her bedroom—crawling around in my no-nonsense business suit and pumps, helping her stuff Beach Barbie into a tiny bikini. Trying to sit on the floor in my conservative, below the knee skirt, while squashing Neurosurgeon Barbie into hospital-green hot pants and thigh-high operating room booties . . . Lying on my stomach in my blazer,packing Librarian Barbie into a strapless purple tube dress with matching glasses . . . Orthodontist Barbie into a plunging neckline, sequined lab coat . . .

I pick some poodle-print leggings from the pile of tiny clothes on the dining room floor, find Veterinarian Barbie in the lineup of dolls, and stick her skinny little legs into them. An act more satisfying than almost anything I’ve done all week.

I hadn’t been with these girls in a long time, and the reunion is sweet. More sweet, probably, because of what’s coming from the other room—the sound of my real-life grown-up princess giggling on the couch with a real-life boy, watching a reality TV show about teens behaving badly. The living room is just close enough for me to be disturbed by what I can hear, but just far enough to not be sure which sounds are coming from the TV and which are coming from the couch. I beam all the motherly disapproval I can their way to cover all possibilities and go back to the dolls.

My job was easier back in our Barbie years, I think, clamping a miniature magenta stethoscope around the hot doctor’s neck. Distinctions between what was play and what was real were nice and clear and simple to explain to my child. All I had to do was make peace with the fact that I was crawling around in my career woman power suit helping my little girl dress her Career Barbies in what sometimes appeared to be tiny hooker outfits.

That was nothing, it turns out. Nothing compared to what a mom needs to make peace with today to help her daughter navigate the world. Distinctions between play and real are no longer nice and clear at all. Neither are the distinctions between good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, honest and dishonest . . . Pretty much everything is complicated in a way it wasn’t then.

So much had already changed in the world for women by the time my daughter was six, it was impossible not to assume that by the time she got to the age she is now, everything would be completely fixed and wonderful. Work opportunities would be wide open, pay and promotions would the same for everyone, relationships would be completely equal, companies would be set up to embrace parenthood, and rights of all people in all areas of life would be guaranteed. I could spend hundreds of hours helping my young daughter dress princesses for the ball in the Barbie castle without ever worrying that I was endorsing a life goal of being a princess or, worse, marrying Ken. This was play. Generations of women had launched a spectacular new kind of real for women. A whole powerful new path for my girl had been set.

The giggling from the other room intensifies. I don’t like it. I don’t like that I need to either give nineteen-year-olds space and privacy in my living room in the middle of the afternoon or risk having them find someplace to go where I can’t hear the things I don’t want to hear. This is not a new motherly complaint, I know, but it’s worse now. This part of the powerful new path has an extremely fast lane and I don’t like it one bit.

“Stop doing what you’re doing in there!” I yell toward the room when I can’t stand it any longer. “Hands in the air! Feet on the floor!”

I go back to the dolls on the floor and the less complicated time. I miss Ken, the grinning blond surfer dude in Barbie’s pink plastic convertible. Ken was too oblivious to be any kind of threat. Ken didn’t have a Snapchat account. No selfies of any part of himself. He didn’t even have his own car. That was Barbie’s pink convertible! I trust absolutely nothing about today’s boys or what the world has encouraged today’s girls to think is expected in relationships.

I want to see Ken again. I dump what’s left in the boxes I brought from the other room on the floor.

Where is he? Where’s that oblivious surfer dude? I ask myself silently as I rummage through the pile. I miss you, you overconfident, undeserving, nonthreatening Romeo! Where are you?? Come out! Come out and let me hug you, little plastic guy!!

“MOM!” My grown-up princess is standing over me. Apparently I wasn’t as silent as I thought.

“Sorry, honey,” I say. “I was just reminiscing.”

“Seriously, Mom?” she asks, looking down at her childhood spread out on the dining room floor. “Is this what you do when I’m at college? Play with my Barbies??”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I answer. “I’m looking for Ken.”

“Ken?”

“I’m searching for the clarity of simpler times.”

“Mom??” she asks, peering at me curiously.

“I worry about your world, honey. So much comes at you from so many directions all day long—popping up on Facebook . . . swirling on the Internet . . . life coaching by YouTubers with green hair . . . link after link to who knows what after what . . . a constant exposure to . . .”—I point toward the living room—“things like that!”

“It’s a TV show, Mom!!” she says with an exasperated laugh.

“Exactly!” I answer. “That’s why it’s dangerous! Behavior that should be shocking is edited into Netflix episodes that start to look normal! The distinction between play and real is gone! I miss Ken. I miss the good old days of Ken!”

