| |  Illustration by Irene Feleo | I was the first of my friends to get pregnant, or, rather, the first of my friends to carry a pregnancy to term. My son was born when I was 24, and we lived in a valley full of Aspen trees outside of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Our studio cabin sat on a plateau within the largest elk-migration territory in North America. The sounds of their calls are burned into my memory. It was 2008; my fiancé and I voted for Obama and had a sense that the future was promising, even though we struggled to pay off debt and always kept a hawk-like eye on our checking-account balance. He had a well-paying construction job, and I stopped working to care for our newborn. We skied and made babies. I grew lettuce and bought into my first CSA to feed our family the right way. Then, everything changed. After the stock market crashed, my partner showed up for work, and the foreman offered everyone a beer, on a Monday morning. He wished them luck finding another job and said the owners would not finish building their vacation home anytime soon. They were on a flight to Europe to ride out the inevitable recession. We couldn’t make ends meet. I was home with our infant, and he couldn’t find consistent work. We weren’t alone — good jobs like his ended abruptly all across the country. We had no choice but to pack up and drive back to the East Coast, where we had family and friends who could provide a soft landing and help us get back on our feet. We moved in with his mom in northern New York. He worked for his uncle. I started a business. We were broke and missed Colorado. He drank more to mask what felt like a failure; I picked fights because I felt trapped. We had another baby and never got married. Eventually, our idyllic life crumbled. The house we lived in literally burned down and our relationship was over. Fast-forward ten years: I’m a single mom, I own a house, and I’ve started two businesses. He built a beautiful home, married a gal, and lives down the street. We get along pretty well, and our kids are the kind who trick people into having their own. Then came Trump and the urgency of flipping the House in 2018. My profile, though nontraditional in terms of a congressional candidate, was exactly the kind that could challenge a Washington insider with tenuous ties to our district in New York’s North Country reigon. New York’s 21st district went with Obama twice before swinging Trump. It’s an outsider’s district and exactly the kind of rural area where people voted for Bernie in the primary and then Trump out of spite. Voters from all parties were sick of feeling silenced, tired of being ignored, and extremely weary of the Establishment. As an outsider candidate, I’m taking on the machinery of both parties. I am not the kind of person who is supposed to run for Congress. I don’t have the money, the résumé, or the connections. And that’s exactly why I’m running. I understand the struggles my neighbors face: long winters and massive heating bills; a seasonal economy with seasonal work; a lack of quality, affordable housing; the high cost of good child care; and a terrible local transportation infrastructure. Rural life is hard, and it’s expensive being poor. I know what a $23 balance in my checking account feels like and how much those overdraft fees really cost. I’m a working mother who qualifies for food stamps and heat assistance; my health-care plan is Medicaid. I wake up and field a storm of headlines and messages, to-dos and meetings — but first I have to get my kids fed and out the door. I have to remember hats, gloves, sneakers, water bottles, and notes for after-school programs and field trips. I have to raise money for my campaign around basketball practice, Girl Scouts, snow days, and birthday parties. I show up to events with Legos and slime in my purse, and I can hardly find the Twitter app on my phone because it’s camouflaged by unicorns, puppies, and Minecraft. Most people in my community, especially young parents and business owners, support my effort to run as a working-class mother. Their help is invaluable; they recognize that I’m here to represent the masses of people who feel left out of our legislative process and are too busy surviving to participate at a state or federal level. But I field a lot of judgment and criticism as well. A few women have even insisted I can’t claim to be a single mother since my kids’ dad is still in the picture. To them, I’m not “single-mom enough,” even though I don’t receive child support and constantly struggle to provide, without an extra set of hands on deck. The comments are brutal (and the worst are from other women), but I get it. What I’m doing challenges everything we’ve been told about how this process works and who is qualified. It challenges class and gender roles, perceptions and assumptions. For hundreds of years, only certain people have been accepted into the legislative fold and young women have been hugely underestimated, and change is pain. But I have more conviction than ever. Sometimes things happen in such a way that you cannot deny they are happening for a reason, that the universe somehow supports you. This is exactly that kind of experience. Every time things get tough and I start to wonder what the hell I’m doing, something unexpectedly opens up as if to signal I can’t give up yet. I’m running to carve out a better future for my children; I’m fighting for a world in which people’s basic needs are being met. Only then can we achieve