Let’s Call Her Barbie

On Being Insubordinate

On Being Insubordinate

1975

Stevie lies beside Simon in her bed. It’s late and she’s afraid her tossing and turning will wake him. Eventually, she slips out from beneath the covers and wanders into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Leaning against the stucco wall, she stares into the flames licking the bottom of the kettle. There are bags of chips and pretzels on the counter, bottles of Pepsi and 7 Up in the icebox, all preparations for the consciousness-raising meeting she’s hosting at her place the following night. Because of her job, Stevie’s starting to feel a little sheepish among this group of women.

Without Ruth at the helm, Barbie and her friends have lost their way. Now there’s a bunch of men running the show, and they’re out of step with the times. A lot of what Barbie stands for these days are things Stevie just can’t get behind. As predicted, as soon as Growing Up Skipper was released, she came under fire, and Stevie is horrified to even be associated with the doll.

The day after Lewis and Barcus introduced the team to Growing Up Skipper, Stevie went into Lewis’s office and shut the door. He was seated in his wingback chair, his feet up on the desk, ankles crossed. Expensive loafers. Three lines on his telephone wer e flashing red. He was something right out of central casting—Asshole Boss.

“I can’t design clothes for Growing Up Skipper.”

“Why not? Your workload too heavy?”

“Because”—she slapped her hands to her thighs—“it’s degrading to women. It’s humiliating. It’s just wrong.”

He smiled unkindly. “You wanna know what’s just wrong? Being insubordinate.” He leaned forward, waving his finger at her. “You women, you take everything so damn personally. Every little thing makes you burst into tears.”

“I’m not crying,” she informed him.

“Everybody’s out to get you, aren’t they?” He reached for his stapler, clamped hold of it like it was a hand grip and started firing off dead, spent staples. “The world is against you, well, boo-hoo. Poor little you. I’m sick and tired of all of you women complaining about how unfair the world is.” He shot off another round of staples.

“A doll like that is going to ruin the Barbie line.”

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion, young lady. Don’t think you’re irreplaceable around here. Remember, Jack’s not here to protect you anymore. Now, get this straight”—he started with his finger wagging again—“your job is to work on a doll that grows tits. And if you don’t wanna work on a doll that grows tits, then leave. There’s the door.” He gestured.

Stevie wanted to quit right then and there but lost her nerve, worried about how she’d pay her rent, her bills. She slinked back to her office, kept her head down and went back to work, feeling more like a robot than a designer.

Since then, Carol Spencer got lucky and was temporarily moved to boys’ toys to work on the new Big Jim project. But the other designers regularly huddle together outside of Mattel, going for coffee, sometimes drinks, far away from eavesdroppers, where they can openly complain about the men now running the Barbie team. They commiserate. They feel like hypocrites.

Stevie hasn’t been this conflicted about her job since the early days, when she first started and wondered what she was doing there. Now she’s come full circle— What have I gotten myself into? She’s starting to think she’s perpetuating the problem. She works on Barbie, a name as recognizable as Liberace or Charo. You say Barbie and everyone knows who you’re talking about. But what started as a great message for girls is now being turned inside out, and she blames the men at Mattel for that.

The teapot whistles and she pulls it off the flame before it wakes Simon. She’s in a trance, dunking a tea bag in the hot water, which is growing darker, murkier.

The next morning, she slaps the alarm clock off and rolls over. She drifts back asleep, only stirring when Simon asks if she’s okay. He’s already dressed, reaching for a tie, slinging it about his neck.

“I just didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“Again?” He pulls the wide end of his tie through the loop and, after tightening the knot, goes over and places his hand on her forehead. “You’re not warm.”

“I’m okay,” she says. “Just go ahead. I’ll drive myself later.”

After Simon leaves, she thinks about a meeting she has that afternoon with Lewis to discuss more Skipper outfits. How is she expected to go from that to hosting a consciousness-raising group? That’s when she contemplates something she’s never done before—calling in sick. Just the thought of not having to deal with Lewis and Barcus, with Puberty Barbie, as some have come to call her, would be such a relief.