“You’re funny, Mom,” she says, shaking her head with a laugh and giving me a comforting little pat on the head. She turns and walks back to the living room. “And don’t worry, I know the difference between play and real!”

I do a quick scan of her teeny shorts, scoopy top, perfect makeup, long flowing hair, and stacked platform sandals as she walks away. I’d be more comforted if she and much of her peer group didn’t look like life-size Barbies a lot of the time. I try to imagine all she’s already facing and is going to face in the future without calling her mom for help.

Then again, what help would I be? I spent years writing about relationships—reading, researching, trying to condense giant societal shifts into comic-strip-size stories that would help women navigate love, work, and self-esteem with a sense of humor when all the rules were changing.

But at least there were rules then. Nothing prepared me to help my daughter deal with what feels like the complete free-for-all of now. I don’t know how to shield her from pressures I don’t even know about and, when I learn about them, can’t comprehend. It makes me crazy when I see freedoms my generation was so proud to win get translated into presumptions and pressures that can make today’s young women more, not less, vulnerable to everything: being hurt, misunderstood, taken advantage of. When I learned that what my mother’s generation saved for their wedding night can be arranged in a nanosecond with a right swipe on a hookup app, I wanted to put my arms around my daughter’s whole generation. Hearts and souls couldn’t possibly have evolved at the same pace as electronics. Moms can’t possibly keep up with all we need to protect. Young women must be feeling more lost and alone at the exact time in history they should feel more in control of everything.

More sounds from the living room. More sounds back from me: “I’m serious! Stop whatever you’re doing in there! Focus on your wretched TV show!”

I pick a princess up off the floor and wrap her in a long yellow gown with glittery butterflies on the skirt. I can barely remember what I did yesterday, but I remember that this gown from years ago came with matching long yellow gloves and teensy silver plastic stilettos with an even teensier butterfly on the toes. I dig through the pile of clothes, determined to put the outfit in order.

It isn’t only relationships. Everything’s more complicated for my daughter’s generation. Hanging on to career passion when it’s so hard to find a job . . . Feeling that one person’s voice can’t possibly matter when so many voices together haven’t made a difference . . . Knowing who and what to trust . . . Staying connected to humans when so much of life is online . . . Feeling safe when the whole planet feels so fragile . . .

I worry that the bright, blazing possibilities of my generation don’t seem possible at all to a lot of young women today. I hear my own daughter say things no women were saying when I was her age. Things like “Nothing’s ever going to change . . . Nothing I do would make a difference.”

I never imagined I’d think what I think a lot of the time now, which is that I don’t really know how to prepare my own daughter for womanhood in this world.

The sounds have stopped completely in the living room. It’s way too quiet in there. I look down at everything that came out of the Barbie boxes on the floor in front of me. The sparkly pink uncomplicated jumble of what was. There’s no going back, I know that . . . but I wish I were a little more confident about how things would go forward. I’m feeling more than a little powerless when . . .

My daughter’s suddenly back in the room, standing in front of me.

“Here, Mom,” she says, pulling something from behind her back and handing it to me, with a compassionate grin and smiling eyes. “I keep him buried in the back of the top shelf of my closet. So I always know where he is.”

Same oblivious surfer dude grin. Same blond hair still frozen in place. That overconfident, undeserving, nonthreatening Romeo. That oh-so-welcome unlikely touchstone of innocence. My heart skips a little beat.

“Also, don’t worry, Mom,” my daughter says, pointing toward the living room, “we’re in there laughing about what losers the kids are on that show. I’m not going to turn into one of them! And the guy who’s with me . . .”—she rolls her eyes and shakes her head—“believe me, Mom, nothing to worry about with him, either.” With that, she leans down toward me and taunts my motherly fears with a big grin of her own and “Not THAT guy, anyway!”

She leaves me with another comforting pat on the head and something even sweeter—a hint of reassurance that she’s able to handle things better than I think. I’m heartened by her self-awareness and sense of humor. Maybe along with all the new things coming at her from the outside that I can’t control, she has coping skills on the inside that I actually planted. Maybe I put enough in there to help keep her grounded in who she is, no matter what the world brings. I touch my hand to my head where she patted it. Maybe she even wants to take care of me a little, just like I want to take care of her.

I hear her get resettled on the couch with her guy. I gaze at the guy she brought to me from the shelf in her room, and have my second beautiful moment of zero inner conflict for the day: This feminist Barbie Mom doesn’t care one speck how happy it makes me to be reunited with Ken.