lasting and widespread social justice. This is hard, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it when I see a seven-year-old girl at the Women’s March holding a sign that says “I Can Be President.” It’s beyond inspiring when a young mom asks me for a selfie before dashing home to get her son up from a nap, or when an elderly man walks across the street to tell me he’s voting for me because he can tell I’ll fight for him. And I know I’m on the right track when my nine-year-old says he wants to be just like me when he grows up. I guess there’s a first time for everything after all. Katie Wilson is an outspoken small-business owner, local community organizer, and single mother born and raised in the North Country, where she is running for Congress to represent the people of NY-21. (The primary is June 26; the general election is November 6.) | | | | |  Illustration by Meredith Miotke | Martha Gellhorn was the first woman ever to achieve an international reputation as a war correspondent, a tall order in what was then — and still is — predominantly a man’s world. She came of age as the twentieth century did, reporting on virtually every major world conflict in her 60-year career, and Martha changed the face of journalism along the way. She was born wanting to “go everywhere, and see everything,” and to write about it. In 1930, and just after her 21st birthday, she dropped out of Bryn Mawr for a job as a cub reporter for the Times Union in Albany. Martha covered women’s clubs, the police beat, and occasionally the morgue. The only female reporter on staff, she felt uneasy in the loud, boozy newsroom, and she often had to fend off the sexual advances of her editor. She stayed until the same lecherous editor told her to drop a story she deeply wanted to do. The piece was about a woman who’d unfairly lost custody of her children, because of a local judge who was punishing her for her life choices — working as a waitress, smoking, playing bridge. In that mother, Martha recognized an underdog who needed her voice. But she couldn’t use that voice, or her conscience. Not in Albany, anyway. Martha wanted to be a serious writer and to be taken seriously, but the only articles she sold easily over the next few years were on fashion or the “woman’s angle” for American magazines she had little respect for. It wasn’t until she took a job with the Federal Relief Administration, documenting stories of the disintegrating towns and dispossessed families most beaten by the Depression, that her conscience, intelligence, and skill found a worthy target. She parlayed what she’d seen into a much-lauded book, The Trouble I’ve Seen, which made her the literary sensation of 1936. Not long after, she met her literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, by chance in a Key West bar. When she learned he was traveling to Madrid soon to report on the Spanish Civil War, she was determined to go as well. She had no formal assignment, but a few months later, in the spring of 1937, she crossed over the border from France into Spain alone, carrying only a knapsack; a fraudulent letter stating her credentials, which she’d begged from an editor friend in New York; and $50 rolled and tucked into her boot. Besieged Madrid was in its fifth month of bombardment. There, as the smell of explosives hung in the air, she began to write what she saw: of boys in pieces in makeshift hospitals and women in bread lines, of children walking to school through trails of blood and civilians living their lives bravely, even as their city fell to its knees. She wrote simply, and personally, convinced from the very beginning that if you cared about something enough, you could persuade others of its necessity. Enough with “all that objectivity shit.” She’d never believed it anyway. The pieces Collier’s Magazine published from Martha’s time in Spain not only defined her voice and style but also radically changed how conflict was seen and reported. Instead of focusing on the usual subjects of war — tactics, generals, arsenals, artillery — Martha looked at the people, and she would continue to do so over the next several years, as nations tumbled toward World War II. She became Hemingway’s third wife and then his adversary, as he grew more and more frustrated by her ambition. The marriage reached its breaking point in 1944, when Hemingway, in retaliation for Martha’s choosing her work over him, offered his byline to Collier’s as senior correspondent for D-Day, effectively replacing her on the masthead. It wasn’t just Hemingway thwarting Martha’s determination. Of the thousands of reporters around world covering the war, only 178 were women, and none of them had access to the front lines, because the military wouldn’t accredit women. Relying on her wits and her nerve, Martha stowed away on a hospital barge that happened to be the first to arrive at Omaha Beach. She went ashore as a stretcher bearer to help recover the wounded. She ended up scooping her husband, who never made it to shore at Normandy, as well as being the only woman on the scene. Afterward, when she was arrested and stripped of all credentials, Martha ditched her passport and charmed her way into mobile regiments, tagging along in Jeeps and sleeping in fields. When she ran into trouble, she lied, cajoled, and talked fast, inventing boyfriends she had to see “one last time.” She was one of the first journalists on hand when American soldiers liberated Dachau in May of 1945. What she witnessed there broke something essential