I could make a guess if you told me how surprised you were to hear that last Friday I went with my friend S to the Barbie Exhibition at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.
If your reaction is ' that sounds like a fun thing to do and I bet you enjoyed it' I've known you for less than ten years and probably more like three.
If it is 'You? And Barbie? I can't quite believe that' then you've known me a long time and it's probably time we had a catch up. I am not the same as teenage/twenties me. 😄
I was not brought up to appreciate fun, or to feel that it's OK to do fun things just because they are fun, and also that some things you should never admit to finding fun at all. Barbie would very much fall into the latter category. However I have learned over the past few years, occasionally with great difficulty, that actually there is nothing wrong with fun; in fact it can add greatly to the enjoyment of life and of course I have also had to learn that it is also not wicked to enjoy life. So when S and I were wondering what to do on our latest jaunt we thought Barbie, that might be fun, and we went. And it was.
It was also a bit overwhelming. I had no idea that there had been well over 200 iterations of Barbie, nor that she had followed so many careers ( quite often totally unsuitably dressed) nor that she had owned such an extensive property portfolio. We alternated between 'I remember that' and 'After my time' and 'I don't think they sold that one in the UK.'
I never had a Barbie and I don't think I ever hankered after one, certainly not in the same way that I hankered after Sindy her UK equivalent. But she was there, in the background, in all the toy shops and endlessly advertised on television so a peripheral part of my growing up. I was astonished by this piece of information recorded in the exhibition
