Polish Communist Barbie

In Poland in the mid-1980s, every little girl coveted a barbie doll, or rather, the Barbie-doll equivalent available behind the Iron Curtain—the Dutch Sindy Doll called Fleur. Fleur was a fashion doll like Barbie, with bendable legs and flexible rubber arms, but her breasts were shaped like pyramids, and her disproportionately large head had Japanese anime-like eyes bordered with “real” stiff lashes. For us, both dolls, like jeans and chewing gum, represented one thing: the West, synonymous with freedom from censorship, poverty, and Soviet oppression. Paradoxically, since we all wanted Fleur, the common desire for the doll made us equal, and those who had them, shared them with friends letting others play with it and even lending it to take home for a week, in a truly socialist way. At the same time, it gave us a taste of Western lifestyle, the illusion that we were the same as all the little girls in America or Western Europe.

I kept asking my parents to get me a Fleur doll for several years and experienced terrible disappointment on a couple of birthdays. My need became more urgent once my younger sister received one on her First Communion from her godfather, who worked as a customs officer and had access to confiscated smuggled goods and money, possibly even American dollars, from bribes. Fleur dolls were only available in a chain of stores called Pewex, which carried Western and export-destined domestic products such as canned Krakus Ham, which were unavailable in the country, and had to be paid for with American dollars or special bank cheques purchased with foreign currency. American dollars, officially illegal, could be procured on the black market. (When in the early 1990s we emigrated to Canada and could only afford to shop in the second-hand store Goodwill, my mother took to calling it Pewex. This ironic inversion made us feel superior about our sense of humour and emotional detachment from our precarious economic situation.)

I was thrilled when on my tenth birthday my father took me to Pewex in Warsaw and let me pick a doll of my choice. Later he told my mother, laughing, that I had chosen the most expensive one in the store, thus confirming I had excellent taste. I drew a picture of my new Fleur doll in my diary, which I still have. She had a long brown ponytail, a complex, multi-layered winter outfit in shades of blue, a toddler child, and a little pastel blue sled. She was beautiful and I loved her as much, if not more, than the Barbie I later received from a family in Utah, who sent us care packages with hygiene products, candy bars, Crayola crayons, and clothes, through a church-mediated international help program.

Although I was aware the dolls had breasts and slim waists, I never thought of their shape any more than that of my other dolls—the main attraction of their bodies was that I could pose their legs. The bendable legs were an asset when, behind the closed door of the bedroom I shared with my sister, my friend and I played sex with our dolls in the only position we knew—missionary. My sister was banned from joining us, because I considered her too young and a potential tattletale. The Fleurs’ husbands were strange dolls my friend had received from an aunt from America. These dolls, with long rainbow hair and heavy multicolour makeup, had small breasts and looked like Glam Rock singers. (I was recently able to identify them as the Jem dolls produced by Hasbro in the mid-1980s). They were very glamorous trans-men lovers of our Fleurs, which we didn’t realize back then, but it was perfectly acceptable and natural to us, amazingly ahead of the times. The consequence of sex between crotchless gender-fluid dolls was the opposite of Polish Catholic sex; it would not result in five or more children and, in fact, there often were none, since miniature baby dolls for Barbie or Fleur were almost impossible to buy. Their replacements were always too big—giant babies difficult for our dolls to pick up and carry, and terrifying to give birth to. They were symbolic of how painful it was for our mothers to birth babies in hospitals lacking anesthetic, and how challenging to raise and feed large broods of children on ration cards for products perpetually missing from store shelves.

Being able to change our dolls’ clothes repeatedly had a peculiar magic, because we did not own a lot of clothes ourselves. We wore the same outfits for a week, including underwear and socks. We kept a select few for “special occasions” such as holidays, birthdays, and name days, and which became too small before we enjoyed them enough. (I still struggle with the habit of saving clothes and art supplies for later. After my mother died three years ago, I had to empty her closet filled with brand-new clothes and shoes she stored for special occasions and her rare trips back to Poland.) When I was eleven, my grandfather died, we inherited his socks to wear. I was a schoolgirl who wore old man’s drab-coloured argyle, checks, and diamond-patterned nylon socks. So dressing and undressing our dolls’ made is possible for us to imagine what it was like to have a lot of colorful, beautiful outfits. Of course, our doll clothes were made by our mothers, who all had some sewing skills, as fabric was more available than clothes, and they had to make them for their ever-growing families. In my mother’s case the sewing abilities were rudimentary, limited to making alterations to various hand-me-downs. My grandmother did the more complicated sewing, including our first communion dresses. My Fleur doll clothes were often birthday gifts from my best friend, whose mother had friends in West Germany who sent her Burda Magazines with sewing patterns and fashion pictures, and who made doll clothes with detail and skill that I didn’t fully appreciate until I became a doll collector in my adult life.

