When Pam and I were kids, we each had a Barbie. Mommy insisted our Barbies have different color hair because if they looked too much alike, we’d fight over them. Pam always got the blonde one because in Pamaland, Pam always got first dibs and blondes have more fun and we planned to eventually both become blondes ourselves when we grew up.
We also had Midge, Barbie’s best friend, and Skipper, her little sister or cousin or something.
And then there was Ken. We were never sure what to make of him and couldn’t quite work out what his relationship was with Barbie. It was complicated.
We had a Barbie car. It was SHARP – a blue Mustang that had room for Midge and Skipper. Sometimes Ken got to come along, too, but, as I said, we don’t really need to talk much about him.
And we made a state-of-the-art Barbie beauty salon with bathroom-sized Dixie cups and Popcicle sticks. I’m talking shampoo bowls (with neck cutouts), dryers, reception desk – the whole works. I think some salons are still basing their setup on our design …
One Easter, we added to the gang when I got a Honey West
doll, which I had begged for because Honey West was so pretty on her television show, with her blond bouffant and sassy beauty mark, and the doll I saw in the commercial
looked just as beautiful. But when the doll arrived in my Easter Basket, she didn’t look anything like the really Honey West or the doll I saw on TV. Sbe looked like a hawk. A mean one.
I cried and hid her in the toy box. But Pam, who was always very clever, dug Honey out of her toy grave, chopped off most of her hair into what she called the “Cockadoodledoo” style, a precursor of a punk cut (Pam was always ahead of her time) and we seamlessly transitioned her into a man doll since sometimes the girls needed a man around and Ken was, well, just not cutting it.
We dressed Honey in Ken’s clothes and, of course, he looked much better in them than Ken could ever hope to.
And that, my friends, is how Pam invented what may have been the very first trans doll.
And the Barbies and Midge and Skipper were totally cool with it because they weren’t jerks.
Not sure what Ken thought about it but I’m pretty sure we didn’t care.