Places, Places, Get in Your Places / Throw on Your Dress and Put on Your Doll Faces
“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”
Godden, Rumer. (1948). The Dolls' House. Viking Press.
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Jacob suddenly felt every fiber of his body become rigid with paralysis. Simultaneously, his field of view began to become wobbly and wavering … and shrinking?
He struggled to blink, but whatever had petrified the muscles of his lower body was equally impacting the muscles of his face. Unable to do anything else, Jacob gazed straight forward with fixed eye rigidity and watched as the universe around him faded out of view and was immediately replaced by a gigantic scale simulacrum of someone's living room – except everything here had an unnatural feel to it. The proportions of the couch and chair somehow seemed off. The floor had a weird, plastic sheen to it. The lighting and shadows somehow fell incorrectly upon the dimensions of the place. The walls were weirdly blank and somehow cock-eyed and not quite plumb, as if somehow had installed them without first checking for proper, perpendicular verticality as compared with the floor. There was just something about the whole room that had a weirdly synthetic feel about it – as though space aliens had somehow had taken a photograph of the living room of a real human being and attempted to build an ersatz substitute with absolutely no other guidance.
The place was eerily fake!
As Jacob continued to stare forward with forced stupefaction and utter insensibility of movement, he suddenly felt something warm, doughy, and soft grasp him about the middle.
Ouch! he thought reflexively, though his body itself felt strangely numb. He noted with concern though that his midsection seemed oddly shaped now – significantly smaller around the waist, while a bit bigger and curvier around the hips and behind. Still, though, he absolutely could not move.
But suddenly, Jacob could speak …
“Hey, Barbie!” he found himself saying in a chirpy, cartoonish soprano voice. “Did you have your big romantic date with Ken last night?”
Abruptly the plastic face of a straw haired, blue eyed bimbo afflicted with a rigor mortis smile was shoved immediately in front of Jacob's eyes. The grinning woman weaved and bobbed about in the air, as though an unseen hand was unsteadily grasping her legs and shaking her about.
“Oh, yeah, totally!” replied the mannequin in a sing-song lilting, voice. “Me and Ken went to Lover's Look-Out and smooched all night long. I was almost last for school, we were kissing so much. And then he asked me to marry him. The wedding is tomorrow. You're invited Teresa! Of course, you'll have to be my maid of honor. But me and Ken have to get married quick, before he goes to astronaut school. He's also joining the army, and they say he'll be an admiral in just a few years. Then we can retire and travel the world, and I'll explore my supermodel and actress career.”
“But what about your singing career?” Jacob found himself forced to ask. “You're the most amazing, superstar opera and rock-star singer on the planet? You can't just give up your career for your secret agent, astronaut, war hero husband?”
“No, no, no!” replied Barbie, still grinning maniacally at Jacob, her stiff yellow hair flopping comically from side to side. “I'm a modern woman! If Ken doesn't like me being a supermodel, rock star singer who is also a mommy and a president of the coolest fashion design company, then we'll get divorced. I have to be able to design my awesome dresses plus sing songs and be an actress. Oh, and I'm still the queen of the ballerinas as well.”
“Yeah, totally!” Jacob said, suddenly realizing his own mouth was stretched in a mirror image duplicate of Barbie's own grotesque grin.
Jacob was now a Barbie doll.
And someone was shaking him about, playing “dolls” with him right now.
“I can't wait to get married and start having babies,” Jacob found himself forced to say. “I'm going to name them Amelia, Brianna, Calista, Daphne, and Elysia.”
“That's so cool!” replied Barbie. “I love how all your names go A-B-C-D-E, Teresa. That's why you're totally my BFF!”
Abruptly, Jacob felt his own grinning face clumsily pressed against Barbie's vapid rictus as the two dolls “smooched” in ham-handed, dollish imitation of what he assumed was meant to be an act of sororal osculation.
Get me out of here! he tried to shout.
Instead the words came out: “Let's go shopping and try on dresses, Barbie!”
Barbie grinned back with a vacant, vacuous plastic smile and answered: “Yeah, totally girlfriend! Lead the way!”
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