Barbie's Autistic?

 

Okay, now I've seen everything.

Mattel has brought out an autistic Barbie.

Sometimes words fail me. This might be one of those times.

At first glance, you might think a piece of plastic, complete with dinky little pink headphones, a slightly off-centre gaze, an equally dinky little pink finger clip fidget spinner (what?) and a loose-fitting purple pinstripe dress would make your average battle-scarred autistic adult melt down in Hulk-like rage, feeling like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune many of us have suffered have been naively trivialised and far too neatly labelled.

After all, I've never worn headphones in my life and in fact rather dislike them, can look you straight in the eye, don't even know what a fidget spinner is and don't wear loose-fitting clothes.

However, I too am autistic and that's why it's called a broad spectrum disorder. A very nuanced understanding of this is required and it's very often misunderstood. Many of us can scarcely manage to get through the day, and we don't all look like Margot Robbie.

Personally speaking, I've been humiliated, bullied, had my ego destroyed on two separate occasions and taken enough punishment at callous workplaces to flatten Rocky Balboa five times over. You might be thinking I'd like to go round to Mattel HQ with a minigun and give them a lesson in the brute realities of autistic life in this nuts and neuro-typical world.

However...

It's always important to keep a sense of humour. It grounds us in reality. It enables us to laugh at ourselves, not to take ourselves too seriously.

So I think I'll admit something.

I've already been round to Mattel, I really enjoyed the Barbie movie, and I like dolls.

This might take some explanation...

If you accept the impossible, seventeen years ago it felt like Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer also escaped from her own dark version of Barbieland, grabbed on to me for dear life and ended up as my flatmate in Partick.

All that led to Dear Miss Landau. Now you know why a fan once said you couldn't make it up. And I didn't just cross America once. Including the original crossing in 1989, I did it five times in total. The third time, I went to see Miss Landau at a comic-con in Chicago.

And while I was there I bought a Drusilla doll.

This is mentioned in my old article Meet Miss Landau, Miss the President:

"I’d even bought a Drusilla doll that day (the one with the fangs, the bloody white dress and the blackened rose), placed it irreverently before Juliet and said, deadpan, that I really didn’t think my life could get any more surreal...

Keith looked at me patiently as I stood in front of him, holding a plastic vampire doll."

(Differently Wired)

When I got home, I mortified several fellow Buffy fans by taking Dru out of her minted box and put her proudly in my display case, flanked by both my books.

She's still there today, the picture is below. And Juliet may be gone but Dru lives on in Avalon.

We all need an inner life.

I bought Dru the doll in 2012, but by 2024 it seemed those days of wonder were part of a mythic past never to be reclaimed, faint and remote as mist over Avalon...

Except that I went back and claimed it.

I flew into LAX, stayed the night at a stark and simple Travelodge on Sepulveda Boulevard and walked over to the Metro station in Mariposa the next morning.

And I noticed I was walking right past Mattel! I'd just seen Barbie and I was heading off (metaphorically speaking) to visit Dru in Avalon. The way things were going I began wondering if I'd bump into Margot Robbie and have a coffee with her, too...

Life can be a many-splendored thing.

It can also be tough and terrible, but the moment we surrender to the gloom and doom and throw away all those moments which make it worthwhile, then we are lost.

So I'll tell you Buffy fans who may be reading that I made it back. I walked up the hill to Dru's home in Avalon. As usual, I took a few pictures and I include a copy of Dear Miss Landau in many of them. It's a bit like saying Kilroy Was Here, joking with the fates and leaving my small mark on history.

And, you know, if I (the battle-scarred adult Asperger) got the chance to go out again, I might take an autistic Barbie with me. Perhaps a photo of her out there might inspire some few of us to find our own Avalons...

Or even have a cup of coffee with Margot!