in her, she would later say, stealing her optimism and hope for mankind. But no matter how hard the world was to observe, Martha’s eyes stayed open. When she reported on Vietnam in the 1960s, one photographer complained, “For Chrissake, here we go again … Why do women always have to look for orphanages?” She wanted to do a book on Vietnam that would mirror the structure of The Trouble I’ve Seen, but she couldn’t get a visa back into the country, possibly because she was “too emotional,” angry, and contentious. “This is how Women’s Lib was born,” she railed to a friend when she saw other journalists — all men, and most without her experience — gain access to Southeast Asia while she was relegated to the sidelines. Martha never wanted to be seen as a mascot for feminism, only to do her work. Today’s women at the front, like Christiane Amanpour, Marie Colvin, Jacky Rowland, and Maggie O’Kane, feel similarly. In a Vanity Fair profile from 2012, Amanpour and her colleagues took pains to insist they be regarded “as reporters, not women reporters,” and of course all have the war stories to drive the point home. In Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Sarajevo, these reporters have shown they have heaping supplies of Martha’s courage and grace under fire. A good thing, too, since they face many of the same challenges she did — 70 years and counting after she paved the way — in what is still very much a man’s world. While it’s a tricky thing to say that a woman sees war differently than a man, it’s no accident that Amanpour and her colleagues idolize Martha’s unmistakable contribution to journalism and essentially do what she did first, looking past the bombs and shell litter to see the people. It’s no coincidence, either, that today’s very small band of female war correspondents rely on some of the same tactics Martha pioneered. Maggie O’Kane, formerly of The Guardian, admits to equipping herself with readily deployed lies and fake “embarrassingly erotic” letters to make it past security checkpoints. Martha continued to write until her eyes failed and to take herself into places of war and conflict until her body gave out. In 1990, when she couldn’t get access otherwise, she smuggled herself into Panama, undercover, as the thriller reviewer for the Daily Telegraph. She had been snorkeling alone in Belize when the story broke that America had invaded in late 1989, and she asked an editor friend to pen a false letter saying she was there on official business as a special correspondent. It was the same kind of letter — exactly — that she’d begged a friend to give her 50 years before to get her over to Spain. Martha was 81 years old then, but you can bet she got her story. Paula McLain is the New York Times best-selling author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun. Her new novel, Love and Ruin, is out now. | | | | |  Illustration by Ghazaleh Rastgar | TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
Happy birthday, Taurus, my favorite sign of the zodiac (don’t tell the others). This month, pay attention to any and all purple flowers. They are a present for you, a totem to tether you in this moment and let you know you don’t have to worry about any other shit. You can put some purple flowers in your house, but better yet is just to spot them growing on a bush or in a painting, on TV, or in a pop-up ad. GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20)
In America, we love to want things because wanting provides us with the dream of filling the empty spaces, of finally becoming a whole person. But wholeness and the way we frame it as something to be purchased, achieved, or obtained can be damaging to our experience of the perfectly imperfect. This month, try to savor all the cracks. CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
Vampires exist. Haven’t you ever met someone who is only looking out for what they can get? Zombies exist. A lot of them work in offices and say things like “Let’s unpack this” and “This changes everything.” If you were a spooky creature, what would you be? Do you like this quality about yourself? LEO
(July 23 to August 22)
Sometimes we ignore our disappointments in love, career, or life in general because we don’t want to let them affect us. It’s like, “If I don’t acknowledge the impact this has on me, then it isn’t happening.” This month, go deep into what disappoints you and really mourn those losses. You can do this by writing a letter to God, the universe, or even the passing of time about how angry you are. Don’t worry, the universe can take it. VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22)
A few years ago, I channeled all my anxiety into buying crystals. I kept purchasing more and more, feeling like if I could just get the right one or arrange them in the perfect way, then something good (I’m not sure what) would happen. We love to buy stuff for the magic potentiality of it, but when we get it home, it usually just becomes more crap. This month, avoid assigning magical qualities to any objects. Focus on the freedom of obtaining nothing. LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22)
OK, Libra, we’re going to get a little woo-woo. If you haven’t already figured it out, miracles totally do happen. But the place where faith in miracles comes from is not your mind, or even your heart, but your gut. This month, strengthen your core by aligning yourself with the third chakra — as symbolized by the color yellow. Wear yellow clothing, get a yellow mani, and eat squash, bananas, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. That shit is still delicious. SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21)
