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Authors: Celia Rivenbark

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Happy 50th Birthday, Barbie! Midge Has Your Back (Stabbed)
B
arbie and I are the same age, give or take a couple of years, so I’ve always felt that we were kind of like soul sistahs.
Granted, she’s pretty and vapid and I’m just vapid, but we do share a love for our convertibles, and a certain bottle-blonde bond.
People who aren’t as beautiful or popular as Barbie, not to name names but
Midge
, have always bad-mouthed her. It’s just that ol’ green-eyed monster, if you ask me. Frankly, Barbie and I are used to that stuff.
You’d think that now that Barbie is fifty, all that animosity would settle down a bit. But then I stumble across this letter written by that jealous Midge to Barbie on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday and I realize that things are worse than ever … .
Dear Barbie,
OMG! I can’t believe you’re the big 5-0! One minute you’re pursuing your many fascinating careers and patiently ignoring snippy comments about your fabulous figure, and the next minute there you are, spending another Sadday night with Ken, watching wrasslin’ on TV and drinking that new Budweiser with the lime already in it. So highfalutin’ and just like the two of y’all to choose the fancy beer. Don’t think I ever forgot how snotty you were when I offered you some Jeno’s Pizza Rolls when you were visiting my less-than-Dream House. You and Ken can eat that rolled-up bait you like so much on your own time.
Oh, Barbie, I didn’t mean to go off on a rant. That’s not the purpose of my greeting. I just wanted to say, as your lifelong friend, the one with the also-ran spouse, Alan, I, Midge, just want to say, “Welcome to my world!” Have you seen the parody of you as Cougar Barbie on YouTube? What do you mean, what is YouTube? Girrrrrl, you have gotta get out more. Things have changed a lot since you came along in ’59.
I have to admit, every time I heard some little shit pout on Christmas morning because Santa brought me or Skipper or Christie instead of YOU, wonderful YOU, it did chafe a bit. OK, more than a bit. I swear there was a time back in the mid-’70s when I toyed with asking G.I. Joe (who, incidentally, like my Alan,
prefers a real woman with red hair, freckles, and a wardrobe of dowdy floral shifts) to, well, accidentally on purpose toss a grenade into your Dream House or at least tamper with the brakes on that ridiculous Pepto-Bismol convertible of yours.
Oh, don’t look so surprised. You made life insufferable for the rest of us with your perfect proportions. Remember how you’d be wearing your black tulle “Nightclub Singer” evening gown and I’d be wearing, let’s see, oh, yes, I remember now, PLAID CULOTTES. And who names their clothes anyway? You think I fling open my closet door (which is bifold and never works right ’cause that’s all we’re allowed to have here in the trailer-home park) and say, “Oh, I think I’ll wear my ‘Singing in the Shower’ today or maybe my ‘Dreamy Delight’ or my ‘Gold ’n’ Glamour’?” Oh hell to the no. I’m lucky if I can find something that doesn’t have spit-up from the grandbaby all over it. And, since you ask, he is, in fact, a bastard. Oh, I can just see your nose crawl right up your face when I say that.
But here’s the thing: I don’t care what you think. You’re too old to threaten me and mine anymore. I’m glad we’ve got lil Deavis Ray the bastard in our lives now. He’s just turned 3 and me and Alan have been trying to potty train him. Funny story about that: See, Deavis Ray finally used the potty for Numero Dos, as
we like to call it because we believe it’s very important that Deavis be fluent in at least 2 languages. This was a real big deal, it being the first time and all, but I was at the Big Lots buying some old-ass frosted flakes and missed the whole entire thing. I haven’t been this disappointed since Alan lost our Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Band tickets in a poker game. But my Alan came up with a solution and he sent me a picture to my phone—not of Deavis Ray on the little plastic potty like most people, no. He sent me a picture of the damn poo sitting in the potty by itself. Men just don’t pay much attention to presentation sometimes.
Of course, Ken would’ve known better than to do that. I know you’re thinking that. But then, Ken always was “artistic” wasn’t he? And by artistic, I mean he was gay as a circus tent in a field of flowers. Just saying.
