Barbie Girl

As far back as I can remember I played with Barbies. My absolute favorite thing to do whenever I got a new Barbie was to remove her from the box and promptly restyle her hair and give her a new outfit. As a result of this I had a bad habit of loosing or misplacing many of my Barbie's outfits and the majority of my Barbies were doomed to end up in a jumbled box with a number of other naked Barbies whose clothing had gone missing.

One year Santa Clause brought me a Barbie Dream House for Christmas. It was just my height, decked out in every shade of pink imaginable and fabulous. Coupling my brothers Transformer action figures with Barbies was also one of my favorite games. I would transition the Transformers into their animal version (my favorite was a bright yellow sabre tooth tiger) and offer them up as some bizarre pet for my Barbie to walk on a leash. Whenever I would take trips to Michigan to visit family my cousin and I could spend hours in the back of a car on long trips to the family cabin playing Barbie or up in her room we would line our Barbies up on the bed making decisions on fashion choices and love affairs.

Then somewhere in my years of growing up I stopped playing Barbie, my interests giving way to other things. Until recently when I stumbled upon my niece's Barbie Dream House and for no real reason at all I sat in the hallway most of that night playing Barbie, happily discovering that Barbie is quite as much fun at age 28 as it was at age 5.

It has been a real pleasure rediscovering my childhood through these pictures as well as putting my own little twist on them. I hope others will find them as fun as I do!