Barbie, Caring A LOT About Blonde Champagne

Apparently, I am overqualified to be Barbie.

I just got off the phone with the agency which booked me for Wal-Mart’s “Barbie Cares” promotion:  The marketing people at Mattel done have themselves a Google bookmark, and Googled their way to me.

And fired me.

This is outstanding day job stuff. Okay, I’ve been fired before?  But not prior to actually showing up to the job.  That is second-to-none motivational speech fodder.  What’s that you say, there’s a Para-Olympian with no head and eight gold medals making the rounds?  Well, I was rejected as Barbie before I even inserted her rhinestone-on-a-stick earrings into the sides of my head.

“Mattel doesn’t want someone who thinks about them like that working for them,” I was told.  The person I talked to admitted that she hadn’t read the post in question, but “apparently it was pretty nasty.”  What?  Come on, what?  Was it the “racist and lookist and sexist” part?  The sentence in which I described the giveaway as “Bag O’ Plastic Crap”?  Or the one in which I described the costume as “last seen wadded up in a corner of Liberace’s closet, rejected as ‘too out there’?” I don’t understand this!  I just don’t understand it at all!

I’m assuming this means that due to the worldwide Live Barbie Shortage Crisis (the past two days have been rife with pleading agency emails from three different states, still trying to find fellow sufficiently blonde, Caucasian, low-bank-account females) that I won’t be replaced, which also means that the bulk of the brand ambassadors and assistants also needed for this gig have been fired right along with me, and that sucks.  Hooray for the local economy of Culpeper, Virginia!  If the training manual I was emailed last week (there was a training manual to be Barbie, people) was any indication, it looks as if I will be replaced by a lifesize Barbie cardboard cutout to stand next to the donation “mailbox”, which, I must admit, is probably far better at mental addition than I am.  Slightly thinner, too, but I bet my rack is way better.

It also sucks because there was supposed to be a “Barbie Handler” on site whose secondary existence was to hold my bag, escort me in and out of the glamorous changing room-slash-Wal-Mart bathroom, remain close to my beck and call, and keep me happy and fabulous.  I was strictly forbidden from helping to set up or break down the event area, thereby literally making it my job to avoid actual work.  I was meant to do this.

The training manual stressed that, as Barbie, I was to be cared for and kept looking “spectacular” at all times; best of all, it also directed that “Barbie should never have to deal with difficult guests.”  I was so looking forward to applying this to every single aspect of my life.  “Barbie should never have to explain your F+ for the semester to you.” “Barbie should never have to flush her own toilet.”   “Barbie should never have to age as a mortal human might.”

To be honest, the thought crossed my mind that this might happen when I wrote that post, but you know what I batted it down with?  The on-its-heels realization that I’m a mega-obscure thirty-one year old freelance writer nobody cares about, outside of the people familially and legally contracted to care about me.  Who’s gonna see this little post, which, I now see, was clearly put in place to bring shame and destruction upon the heads of Mattel?

This, then, is awesome.  My readership is way bigger than I originally thought.  I can move multinational corporations.  BEWARE THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF AN ENGLISH MAJOR WHO VERY OFTEN ENTERS THE INCORRECT PUBLIC RESTROOM.  First the Mormons!  Now, the Jet To Yacht Playset!  A pox upon your Dream House, Mattel!

Man, I better start watching my step here.  If they found me before, what are they going to do after reading this post?  For I am a marked woman.  Roving bands of Skippers– Skipper always has to do Barbie’s dirty work– are probably speeding down the Beltway as I type.  Terrifying, quick hang-up calls will be coming from inside the Dream House.  In the coming days, I will catch brief, menacing glimpses of pink out of the corner of my eye, but as soon as I turn my head, there’ll be nobody there.  I’ll have to start checking the BrideMobile for plastic packages wired to the undercarriage– plastic, fully accessorized, and blinking ominously.

Well, kids, it’s (at least, for now) America.  I have the right to type in self-mockery and continue my impassioned crusade against being kicked by children; Mattel has the right to fire me; and I in turn have the right to get hammered and stagger through the Pink Aisle at Toys R Us, hollering, “IT’SHA COMMUNISHHHT PLLOOOT!  KEN’S A FAAACCSSHIST, AN’ HE CHEATED ON BARBIE IN MALIBU!”

Either way, I know who’s going to be having more fun on Saturday.

Extreme Irony mode ON at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

tip the bartender

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