You’re a year younger than I, which might
account for your youthful… well, everything,
from your spectacular figure and eye-popping
blonde sheen—
not that I’m jealous, though OK, I was,
just a little, long ago—but honey, you
clearly have a whole team of pros keeping
you poofed into perfection. And that’s fine.
You do you, Barbara Millicent Roberts.
That’s the name you were given in the novels
I read about you when I was growing up.
It’s a long way from your hometown of
Willows, Wisconsin, to being a
full-fledged movie star.
Look at you, headliner of your own summer
blockbuster. That’s gotta be a bigger wow
than the best Dreamhouse ever. I know
you’ve been in films before—love you in
the “Toy Story” movies—but now you’re
up there on the Big Screen all pinked
out doing major dance numbers. Yeow!
I’ve imagined being your friend since I
first held one of your earliest incarnations.
I never mistreated you—pulled out your
hair or drew on you. I didn’t want to be you,
exactly, but I admired your can-do spirit
of adventure.
I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to,
now that you’re approaching sixty-five,
and I’m squarely there. What if you lower
your heels—the ones on your feet, I mean—
and we grab our tennies (not for tennis,
though I bet you still have the cute outfits
for it, not to mention a tightly-strung
racquet), and do something radical,
like go for a walk-and-talk?
I think it’d be fun, us two sexagenarians,
to stroll and laugh about so much in our
lives—sure, a bit about the men—
the long term (looking at you, Ken)
and the short term (hey, surfer Blaine).
But we both know those guys were only
part of our lives. I want to hear about
you flying planes, rocketing into space,
driving race cars, delivering babies.
You evolved so much from your initial
black-and-white striped bathing suit
self.
I knew you then, with your pointy
boobs and impossible figure, a real doll.
But in the decades that followed
so many other girls like me watched
you grow into more of a real woman,
as we do, if we’re lucky—
some of us as moms and professionals,
as scientists and mechanics and teachers
and veterinarians and singers and writers—
and some of us also blessed with a
perennially killer wardrobe and fabulous
legs that go on for days and days and days.
