The Second Act
The Second Act
1976
Ruth enters the conference room carrying the pink sample case that accompanied her on the flight from Los Angeles. Dressed in a royal blue Oscar de la Renta pantsuit with a camisole underneath, she stands before the Neiman Marcus decision-makers at their flagship store in Dallas. It’s been years since Ruth’s felt this kind of rush, has taken on this kind of challenge.
As she sizes up the room, her adrenaline amps up even more and she’s ready to knock their socks off. There’s the regional manager in his bolo tie, and next to him is the heavily sideburned district manager, and another man in bell-bottoms and platform shoes whose title she never caught. At the other end of the table sits the head buyer, a smartly dressed woman with a red scarf about her neck. She is next to the merchandise manager, another woman with long, frosted hair, who sits across from the lingerie specialist, who is also a woman.
After the introductions are made and handshakes and pleasantries are exchanged, it’s showtime. This idea has been years in th e making, and now here she is with the answer that so many women need to help them feel whole again.
There were a million reasons not to mass-produce Peyton’s prosthetic breasts, just as there had been a million reasons not to create Barbie. And yet, look at what Barbie has done for little girls the world over. It wasn’t easy, but Ruth will never regret how hard she fought to get Barbie made. Something that she invented has helped shape a whole new way of thinking about what girls can do, what girls can become. Because of Barbie, Ruth’s helped to reset the expectations and lift some of the limitations placed on young girls. And despite what the women’s liberation movement and the feminists have to say, Ruth will not apologize for any of it. She may have fallen short as a mother to her own children, but that doesn’t negate what she has accomplished. She’s proud and humbled to have played even a small role in helping to raise a generation of women to be stronger and more independent than the one that came before them.
It’s been twenty years since she started this journey, and those same little girls who once played with the original Barbie, the first doll she ever created, are now grown women, grown women who might have or might someday develop breast cancer. When Ruth and Barbie first came into their lives, they were young, and all possibilities lay before them. Back then they might have dreamed they’d fall in love someday, they’d marry and have children and that was just part of their story. They also might have dreamed—if Ruth got her way—they’d become doctors and lawyers, professors and chemists. They might have dreamed they’d grow up to be artists and dancers, musicians and singers. Maybe they’d wanted to pilot a jet airplane or circle the moon, or climb to the summit of Pikes Peak, watch the sunset in Machu Picchu. They had so many dreams back then, and none of them included developing cancer.
Two decades ago, Ruth knew what those girls wanted, and now, so many years later—and after her own experience—she also knows what these women need. As she unsnaps her sample case for Nearly Me, the prosthetic breasts she and Peyton created, Ruth turns a wide smile to the room. She has important work to do.