So you’re 50 now and not even a grandmama like me. The way me and Alan see it, it’s time to finally just tell you the truth. Which, unlike your Malibu-tan face, is going to be completely unvarnished. Here goes: Girl, we all hated you. Even Becky, the one in the wheelchair. In fact, she hated you the most. Hahahahahahahahaha! There. I feel so much better already. The free shrink down at the welfare office told me that I should save myself another stroke by confronting problems (you) and not just stewing in my own juices. She’s a pretty good shrink, although I don’t think she’s good
with money because Alan says she’s down at the Internet sweepstakes café almost as often as he is! Oh, shut up! Alan’s gonna win that Pot O’ Gold one day, just watch.
Oh, Barbie, now that you’re 50, maybe you’ll finally understand that it’s inner beauty that counts. YOU SHALLOW COW! Oops. Did I just write that out loud?
Barbie, they say living well is the best revenge, and I must tell you that Alan and I have a full and productive life that has nothing to do with you but has a great deal to do with cooking up large quantities of methamphetamine in our RV and getting the young’uns to sell it to their school friends. OH, DON’T JUDGE ME! You don’t know what it’s been like for me living in your 38-22-34 shadow all these decades. But no more! You’re just a few short years away from senior coffee at Mc-Donald’s.
The playing field is a little more even now that we’re both “on in years,” right, Toots?
You were always so high and mighty but now you’re just old and high and mighty. Don’t think I don’t remember how you snickered when I told you that me and Alan spent $2,000 on that pageant dress for our baby daughter, Alan-ia. Let me tell you, we were the proudest parents in the entire Ramada Inn Conference Center when she won “Best Manicure” and got
that big-ass trophy. She beat a whole roomful of other contestants, all of ’em dipped and fluffed to the nines.
When she won, I shouted out, “Well slap my ass and call me Sally!” Oh, there went your nose again. Well, get over it. At your age, making ugly faces can lead to wrinkles. Anyway, after Alan-ia got her trophy, we all went out to eat at Ruby Tuesday. Alan had a coupon for $10 off because he thinks of every-freakin’-thing, my Alan. Alan-ia is just so much like me. We got up to go pee and the waitress came along about the time we both stood up to walk to the bathroom and we said, IN UNISON, “Don’t be touchin’ my shit while I’m gone.”
No way could I have been more proud than I was at that particular moment. We hate somebody touchin’ our shit. And since we’d said it together, we had to say “Jinx!” real quick to get rid of the curse. We may not be wealthy but we’re also superstitious.
Barbie, I guess all this has turned into more of an update on my full life instead of the Happy Birthday note that I had started out to write and for that, I’m sorry.
It’s kinda like when we visit Alan’s crazy-ass aunt, Sudie, and she just talks and talks and talks about everything in her stupid life and then, when she finally shuts up and takes a breath, you know what she says? “Well, here I go just talkin’ about myself all this time. What would YOU like to know about me?”
I will close now because Alan’s outside trying to show Deavis Ray how he can set his ass hairs on fire using a can of Suave Extra Hold and a torch. Again.
So, from all of your “friends” (OK, just me and Becky) at Mattel, happy damn birthday. I hope you can still fit into your “Barbie in Switzerland” ensemble because alls I got to add to this is “Yodel-lay-ye-HO!”
Gotta go now! Alan says it’s past time for my “crazy pills.” See what good care he takes of me?
Love,
Midge
Postscript
Aside from Barbie turning fifty, there’s more exciting news this year from Mattel, which also owns the American Girl dolls. You know the ones: They’re about a hundred bucks each and wear those Mennonites-in-the-airport outfits.
So what? So this. There’s a new American doll named Gwen and she’s
homeless.
I’m picturing a pretty fiery board meeting as Mattel tried to figure out how to accessorize the homeless Gwen. American Girl dolls tend to have pricey accessories (who can forget the $65 plastic horse?), so how do you brand a homeless doll without seeming, well, tacky?
It’s not like Mattel can, in good corporate conscience, sell a battered ’86 Taurus station wagon for Gwen and her mama to sleep in.
