“The Japenese have already perfected a lifelike geisha robot with artificial skin.”
-Naomi Wol, The Beauty Myth, 1991
When Barbie was under
anesthesia, her whole body replaced with smooth plastic
she swore she heard her doctors
telling smutty jokes.
When the surgeons sliced off her nipples
to put in the silicone implants
they decided to leave the milk-outlets off
because, after this, the nerve ending
would be dead and Barbie wouldn’t be able to feel
anything anyway. The sensation
in the rest of her breasts would be
diminished, but sexuality was not why Barbie was doing this. She gladly
forewent her own pleasure for her race,
for womanhood, for survival.
Her clitoris and vulva’s lips
were next to go. And her vagina
was sewn up, after the ovaries
were scooped out. Barbie couldn’t
possible give birth. After all
the expense her family went to,
she wouldn’t insult her new body
with stretch marks. These were other women,
shorter and darker, who could carry Barbie’s eggs.
That was their livelihood, up until
menopause. Some of these surrogates
told of dolls called barbie they remembered
from their girlhoods and claimed
the elite women these days all looked remarkably like her.
The surrogates said there was a time when women actually had their own names: Gloria, Andrea,
Betty, and Robin. The doctors
cut around Barbie’s neck,
took off her head, and removed
her vocal cords and her brain. This
was when all memory was lost,
her mouth her adolescence, the smutty jokes.
Ad she was glad. How could
Sensational Life-size Barbie bear it
any other way?
-Denise Duhamel
Playing with Poetry 