cultautobio

I grew up with Barbies. Family and friends would buy them for me without anxiety and my mother never hid them away while directing my attention to the birthday cake. I went through many phases with them, from an age where plain sheathed figures without accessory were chewed upon until the rigid support system of the leg was exposed to buying them swiftly with untraceable birthday card cash. I would arrange the special edition velvet gown with fake rubies on the bodice so that it looked like just another piece of old outfit in a pile of doll clothes to my family but distinct and preserved to me. To be one of the gang I consented to their use in my brother’s daily broadcast schedule. It was called the Barbie Freak Show and was hosted by a stuffed animal, a sea turtle we bought at the Baltimore Aquarium and named Fresca. I owned the pink motor home that opened up to a deck situation so naturally the reality show was placed in a nudist trailer park. Most of their clothes were missing or in tatters after leaving them in the garden overnight so the costuming worked. I was never into the little hairbrushes woven into the box either. We were blissfully ahead of the times.
Most of the plots fell into the themes most observable to us: How do all these teenagers date when all the female characters were related and all the males were as well? Was there incest in the history of Barbie and Ken? Were they a band of orphans, two families bunkering through the cold war, having to start over after the parents die, their emotional wounds cauterized to the outside world leaving only the bonds between each sister’s and her similarly aged companion as they try to make it in the world?
They didn’t confuse me, shatter my perception of self, or push me to dream of the day when I could wear neon orange pumps that match my lipstick. Barbie dolls did not matter one-way or the other. In my mind they were just as weird, and just as entertaining, as the Alien brand toys that began to dominate the soap opera world of New Pangaea as we moved into the afternoon time slots. (New Pangaea, obviously, is the future reconciliation of our continents, dinosaurs return, as well as many other mammal-like creatures with Napoleon complexes and grappling hooks. The Aliens attack several seasons in, this served in some ways to temporarily unite the carnivorous dinosaurs banished to Itchy Itchy Island with the mainland force of Pro and the other peace minded beasts. Two Popples served as defenders of the continent and are then forced to acknowledge their own other status while attacking the closer in appearance to themselves aliens. But I won’t pretend we know what the “other” was yet, despite referring to the Poppies only as “blue guy” and the newcomer “white guy”. )

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I played in a way that only helped me to perceive the world and was not dictated to me by an object’s bias or image. We dictated its place in the ever-increasing detailed world constructed to contain it. What I could have been told by an unrealistic doll was not mirrored in any reality I knew. My dad cooked our food, took the most care with his work, picked us up when we were sick at school, but was also a carpenter. My mom worked late, went on business trips, but was a nurse. When it came time to translate play to real life actions and later into my artistic practice it was my father’s example I wanted to follow. Not a man’s role, not a woman’s, but the guy that worked on a piece of furniture until it was perfect and whose warm hand fit perfectly over my face when I had a headache. I would sweep up the sawdust in his shop, saving particularly long tendrils until my love for them meant their destruction in my clumsy hands.
As I became older the outside world began to seep into my family and make me aware of my gender. Aunts and Uncles would give me body lotion or glittery earrings while handing my brother gift cards to bookstores. Was I not supposed to like books? When did books become masculine? We used to combine what we cared for so well. Later on while taking art classes I felt for the first time that it was unusual for a girl to be in the woodshop. My professors were all male and paternal and I did not use the tools well enough and on the occasions I did was overly praised. I saw a lot of beautifully made wood objects and welded beings skulking about the studio, threatening to fall on me and generally being useless other than to tear the clothes of anyone who happened to brush alongside. Literally retreating into a corner, I set to work on being without craft. I would make spindly legged tables and write on the side that I was a student of so and so, put my wax dipped tissue papers and some baubles carelessly on top, and wait for people to tell me the table takes away from the pretty carelessness of the objects.
I started thinking more about Lee Krasner. I didn’t care much about painting then. But she was an abstract expressionist at a time when they still had to know the craft and then work if for themselves, appearing to many as if there were none. But I would never not think of her as Pollack’s wife. If someone is merciful about the first sentence in her biography it is the second, Pollack’s wife. Thinking about how detail was feminine when Krasner painted with it, when grandma embroidered with it, when I curled glue into thin gauzy sheets with it, I wondered why we felt the need to care so much about the little things.
After seeing one of her paintings in person, a dark number with hieroglyphic shapes, I found my answer. We needed to work intensely on small areas, prove our devotion and hard work, how much we care more, as if care was equal to value. We would earn our way through labor. I began to see my work as penance. I can work my way out of this situation and every knife slip, crock-pot of wax overturning, and pinprick would help me get there. Working my way back to a time when I didn’t see my play as different from my brother’s, when we worked together for fun, I started making my own skill sets. These are not particular to women, but to me. I can take a wrapper off a straw much faster than you. My muscle memory was just as good as someone accustomed to curling his or her arms around a band saw. My pieces provided me with the reconciliation of what I wanted and what I was told is valuable. I couldn’t deny the value they had to me, I knew how much went into them and anyone taking more than a glance would see it as well.
My conflict with woodcraft remains. But I take the time to appreciate their method of penance.