But if she calls in sick once, she knows she can do it again and again, with diminishing guilt each time. She can already picture herself growing apathetic, and though it’s counterintuitive, she knows that doing anything half-assed is more exhausting than giving something your all. Once again, for the umpteenth time, Stevie entertains the thought of resigning but, again, talks herself out of it, doubting she’ll ever land a design job that’s half as lucrative as this one. Plus, she can’t imagine not working with Charlotte or Ruth and Elliot. A wave of nostalgia washes over her, remembering when she first held Barbie in Charlotte’s office, when she designed her first outfits and saw them on that television commercial. She’s studied Ruth through the years and her sense of determination has become ingrained in Stevie. It’s like a muscle that’s been worked and flexed and has grown more dominant through the years. She can’t give up on Barbie just like she can’t give up on Jack.

She pulls back the covers and prepares to bounce back. She’s not only going into work today. She decides she’s going to reverse course, turn this all around and call for the men in charge to discontinue the Growing Up Skipper just like they did the Allan doll. And Midge, too.

After getting showered and dressed, she arrives at Mattel and heads straight to Ruth’s office. Her argument to the men will be much stronger if she has Ruth’s support.

It used to be you had to go through Ruth’s secretary and try to get on her schedule within a reasonable amount of time. But now Ruth is accessible, humiliatingly so. When Stevie gets to Mahogany Row, Ruth’s secretary is away from her desk, but Ruth’s office door is open, just a crack. Stevie’s about to knock when Ruth looks up from her pink sofa and invites her in.

“Are you okay?” asks Stevie, closing the door behind her. Ruth seems brittle and frail. She looks older than fifty-nine. Her hair is as dull as her eyes. Her nail polish is chipped, her red lipstick bleeding into the lines around her mouth. There’s so much coming down on Ruth, Stevie shouldn’t be surprised to see her crack—but she tells herself it’s just that, a crack. She’s confident that Ruth will find a way to bounce back. She won’t be broken. Not ever.

“I’ll be fine,” says Ruth. “Eventually. More importantly”—she rearranges herself on the couch, patting the cushion, indicating that Stevie should sit down—“how are you? And how’s Jack?”

This second question takes Stevie by surprise. She sits down and shakes her head. She can’t keep track of Jack’s shifting moods. One day he’s hyped up about starting his own design group, the next he’s sobbing about being all washed up. One day he’s throwing a party, and then he turns around and kicks all the UCLA boys out of the Castle. He’s draining her patience, and she can only imagine how exhausted he must be. “Poor Jack,” says Stevie. “He’s a mess.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” Ruth lets out a sound, part whimper, part laugh. “He and I really screwed things up, didn’t we. We had a good thing going and we messed it up.”

There’s a long silence, and Stevie looks about Ruth’s office, at the shelves housing all the Barbies they’ve ever made, from the original Barbie #1 with her ponytail and chevron swimsuit to the Barbie with the bubble cut hairstyle…there’s Ken and Midge, Allan and Skipper, the Francie dolls, and Christie…there are Barbies that bend, that twist, that talk. Every Barbie and all her friends are present, all the way up to the newest Malibu Barbies. Stevie turns back to look at the woman who started it all and thinks it’s a strange legacy but a legacy nonetheless. Stevie wants the line to continue, which is why she explains her thoughts about discontinuing Growing Up Skipper and why she feels so strongly about it.

Ruth listens but is not really focused. She picks at her nail polish and then at a cuticle. When Stevie’s done speaking, all Ruth does is shake her head. “This isn’t the company that hired you. This isn’t the Mattel I created. And for that, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Ruth looks as if maybe it is. “We’ve worked together for a long time,” she says. Surprising them both, she reaches over and takes Stevie’s hand. “You’re smart and you’re talented.” She pumps her grip for emphasis. “Do what you need to do. Look out for yourself. Don’t go down with the ship.”