What’s next, I wonder. Mackenzie, a spunky American Girl doll who experiments with drugs and alcohol to escape the reality of her daily doings with her pervy rock-star dad?
I don’t want to say Mattel is being insensitive to the plight of the homeless, although there’s a definite let-them-eat-cake vibe here. On the other hand, it’s not terrible to introduce your precious Oilily-clad cherub to the notion that Poor People Aren’t Bad People. Except maybe for Midge.
Charlie Bit Your Finger? Good
I
’m not the only one who has noticed the depressing American obsession with all things “cute” lately. An article in
Vanity Fair
magazine confirmed something that I’ve suspected for a while now: We’re on cute overload and it’s only getting worse.
The whys could be debated. Maybe it’s just an overcorrection to national angst about the economy, wars, and a health care system that is so whacked out it will pay for his fake boner pills but not for her birth control.
If you think about it long enough, you’ll go crazier than a cat trying to cover shit on a marble floor. So you retreat from adult worries and sink into the soft cocoon of cute. Yes, we crave cute. Oooey, gooey cute. And while I think that’s groovy for hawking kids’ products, when cute is used to sell adult stuff, I find it sort of gagsome.
Do you really want to buy car insurance from a company that uses a cute little cartoon character made of money as its spokesman? I mean, this is insurance, the stuff that pays to have you and your car put back together after some asshole pulls out in front of you in his limp lil hybrid and you end up in the hospital.
And speaking of hospitals, did you know that some of them now give teddy bears and other stuffed animals to adult patients who complain about the service?
Patient: “You amputated the wrong leg, you idiot son of a whore!”
Hospital staffer: “I know! And we’re really sorry. And to show how sorry we are, here’s a cuddly-wuddly Mr. Snuggles the Bear for you to keep!”
Patient: “Snuggles the Bear? You think a stuffed bear that any idiot could win at the carnival by tossing plastic rings onto milk bottles is going to make up for my missing leg?
Do you???
Well, aw hell, he is kinda cute. OK. C’mere you little cutie patootie!”
God save us all.
The cute conspiracy is everywhere. How brain-dead must adults be to tolerate a commercial in which a dancing scrub mop croons ballads to its ditzy human in hopes that she’ll decide to use it again for her cleaning needs?
“Martha, come quick! That mop is pretending to sing
Love Hurts
again. God that really makes me want to tell you to go scrub the kitchen floor.”
And since kids aren’t in charge of buying the toilet paper in most households, it’s a mystery why cartoon bears with toilet paper stuck to their asses are causing formerly mature, responsible grownups to go to the grocery store and ask for help finding “the cute toilet paper that, you know, sticks to the baby bear’s ass on TV.”
There’s a credit-card commercial where every image “smiles” at you through its shape if you look at it hard enough. Duh-hubby loves this commercial. He sits mesmerized by it, giggling at its cleverness.
“Get it? Every object is a smile. Like that car with the headlights and the grille? If you look close, it’s like the car is actually smiling at you!”
Precious Lord, where is the whip-smart man I married two decades ago? The one who once gave me a card with kittens romping in a flower-covered meadow on it with the message, “Dreams don’t come true”? I still laugh my ass off when I look at it. Where is the man who thought my ASK ME ABOUT MY EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA T-shirt was as funny as I did?
Vanity Fair
concluded that, “The move toward cuteness has come about partly because the idea of ‘edge’ has gotten old.” Apparently, and it grieves me to write this, Americans are tired of cynicism, sarcasm, and all the other isms and asms that basically keep me employed.
I don’t do cute. Edge I like. Cars with flower-shaped tail lights being driven by women old enough to know better? Not so much.
And get this: While I was pondering this horrifying pop-culture development, no fewer than three impossibly cute e-mails landed in my inbox. Which, by the way, I imagine to be a dark, cavelike place that smells of stale puns and bean dip. You know, the kind of place where there’s a stained VOTE FOR PEDRO T-shirt wadded up on the floor in the corner.