This month, don’t worry about what is going to last. In fact, focus on the opposite. Dig deeper into what is here now, and how every ephemeral moment is, in its way, eternal, simply because it has happened. SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21)
Remember the first time your parents let you do new shit alone, like explore a new city, stay home by yourself, or drive somewhere with just a friend? It would be cool if life was still like that sometimes. How can you make life feel like that? What’s the difference between the first time and now? CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19)
Happiness is such an elusive thing because of the ideas we are sold on: just one more accomplishment, one more relationship, and we will be happy. This drive is mostly a set-up made to sell things, but it plugs into something fundamental in the human spirit. We do enjoy longing for things, perhaps as much as, if not more than, the actual acquiring. This month, allow yourself to really revel in the experience of wanting. AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18)
If you don’t feel like smiling, do not feel pressured to smile. In fact, all this month, notice how often you do things out of a feeling that you should be doing them, rather than an inward desire. Ask yourself: How many of those performances are necessary? PISCES
(February 19 to March 20)
There is an old adage that says “When you feel far from God, ask yourself who moved.” This is totally applicable for agnostics and atheists, and in fact, I prefer it as “When you feel far from your highest self, ask yourself who moved.” ARIES
(March 21 to April 19)
This month, relieve yourself of the notion that people care whether or not you know the answer. Invest in the idea that people actually enjoy teaching you. No one expects you to know everything. An openness to new knowledge is actually sexier than having it all figured out. Melissa Broder is the author of the novel The Pisces (Hogarth), out now!; four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House 2016); and So Sad Today, a book of essays from Grand Central. | | | | |  Illustration by Lucy Engelman | On the morning of my first day at my new job, I woke up nervous but excited. Anxious about being late, I quickly donned the outfit I’d chosen the night before, a black shirtdress that tied at the waist and fell just below the knee, work appropriate but also somewhat nondescript. I wanted to make a good first impression but not draw too much attention to myself while I got the lay of the land at my new office. I had always been partial to dresses for work, because they solve the outfit problem with one garment. But as my first week of work unfolded, I began to suspect dresses would not be the workwear staple they had been for me in the past. My company, I soon found out, was a boys' club. It was run by two college buddies, and the frat-house feel was still in full effect. If you were a white man who played sports in college, there was a good chance you would eventually be promoted to VP. If you didn’t fit this description, you might as well have been invisible. Women, even those who had “Senior” or “Manager” attached to their title, were treated like secretaries. This culture was odd to me, because I had been working in product development for various textile producers my entire adult life and had come to believe it was a field dominated by women. I was used to offices where I chatted with my coworkers about Rihanna, wedding plans, and fashion, and no one was concerned that showing interest in such topics could be a liability. At my new job, however, I quickly realized I was in uncharted territory when the VP of my department called me into his office and asked me if my husband (not me) would be interested in joining him and other VPs on a hunting trip. It wasn’t just the hunting trip; there were so many unsubtle ways I was reminded that I wasn’t part of the power structure. I once had a VP laugh and say to me, “Why do we even bother hiring women?” My boss once told me to “just sit there and look pretty” in a meeting. I had to buy a Secret Santa gift for a director who listed his “favorite activity” on the gift-exchange questionnaire as “watching my wife cook and clean.” This is to say nothing of the complete lack of female representation in company leadership, executive lunch meetings at Hooters, and the daily grind of casually sexist comments such as describing certain cars as “girly” and making jokes about domestic violence. Though I didn’t realize it consciously at the time, I started instinctively searching for structured jackets to wear to the office, garments that would cover my body more adequately, make me less soft, less vulnerable, less “womanly.” I had a nice collection of high heels that I had acquired over the years, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear any of them. I was also loath to don anything too tight or form-fitting. I did everything I could to downplay my sexuality, for fear that I would be seen as weak or, worse, invite inappropriate comments or leering. By contrast, in previous jobs, clothing had been a source of joy, a way of bonding with my coworkers. Noticing and complimenting each other’s outfits was a method of giving and receiving validation, which often led to longer conversations and sparked