It never occurred to me to think that dolls like Barbie or Fleur had a toxic influence on young girls’ body image, leading to various insecurities and eating disorders. I never longed to look like them nor did I feel badly about the way I appeared in comparison. When I heard, as an adult, how feminist mothers refused to buy their daughters Barbies, I was as shocked as when I found it that some girls mutilated their Barbies, cut their hair, and drew on them with markers. My dolls were so precious I was afraid to brush their hair so it wouldn’t get matted! I have wondered why I wasn’t negatively affected by my Barbie, or Fleur for that matter, and I think it might have to do with the kind of mother I had and my social environment. The world of my childhood did not have any commercials on the only two, government-controlled TV channels. I did not even know commercials existed. There were no fashion magazines, just women’s magazines that included advice on how to make clothes and take care of the house, with very few ads. Most women I knew did not shave or wear antiperspirant. I remember the dark hair squashed under white stockings on the deliciously rounded calves of my homeroom teacher, somehow erotic and animalistic, and how it gave me a strange thrill I had not yet recognized. One of the popular Polish Disco songs during my childhood was about Fa soap, in which the singer imagines his girlfriend washing herself with it. A friend of mine was gifted a Fa deodorant which she used sparingly on her wrists before our school dances.

My mother somehow escaped the societal pressures of the time, which required women to be fragile coquettes submissive to men. (She did, however, lose herself in the classic role of the Polish Mother who sacrifices everything to her children). She never wore make up, high heels, or jewellery; she never even owned a purse. She had a large leather tote filled with her students’ homework and pedagogical literature that she took to work. Her sister, on the other hand, had a perm and wore make up, stiletto heels, sexy bodysuits, and perfume. As a child I didn’t notice these details, but I sensed my aunt was different from my mom, and that otherness intrigued and excited me—the diversity and variety of women, the possibilities of what I could be like as a woman. I do remember that my mother occasionally said she was on a diet, even though she wasn’t obese, just buxom and heavily built. I suspect it was her friends and her slim sister who suggested it; otherwise I don’t think it would have occurred to her. I had never heard her say anything critical about her own body. And she never seemed to actually go on a diet (on the other hand, it was absurd to diet in an economy where food was scarce). She didn’t own a lot of clothes, like other women, but unlike them, she did not seem to spend much time or effort to find or make something to wear. I suppose she chose to spend the extra money on her children instead. I grew up unaware of how people look or that people’s looks can be judged by others until I was in my teens, in Canada.

I think Polish girls of my generation played with dolls much later than girls do now. The last time I played with dolls with my friends, on a blanket on the lawn in front of our cement-block apartment building, was the summer before I started grade nine! And in Canada, when I was in high school, my mother bought me an anatomically correct baby boy doll. I had never seen one like this before in my life and loved it right away. Perhaps playing with dolls for so long had delayed my interest in body image and fashion, dating, and sex—I experienced this vicariously with my dolls instead of with my friends.

I would be happy to buy my daughter a Barbie, but she doesn’t want one, and believe me, I have asked her many times. We do have many different dolls in our house, including Barbies, because I collect them, but she has always preferred plush toys. She has recently started playing with Creatable World dolls, which have the undeveloped figures of children, and come with short hair, long-haired wigs, and a set of clothes that includes both dresses and pants. She is in grade seven, and I think most of her friends don’t play with dolls anymore. When my daughter and her younger brother play, they say their dolls are gay and trans, and go on adventures that involve dressing up, being attacked by plush animals and cannibals, travelling to the Medieval Era and driving cars. The dolls have a boy band and are ultrarich: they have their own newspaper (written by my children), and movies they act in (recorded by my children). One doll’s girlfriend is a plastic dragon. An occasional Barbie makes an appearance as a mother to these other dolls, but when I am invited to join in their games, I play the role of a friend, not a parent, and pretend to be a child again. But I do secretly lead the game.