Headless in Pink
I wanted to be a horse girl, but I lived in a Barbie world. Then I found my last perfect Barbie sprawled on my bedroom floor, her head cruelly detached, staring blankly at the ceiling. My little sister and I had been assigned roles with precision. As though our parents, and even our very genes, conspired to keep our tastes and looks in neat, separate boxes. Pink had to be the favorite color of the firstborn girl, leaving purple for whoever came next. She, tall and fair, received equine grace. While I, short and dark, navigated the land of plastic perfection.
Don’t get me wrong, I adored Barbie, her smooth, cool body a natural fit in my small hands. The glossy sheen of her hair. The satisfying click of her limbs. In a home of limited means, each new toy, each tiny accessory, became a treasure beyond compare. We went on grand adventures, where cereal boxes morphed into cardboard skyscrapers and rows of pizza-saver tables furnished chic cafes. Cotton saved from the top of Flinstone’s vitamins stuffed Barbie’s dress for the occasional pregnancy. My imagination reared its head in a domestic cage while I longed for open plains.
Beneath the surface of every joyous addition to my collection existed a disconnect. My mind couldn’t reconcile the manicured model with the wild, untamed spirit I craved. A hollowness peered back from painted eyes. The allure didn’t lay in the endless add-ons or the immaculate plastic smiles of my dolls. It was the strength I imagined horses possessed. A yearning that Barbies, restricted to their high heels and pink wardrobes, wouldn’t fulfill.
Whenever I brushed Barbie’s synthetic hair, I pictured running my fingers through a pony’s rainbow mane. I’d think of the power and poise that my dolls could never manifest. My sister, oblivious to my envy, pranced with her herd. The sweet scent of berries and cotton candy signaled my exclusion. With their vibrant colors and whimsical cutie marks, the My Little Ponies embodied a magic that I could only dream of. They were off limits. I rarely got to handle them. My closest simulation of the pony aroma came from huffing a toy cupcake that transformed into Strawberry Shortcake. Another doll. Another girl. I was so tired of playing human. Of the smothering pink.
Watching my sister play, I could see the joy and contentment in her eyes. She seemed so at peace in her world of ponies, a peace that eluded me in my rosy realm. We enjoyed time together, too, like playing aliens. We stripped identical-except-for-the-color nightgowns off baby dolls to wear as hats, threading our hair through the arm and neck holes. I often wondered if she knew my frustration.
Despite the exclusivity of her pony domain, my younger sister had free reign in my Barbie world. Her cute, grimy hands were strong, and one by one, my Barbies suffered decapitation under her rough grip. Once a Barbie’s head popped off, putting it back on became nearly impossible. With my cherished crew all broken, I tried to mend their mutilated bodies, producing neckless monsters.
For days, I struggled with my thoughts, the headless Barbies haunting my every moment. Each time my sister paraded her ponies, a fresh wave of bitterness washed over me. The warped smiles of my mangled toys became a taunting reminder of my powerlessness, fueling a dark resolve within. I needed to balance the scales of toy justice.
In a covert mission of retribution, I gathered her beloved ponies and hauled them to the sandbox. There, with a pair of kitchen shears, I systematically beheaded each one. Every snip, an act of claiming my own kingdom, writing my own fate. A thrill coursed through me as the plastic yielded, a grotesque symphony of snapping and shearing. But with each separated head, guilt poisoned my insides. The triumph felt empty. I buried the severed heads in coarse sand, a monument to my twisted vengeance, followed by a deafening silence. The sandbox, once a place of innocence, turned into a desecrated grave. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the alarming reality of what I’d done.
The storm arrived with my sister’s anguished wail, raw and primal. As she unearthed the pony heads, a sickening mix of pleasure and dread churned in my gut. Through her tears, I saw betrayal and heartbreak, a mirror of my own pain. The satisfaction I sought dissolved, replaced by a heavy, suffocating shame. The accusations were swift and merciless, my justifications dissolving like cheap styrofoam in the face of grief. At that moment, I stopped being the Barbie girl. I was a fallen warrior queen, a ruler of a plastic wasteland, willing to wage war at all costs. Our world of dolls and decapitations, love and hate, stood a sharp portrayal of sisterhood’s fragile ecosystem.
In the wreckage of our playthings, my fingers traced seams along the sides of smooth, headless torsos, ghosts of the characters I used to command. Parodies of the dolls I’d loved. No liberation, only a deeper cage. Their blank stares held a terrible truth: freedom wasn’t found in revenge, but in embracing who I truly was, even if it wasn’t what anyone expected.