friendships. *** I was raised a feminist. My mother had a well-worn copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves on our bookshelf growing up and a bumper sticker that read “Tip Over Patriarchy.” But I had always cherished traditionally feminine signifiers. I believed I should be able to wear as many pink floral frocks as I wanted and still be taken seriously. I spent a large portion of my early twenties making my own clothes, seeing it as a form of self-expression, and I started working in textiles precisely because of my interest in clothing. But at this new job, I suddenly felt the essence of my identity, my femaleness, was under constant scrutiny. I had to temper my voice, my topics of conversation, every aspect of my appearance — to be less obviously female. At the same time, I had to become more fierce — repeating myself in meetings to overcome constant interruption, defending personal boundaries on a daily basis. One VP would routinely stop by my desk to chat, offering unsolicited, long-winded opinions on hot topics like “microaggressions” (he didn’t believe they were real, he informed me). My boss once slapped a 24-year-old female coworker on the ass right in front of me. It was like a living diorama of unexamined white male privilege, which would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so depressingly real. I came to realize that while women had it bad, and women of color had it the worst (when they were even hired, which was rare), it wasn’t a healthy environment for anyone. These men were not happy; they were tense, unsmiling, red-faced, and bloated from being perpetually hungover. There was no reasoned conversation or collaborative exchange of ideas. Men shouted each other down and worked to undermine each other both overtly and in more underhanded ways, and then women were expected to quietly execute the commands of whoever had emerged as the alpha. I had always thought the days when women wore big shoulder pads to work in order to look more masculine and be taken seriously, à la Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, were so passé. But when I was thrust into this environment, I began to wish I owned a power suit. I began to understand that clothing could be more than just an expression of personal style; it could be armor. More than anything, I fell into a confusion about what to wear, knowing that whether I dressed up or dressed down, I would still be afforded roughly the same significance as a neglected plant nestled in the corner of a conference room. I noticed other women in the office suffering from this same confusion, swinging wildly between looking overdressed and like they had given up. With #MeToo and Donald Trump’s administration shining a spotlight on the hostility that women still face, it’s no surprise that power suits are back in fashion. It’s as if women are searching for a magical garment that will somehow grant them the power they lack in their everyday lives. I have moved on to a new job, and I no longer feel like I’m prepping for battle while getting dressed in the morning. Clothing choices seem easier to make when I’m not straining to defend my identity and autonomy on a daily basis. I am, however, more wary of being perceived as vulnerable. I’ll offset overtly girly items with more masculine pieces: high heels with a blazer, a pencil skirt with a top that’s more boxy and boyish. Most of the time I opt for a slightly androgynous uniform that involves some variation on a button-down shirt, black pants, and a flat shoe. I guess you could say it’s my version of a power suit. It might be boring, but it accomplishes what I need it to accomplish. And if this experience taught me anything, it’s that no matter how “empowered” I believe myself to be, there’s still so much work to be done. A.K. Watts is working on a novel about a family’s search for meaning in the aftermath of a communal living experiment in the 1970s. | | | | |  Illustration by Sarula Bao | I didn’t like Barbie when I was a little girl — OK, to be honest, I hated her. I had no interest in styling Barbie’s hair or finding the perfect dress for her to wear. And my sister’s Barbie styling head, which was just a big Barbie head that she put makeup on, creeped me the hell out. So to find myself talking Barbies with Kim Culmone, vice president of Barbie design at Mattel, felt somewhat odd, even though I’d initiated the call. I really wanted to talk to Culmone after watching Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie, a documentary that is now airing on Hulu. Culmone is a central figure in the film, and I had no idea I would have so much in common with someone who is so close to Barbie and plays such an instrumental role in the doll’s life. (I know Barbie isn’t a real person, but she is about as real as an inanimate object can be to lots of people.) Directed by Oscar-nominated documentarian Andrea Nevins, the film charts the history of Barbie since the doll’s launch in 1959 and features commentary from feminists like Roxane Gay and Gloria Steinem. But most notably and remarkably, the movie follows Culmone as she leads a redesign of Barbie’s body, culminating in the introduction of three new body types — curvy, tall, and petite — to the brand’s Fashionista Barbie line, marking a long-called-for evolution in how the brand portrays women. Culmone is part of a Mattel design team that has brought other needed changes to Barbie in recent years, introducing dolls with different skin tones and eye colors and facial