Walton 1 Keegan Walton Professor Babbitt English 1201 October 1st, 2019 Dynamics of Human Relationships The Barbie Birthday, by Alison Townsend explores the mind of a young girl with a traumatic past who has a need to feel something every human does- love and acceptance. As her mother passed away due to disease and her father remarries shortly after, this little girl is torn with emotions in which she needs guidance to solve. Reading this flash fiction story, we learn parts of this girl’s inner fight with herself when it comes to accepting this newly introduced life with a newfound “mom” and how certain figures can change a relationship forever. From emotions to actions we also learn that young girls relying on the role models of mother figures struggle with adapting to different dynamics of mother-daughter relationships. A short time after this girl’s mother passes away her father ends up with a new girlfriend, Shirley, this girl soon to be stepmother. Shirley embodied everything that was perfect in a fairy tale type of way. “Her auburn curls bouncing in the early may light, her suit of fuchsia wool blooming like some exotic flower”. With her mother being sick she never gave off this image of perfection, “…both her breasts cut off like raw meet”- making Shirley the girls first close experience with this concept. Ironically this look that Shirley portrayed was associated with that of a barbie- a figure this little girl longed for and to be. Shirley knew about this girl’s obsession with barbie and used that as a way to get to this girl’s heart. She starts out by saying “The first gift my father’s girlfriend gave me was the barbie Walton 2 I wanted”. Stepparents in general seem to suffer from a disconnect with stepchildren and vice versa, something Shirley knew and immediately started to feel. During the girls 10th birthday she describes her everlasting memories that consist of Shirley’s Barbie like figure and then an actual Barbie in all its built-up glory. “I turned her over in my hands, marveling at her stiff, shiny body”. This girl is now experiencing something for the first time ever that was once forbidden by her mother. This in returns opens up the conflict of mother daughter dynamics. This girl, her entire life was not given the opportunity to explore these dolls and ideas that surrounded them. Now on this day, in this short time period of less than a year she has a new possible role model in her life and is given that chance to explore those once forbidden concepts. This single gift was a pivotal moment in this newly founded mother-daughter relationship. She sees Shirley’s smile while opening up her present and thinks “she likes me, she really likes me”. These two both have the same end goal- love and acceptance. They both internalize that goal as their relationship hasn’t fully developed the trust to be able to share these deep feelings. “…she wanted to please me, the eldest daughter who remembered too much and who had been too shy to visit.”, the girl understood Shirley’s desire for a relationship with her as she had the same feelings. While she contemplates her relationship with Shirley, she thinks a lot about her mom and what her mom would think. She states, “My mother had been dead five months… but I yearned for the doll she’d forbidden.” As she starts to think about what motive her mother had for these rules. She had a sense of betrayal to her mother knowing that she would not agree with this gift and what it stood for. In an ironic state of events she uses this “forbidden” barbie doll as a way to release some of these conflicted feelings. She personifies the doll saying, “barbie could tell me what everything meant”. This plastic figure was her out. She used it to decipher her feelings towards Walton 3 Shirley and her grievances towards her mother. A powerful statement she uses says “how to be a woman when I was a girl with no mother…”. Although this doll was given to her by her new mother figure, she still feels that sense of abandonment due to her mother’s absence. She needs to know that her accepting Shirley into her life is the right thing to do. In the end all this little girl wants, desires and craves is that new woman role model in her life. In her head when comparing stepmom to mom, they both seem to be from two polar opposite worlds, and it becomes apparent that she has a lot of anxiety over this swift change as she doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. In the end through reading this we learn about our human needs for love, affection and acceptance of one another. This girl goes through a journey of not only finding herself but maturing and adapting to situations around her at such a young age. Self-conflicts happen within all of us for so many different reasons and sometimes all it takes is a figure, such as a doll to change your perspective on things. This isn’t just a story, it’s a collection of examples that prove the statement “You are stronger than you believe”. Something that is important in so many different contexts of life as everyone deserves happiness, even through the traumatic times. This girl lost a mother physically, but emotionally and mentally she’s still there. Now not only does she have one, but she also has slowly overcome immense feelings of guilt, anxiety and is learning to have a second mother as well. You don’t have to sacrifice the things you love for something new. You must instead learn to accept the good, bad and ugly and join old and new together. Self-confliction and new dynamics can lead to new concepts of love and family as long as you’re willing to struggle and sacrifice through it all.