—

Later that day Patsy tells Stevie that Jack is missing. No one knows where he is. Stevie, fearing the worst, finally tracks him down in Las Vegas.

He’s at Caesar’s Palace with Zsa Zsa. That alone is concerning. Zsa Zsa loves spending Jack’s money, and there’s no better place to piss it all away than Vegas. Two days later he returns having lost about $8,000 at the tables, but at least he’s gained a wife. After dropping another $12,000 on a diamond ring, Jack is now the sixth Mr.Zsa Zsa Gabor.

“Why did you do that?” asks Stevie the day he returns. They’re in Jack’s office at the Castle. The shag carpeting is covered with contracts and all the royalty statements he’d pulled for his lawyers before jetting off to Vegas.

“Because I love her,” he says, kicking a pile of papers out of his way before joining her on the sofa.

“You do not love that woman.”

“Are you jealous?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Seriously, why did you marry her? A wife is not an impulse purchase.”

He laughs. His eyes look glassy but not tearful, just more unfocused than anything else. He’s drunk, or maybe high. Knowing Jack, it’s probably both. Not having the UCLA boys living there anymore hasn’t slowed him down a bit. And she knows he’s not taking his medicine.

“Schteevie!” Zsa Zsa is standing in the doorway, knuckles ground into her hips. She’s wearing a sheer lime-green negligee-like getup that only Zsa Zsa could get away with. “What is Schteevie doing here?”

“Relax,” says Jack. “She just came by for a visit.”

“It’s okay,” says Stevie, getting up. “I was just leaving anyway.”

“No, don’t go,” says Jack, taking her hand, pulling her back down onto the sofa.

“See, Jack?” says Zsa Zsa, pouring herself a drink. “ Schteevie was just leaving.”

“I really do have to go,” she says, getting back up. “Besides, I don’t want to disrupt the honeymoon.”

As she heads for the stairs, Stevie overhears Zsa Zsa laying into Jack. “I don’t want you to see that Schteevie ever again. You’re married to me now. You can’t have a mistress.”

“Jesus, she’s not my mistress. She has a boyfriend now. She’s my friend.”

“Well, I don’t want your friend in my house.”

“This is my house,” he tells her.

“Fine. If that’s the way you feel, I’ll stay at my house tonight.”

Stevie darts out the front door just as Zsa Zsa, in her negligee, gets into her Jaguar, nearly sideswiping Stevie’s car as she floors it, chewing up the lawn between the Castle and her place next door.

Stevie grips her steering wheel as tears cloud her vision and her head fills with pressure that can find no way out. Her friend is destroying himself and it’s tearing her apart. Such a waste. Jack is one of the most talented people she’s ever met. What happened to the guy who inspired everyone around him? Who brought energy and fun with him wherever he went? The guy everyone wanted to be around? Now he’s all alone. No UCLA boys to distract him. Even Zsa Zsa is gone. It’s just Jack and his Castle, surrounded by booze, pills and cocaine. And there’s not a damn thing she can do for him. She can’t babysit him, can’t keep watch on him twenty-four hours a day. Even if she cleared out his liquor cabinets, dumped all the booze and flushed the pills and all the cocaine, he knows how to get more. And he would.

There’s a silent scream firing off inside her head as fresh tears trundle down her cheeks and her chest squeezes so tight it hurts to breathe. Just when she thinks she can’t handle another second of this awful, heavy sinking, something else takes over. A new space starts to open up inside her chest. That was the worst of it —it can’t hurt any more than it just did—and as she’s working her way to the other side, she’s greeted by a certain clarity. It comes to her like a rescue. Stevie gets it now, and the conclusion she’s coming to is not the same as giving up. She just realizes that she can’t save Jack any more than she can save Ruth or Mattel. But she can still save herself.