When I was six, I got my first Barbie doll. I don't remember if it was for Christmas, or for my birthday, or just because, but I remember very clearly my parent handing me the unwrapped box, and my surprise and giddy excitement over that Barbie. She was a Teresa Barbie. I dodn't mind that she spelled her name wrong, (no, I didn't say diffrently; to my six year old mind it was just wrong), and I didn't notice that she was dressed as a gymnast when I was a dancer, what mattered was that there was a Barbie doll made just for me.

Teresa is Barbie's Hispanic friend, not Barbie's interracial friend. I didn't realize this until I was well into high school. What I did notice was that her skin was the exact same color as mine, that her eyes were the same shade of brown, and that her hair, like mine, was thick and wavy and a brown that turned red in the sun. She was origionally introduced in 1988 and reinvented with her now familiar and unique face shape and skin tone in 1990. I have quite a collection of Teresa Barbie's that I've bought or been given. When I made the basketball team my little sisters pooled thier money and bought me a Basketball Teresa made for the fledgling women's basketball leauge. For my sixteenth birthday, one of my little sisters stole one of my Teresa dolls and made an "actress Theresa" with her own version of my favorite skirt, shirt and scarf. I never bought a regular Barbie, I didn't like the Kira Barbies or the Barbies from aound the world. Why should I, when I had a Barbie made just for me?

When I got my first Teresa Barbie, my younger sister got a Barbie too. I don't remember if it was a Swan Lake Barbie or just another Princess Barbie, I do remeber that her legs were boneless so she could move in ways my doll couldn't. She also had painted on shimmery pink tights, and a big silver dress, and more toys in her box than Teresa did. Hers should have been the cooler toy, but I had a doll made just for me, and no one was making Gertrude Barbies. When we played, we told stories about how the awesome Teresa was a secret agent spy who could use her awesome gynast powers to resuce silly, helpless Barbie from whatever trouble she was in.

Of course, we were pretty much the only girls in the neighborhood, so Teresa was occasionally abandoned and I would play with my other favorite toy, the blue Centurian with the rockets that plug into his body armor. The guys didn't take Teresa seriosly, even if she wasn't a Barbie.I didn't really mind though. I was tough, like my Centurian or the Thundercats on my bedsheets. I was fast, like Cheetara, and proud, like Liono. I was pround enough to push myself past what my body thought it was capable of, because I had decided I was not just athletic, but the most athletic. I would not lose a race, or a game of horse to anyone except Hunter, and he was older and bigger and he would win anyway. I would not call uncle when we'd wrestle in the basement, not first anyway. That's how I fractured my wrist.

I was lucky in my first Barbie expiriance. I don't have to join the ranks of women who moan and complain that in their formative years an impossible ideal was thrust into their impressionable little hands. And while I owned at one point the Barbie Dream House, (the two story one with the bacony and elavator you work by pulling on a piece of yarn that after about a month frays and breaks off,) and the Barbie converable and Swan Prince Ken, they were just accecories for Teresa's stories of espionage and intruige. I don't remeber if I ever played at Teresa getting married, though I'm sure I must have at one point. I certainly never spent sleepless nights planning diets and beauty treatments so I too could look like Barbie. Why should I, when my Barbie was modeled after me?

That is not to say that I don't think there's a danger in Barbies. She did give me a clear goal of who I wanted to be, and she affected the stories I told myself. I didn't tell myself stories about marrying my high school sweetheart and settling down to have babies. I told stories of the incredible Teresa leaping across walls and scaling high cliffs to reach a bomb, then instead of diffusing it kicking it clear into outerspace with one of her famous Outerspace Kicks. They were stories about obvious strength saving the day. I put value on being measurable faster, sronger and better than my playmates. I didn't work to hard on being smarter than them. I never thought of competition in the classroom as being all that important. I was smart, but who cares when I can run the mile exactly 17.5 seconds faster than everyone else? So I read by choice when it was raining or I was sick. No one got a ribbon for reading, and in the stories the smart one has to stay behind or get kindnapped from the lab. Barbie has her obvious faullts,and some not so obvious ones that worry me more. Like any toy, she limits the things kids think about when they play. She narrows the world and gives it a bright shiny costume to focus on. That's what's so dangerous about Barbie. With all of her variety and specilazation, for all of her faux empowering costuming, with all of her accessories she still paints a picture of what a child should be. She's not another kid to play with. She's the story and the child the accessory.

I don't at all regret my Teresa Barbie. In fact, I still collect them. I still buy them and their oversized "Bratz" friends for my little sisters. What I don't buy is the clothes and accessories. I'd noticed that the same sister that made a specialized Teresa just for me has stared making doll clothes for the other girls as well. The dolls lose intricate peices of clothing, or something looses a button or breaks and the girls will pull out the scrap box and sit down together and sew. The clothes they make are never the same as the ones that broke. The dolls end up wearing a lot of togas too. But the girls make the clothes by hand, with no pattern or guidance from Barbie. The Barbie with the wetsuit that dissapears when you drop her in hot water takes on diffrent personalities to match the lopsided, unseamed creation she's stuffed in. Her wetsuit has been long forgotten, and dressed in her homespun creation she's indistinguishable from the other dolls unless you look up her skirt. I don't worry too much about my little sisters trying to live up to Barbie's ideals. There has been enough moaning and complaining about Barbie's power as a role model for them to be aware and the toymakers to be nervous. And in any case, for them the doll changes to suit their stories.