sculpts. Barbie is starting to look like more of us, and it’s about time. *** When she was a kid, Culmone, who is from New Orleans, loved playing with her Barbie dolls. An only child, she spent hours using her imagination to make up stories for her Barbies, who often played journalists and took a lot of vacations. “That is the key to Barbie. Barbie is a tool for storytelling, and we know that especially for girls,” says Culmone, noting that little boys play with Barbie, too. “Almost what you might call being a director of a scene is one of the primary patterns that girls play out with dolls. It’s deeply personal and can be an emotional process.” In Tiny Shoulders, we get to the root of why Barbie became such a sensation in the toy world. Created by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handel, Barbie was the first adult doll to be mass-produced for kids. Prior to Barbie, little girls played mostly with baby dolls, and the emphasis was on learning how to feed, bathe, and care for babies. But Barbie was an adult and offered children the opportunity to envision the future they saw for themselves through their play with her, and that appeal has continued throughout the decades. Culmone says playing with Barbie made her feel grown-up and in control. The doll also sparked her creativity. She was obsessed with perfecting Barbie’s environment. “I spent a lot of time setting up the Barbie Dreamhouse and setting up scenes and making things to fill in the gaps for the things that weren’t there, cutting out little pieces of paper and making tiny magazines for Barbie to put in a suitcase and take with her on a trip,” says Culmone, who, as an adult, still loves magazines and always has a stack next to her bed. She also stocks up on them at the airport when she travels and thinks lugging them on trips could be contributing to her back issues. After studying interior design at Louisiana State University and textile design at Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, Culmone began her career at Mattel as a temp in the textile department in 1998, and she worked in various areas of the company, including licensing, before taking on her current role. She is a true believer in the Barbie brand and even wears a necklace with the Barbie logo on it most days. That said, Culmone understands why Barbie is both a beloved and controversial figure. For years, many criticized Barbie’s ridiculously unrealistic body — her proportions don’t exist in reality. And the criticism has intensified in recent years as the concept of body positivity has made its way into the public consciousness, mostly through the Internet and social media, as Andi Zeisler, co-founder of Bitch Media, points out in the film. There is a scene in Tiny Shoulders in which Culmone acknowledges that the powers-that-be at Mattel resisted making substantive changes to Barbie’s physique for years and says that refusal to budge for so long gnawed at her. While in the midst of the intensive redesign process that finally gets underway, Culmone says, “It’s so important, and to me, we’re late. We should have done this a long time ago.” “Like a lot of human beings, I grew up with my own body-image issues, and I absolutely know how it feels to stop doing things you like as a kid because you’re uncomfortable in your own body,” she tells me. “If a kid sees themselves in Barbie, specifically their own body type, and that builds their confidence, I couldn’t be happier.” Beyond finding Culmone’s own body issues relatable, I was also surprised — and delighted — to learn that, like me, Culmone is married to a woman and has long been an activist in the fight for marriage equality. “I think it’s important for people to be visible at whatever comfort level they have,” she says of the decision to talk about her personal life in Tiny Shoulders. “The things that make us different in life and the challenges that we as a population had to secure marriage equality informed our lens in life. It has built an empathy in me for marginalized populations.” You can see that empathy in the diverse team Culmone has built and how hard she has worked to make all kinds of children see themselves in Barbie more clearly. *** As a kid, part of the reason I resented Barbie so much was because I was judged for not being into the “girly” things — the makeup, the dresses, and the high heels — that made my sister love playing with her Barbie dolls. When I began reflecting on my history with Barbie after watching Tiny Shoulders and talking to Culmone, I realized that I was judging my sister for liking those girly things — sorry, Lisa! — as much as I was being judged by others for liking the things I liked. So much judging. Perhaps Mattel will be inspired to design a special Judgmental Barbie based on me. At the same time, I think it’s wonderful that we now live in a world where Barbie is not so unrelentingly femme. In what has been the most monumental advancement in Barbie design to me, Culmone and her team created a Barbie with flat feet a few years ago, freeing the doll from the tyranny of always having to wear high heels. If Mattel sold a Barbie back in the day who could actually wear high-top sneakers, like I did when I was eight years old, you know what? I might have been a Barbie girl. Christine Champagne is a New York City–based writer who has written for vanityfair.com, Variety, Fast Company, and other places. You can follow her on Twitter @itsthechampagne. | | | | | | | | |
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