Two of these e-mails were accompanied by smiley flower “emoticons” that made me lightheaded with all their winking and tomfoolery. Which is the word of a curmudgeon, now that I think about it. An edgy curmudgeon. I don’t know how to make the winky face or the frown face or any of the despicable acts that grown adults force their punctuation keys to perform. Every morning when I check my e-mail, I must first be assaulted by a screen-sized emoticon before the mail is loaded. WTF? One has a lower case
d
and a lowercase
b
with the message “Listening to Music!” Another uses
m
’s and
o
’s to create a “Monkeyface!” Are you serious?
This morning’s e-mail included a dozen criminally cute photos of kittens sleeping on computers and curled up inside their own food bowls, as well as one of a baby asleep, facedown, inside his daddy’s large, and I’m guessing stinky, running shoe. The last photo was of a huge orange tabby cat asleep in a lasagna dish accompanied by a caption that asked earnestly “Have you ever been this tired?”
Tired enough to crawl into a Pyrex casserole dish or somebody’s nasty-behind shoe? Can’t say as I have. But my friend
Lisa will crawl into a Laundromat dryer if you buy her enough beer. What? Not cute enough?
Over on Facebook, one of my “friends” asked if I would please accept his gift of “one wet puppy nose!” To which all I can muster in reply is a world-weary, “Dude.”
Facebook is downright obsessed with cute, between its imaginary farm-building games and, just today, the insistence that we use our baby pictures as profile pictures. Sorry. It’s creepy seeing your boss naked in a kitchen sink circa 1958. And I don’t want to type in what color bra I’m wearing in my status update (but don’t tell the guys ’cause it’s fun to keep ’em guessing! Smiley face, smiley face, winking emoticon). What is this? Sixth grade?
But back to this crazy-ass notion that people are tired of edgy. This is scarier to me than a roomful of yard-sale Beanie Babies. This ghastly culture of cuteness, a massive group hug, if you will, could kill my career. And I believe we can all agree that this would signal the end of civilization as we know it because, in the immortal words of anchorman Ron Burgundy, “I’m kind of a big deal.”
OK, maybe not. But I do so love the snarky, the sneering, and the snotty. There’s simply no room for all these YouTube videos of laughing babies that you people keep forwarding to me. That little kid who squawks about how “Chah-wee bit my finger again”? Not funny. Ditto the little boy who’s still loopy from his trip to the dentist, which was sent to me by a friend who said, “This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Yep. Nothing says hilarious like videotaping your kid while he’s recovering from oral surgery. Maybe he can return the favor one day after your hemorrhoid operation. Payback’s a bitch, eh?
Clearly she has never seen Bon Qui Qui at Burger King. Now that’s some funny shit; Google it.
The cuteness craze is even taking over food. Cupcakes weren’t cute enough. Now there are miniature cupcakes topped with fluffy-wuffy icing and teeny-tiny décor-wations. Even the traditional wedding cake is being replaced by cupcake towers. Sure, they’re tasty enough, but you can’t really jam a cupcake into your spouse’s face in that weirdly aggressive reception ritual. For that, you need a giant, very un-cute wedge of cake. You want him to be picking red velvet crumbs out of his nose hairs for weeks. You can’t do that with a cupcake.
Of course I’m looking to blame somebody for all this and I have decided the whole thing is the fault of, you guessed it, the Japanese. Ever since they invented Hello Kitty, the world hasn’t been the same. You can safely chart the rise of The Culture of Cute ever since that flat-faced skank started showing up everywhere.
The first time I saw Hello Kitty was on a tour boat that was circling the Statue of Liberty. For some reason, I was the only non-Japanese person on the entire boat. And every single occupant of the boat, even the
men
, were wearing some article of clothing—purse, shirt, jewelry—with that mutant white head
on it. Creepy thing doesn’t even have a mouth. How do you get such a fat head if you can’t even eat? OK, I’ve overthinking it.
Stop the madness. Embrace the snark. Or, yes, I will come to your house, kill your puppies, and kick in the door of that stupid Lego car you drive that you insist is “so ugly it’s cute!”
News flash: It really is just ugly. What? That hurt your feelings? Oh, no! I’m sooooo sah-wee. Here, have a minicupcake and Mr. Snuggles the Bear to make it all better. Asshat.
BOOK: You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl
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