Writings - Drag King Barbie

It's been a month and we've missed you! We're not embarking an a different sort of journey - that of creation. Each week one of us provides a prompt and then we free write. We hope to use these writings to create our performance piece, wherever that takes us. But, we want to share some of our musings along the way. Sometimes we'll post an entire piece, other times just snippets of them. We'll also do our best to provide the prompt, so that you can see where our minds journey! And heck, if you feel inspired to write something that inspired you in the comments, we'd be honored.

Without further ado - I bring you our first prompt... (please note that this image and the 'intellectual property' of the image belong to P. Jeannechild - thank you!) The writing below consists of snippets of each of our individual pieces.

1. I never had a barbie. of any kind. my father refused to allow them in the house. didn’t want his daughters growing up with that image... that kind of role model. I took this very seriously. I was not permitted to play with them. there was something dirty... something low about them that my daddy disapproved of. something I was not supposed to be. something I’ve always been afraid of being.

the most common comment I ever hear about barbies from my friends is that they cut their hair. gave ‘em all butchie do’s and then made them have sex with each other. very few were affected in the way those feminists in the 70s said they would be. they turned those dolls into icons of a completely different sort.

2. If only there had been a drag king Barbie poking out behind the plastic on the shelves at Child World. Or even a GI Jane with combat boots and helmet hair. There was only the opposite camps. Pink and pretty Barbie and Army Green and rugged GI Joe. Pick a side, stay there, make sure it’s the right one. Don’t deviate. Yes sir, ma’am. Good thing I had an older brother who liked GI Joes. I lucked out. And I saved my parents a fortune in ¾” stilettos and dream home accessories.

3. I really like Barbies. Please don't take away my Dyke Card. And I'd like to hold onto my Drag King Membership and Butch of the month subscription.

Barbie had no need to wear underwear! She had long, luscious locks. She had pointy, ridiculously arched feet. She was perfect. Except when she wasn't. I needed boy dolls to enact my lavish soap opera dream life. So I cut Barbie's hair. I tried for it to be stylish and coiffed, I put Dep in it, I brushed it back. It invariably looked like Dorothy Hammil on crack. That wasn't hot. So I cut it super short, super, super short so that the individual pegs of hair were visible. She got to wear Ken's clothes with a gumband around the waist to hold the pants up. And then she got to visit other Barbies.