‘Cut and Style’ Barbie gave me the queerest moment of my childhood

When I was 4, I tried to cut my hair. Although it was technically my choice, nearly 30 years after the fact, I still attribute this idea to Mattel.

I grew up in a multigenerational home where my bed was just feet from my mom and dad’s. In an effort to give me a sense of “privacy,” my mom used several of my Disney-branded sheets to construct a tent-like structure over my sleeping space. The tent-like structure made me look cool and invincible. It also gave me the feeling that I was capable of anything. The Mattel Cut and Style Barbie Doll was also delivered around the same time. It included safety scissors and several hair extensions as well as a plastic brush and hair accessories.

Mad with power in my new “room,” I quickly exhausted most of Barbie’s hair extensions. So I did the next logical thing: I contemplated the doll’s accompanying safety scissors, and then took them to my own very long hair. Although Barbie’s hair didn’t technically “grow back” when I cut it, and I had to attach extensions to return her preset hair to something like its original length, this ability made me believe wholeheartedly that my own hair would somehow grow back instantly if I cut it. In hindsight, I was simply tired of always being told “no” whenever I asked for haircuts because my grandparents thought long hair was “more feminine.”

It was not easy to go against the grain. I couldn’t reach all of my hair and wasn’t ambidextrous. I also didn’t have a mirror in my sheet fort, which meant I couldn’t even see what I was doing. But the most pressing issue, in hindsight, was that I didn’t ask for permission. It certainly wouldn’t have been granted — which would have spared me the heartache of family members criticizing my appearance. This would have robbed me of a unique experience, which has changed the way I think about gender.

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A few minutes into the haircutting process, I realized my mistake and crawled out of my bed already crying — not because I had cut my hair, but because of what it meant. It was inevitable that I’d get into trouble, and it did. She lectured her mother about leaving me without supervision and kept asking me, “Why do you want such short haircuts?” She told me I made myself “look like a boy.” (No one acknowledged the irony that she had sported a shoulder-length cut ever since I could remember.) The entire time I was getting my haircut, I wept. And the following day, I wore a bucket hat made of denim to preschool. After my teacher asked me whether I got a new haircut, and complimented it on its success, I became utterly distraught. For a very long time, I felt this way whenever anyone mentioned my hair.

I didn’t ask for a haircut for years and let my hair grow until it reached my waist. Whenever the subject of my hair did come up, even after I began sporting a shoulder-length cut in middle school, my family would loudly insist that “long hair was feminine” and ask variations on “Do you want to look like a boy?” What they didn’t know was that the older I got, the more I realized I liked other girls, and I was terrified of being a fat lesbian because I thought it meant I would have to present as butch. “Looking like a boy” was the furthest thing from my mind.

In a 1994 Cut and Style Barbie advertisement (that stars an Amanda Bynes from Nickelodeon), the doll has long and short hair. She even sports spiky Annie Lennox hair. At no point does she appear less “feminine” — instead, the commercial offered me a chance to see how gender norms and gender presentation aren’t binary. Barbie’s hair could be long or short and she would still qualify as a feminist icon. Barbie was criticized in the past for maintaining impossible beauty standards. Mattel even redesigns the doll’s body to be more realistic.

My choice to chop my hair off was both a way to achieve a sense of belonging to Barbie and an act that would allow me to gain more bodily autonomy. My mom, who wasn’t even 22 when I was 4, didn’t seem particularly bothered beyond wanting me to have an even-looking haircut. But some members of my family reacted so dramatically that now, I can’t help but think of this experience as the first time I experienced queerphobia — even though as a preschooler, I didn’t know what queerness was or that I would eventually come to identify as a lesbian.

Photo: Greg Doherty/WireImage

Barbie is one of pop culture’s most iconic heterosexual icons. The world is familiar with her on-and-off-again romance with Ken. It’s also a central point of the upcoming Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig — even if their relationship as portrayed by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling is at least somewhat rooted in blatant irritation, as seen in the trailer. Millions of queer children have played with Barbies, exploring issues of gender identity and social dynamics. Like many AFAB people born in the early ’90s, I made my Barbie dolls kiss whenever my family wasn’t looking. I had my two favorite Barbie dolls share the single bed in the 1995 Barbie Travelin’ House and play-acted them saying “I love you” when they “moved in together.”

Even so, I think cutting my hair myself was the most bizarre thing that I did when I was a kid. Without Cut and Style Barbie, the idea likely wouldn’t have occurred to me. I was a well-behaved kid with no siblings who struggled to make friends in preschool because I was fat and weird and, I’ll admit, more than a little bossy.

After the haircut incident, I played up femininity — or at least what my family defined as femininity — even though it didn’t feel completely right. I even got “engaged” to a preschool classmate named Paul who gave me a Ring Pop in my favorite flavor (red) to mark the occasion. It’s a Ring Pop in my favorite flavor (red) to mark the occasion. The following are some of the reasons why you should consider hiring someone else got me in trouble because it “wasn’t appropriate” for me to like boys. The mixed messages I received made it difficult for me to know how I should act and look. I was also paranoid of my family catching me, or getting mad. It seemed wrong to make two dolls kiss. Wasn’t Barbie supposed to be with Ken? If I made them kiss, would I get a similar scolding as I did when I thought about liking boys after Paul and me exchanged promises to not be rude to each other because we had promised to do so?

In looking back, I can see how the 4-year old me tried to define herself through her best guesses of adults she didn’t know. I owe my entire relationship to my looks to the decision that I made to cut my hair with safety scissors. By the time I reached my 20s I had shoulder length hair, or even longer, because I wanted people to see me as feminine. Cut and Style Barbie encouraged self-expression. Had my family seen it, I would probably have a more positive relationship with myself.