Barbie in a Balls World
So, I saw Barbie a few weeks ago and thought it was fun. It poked holes in feminist theory, toxic masculinity, and corporate America, and generally had a good time doing all of it. Who did I resonate with? Weird Barbie, of course! And that’s because of my favorite solo role-playing game as a kid (before I knew about D&D): Post-Nuclear Holocaust Barbie.
Who? What? Yes, as a child growing up in Cold War America of the 1970s, I channeled my primal fear of nuclear holocaust into my play. So, I’d received the Barbie Shopping Plaza (circa 1976) as a holiday gift. It had an escalator, a styling salon, a clothes shop, and a bistro. About the same time, I got some GI Joe play sets (radio unit, microwave emitter, and travel gear). I mixed this all up with Malibu Barbie, Malibu Skipper, their friend Francie, Jaime Sommers (the Bionic Woman), and Miss America 1975 (Shirley Cothran, complete with affixed tiara). End result? Read on…
Twelve or so months before, Jaime Sommers had been an Army officer leading survivors (Barbie, Skipper, and Francie) into the mountains of Western North Carolina. There, they met up with Shirley, who was an ousted occult leader with mesmerizing mind powers. This probably was a result of the weird metal circlet welded onto her head (the prior crown). Francie was in a bad way, what with radiation burns on her legs (orange marker) and loss of hair (scissors). Shirley took them into her haven (shopping plaza), demanded they all become acolytes in her feminist social structure (no males allowed), and serve the small community by hunting and gathering. Things went pretty well; adventures revolved around supplies and repairs, for the most part. Sometimes the crowd had a plague. Once in a while, they held a secret ceremony. Average 10-year old stuff.
Four years later…I started playing D&D with a group of friends that were mostly boys (they all identified as male). Let me stress that they were friends, not boyfriends. And that’s more or less been the summary of my gaming for 43 years. I have this lovely group of fellas I game with weekly, who are kind and thoughtful. The Liminal Victorian game I run has three guys and one gal (and it ended up with only one player character who is a dude). For decades, folks, I’ve often been the only person identifying as female at the table. And that means…balls and semen.
Conversations sometimes run like this:
“Hey, what’s that stuff in the beer fridge? Is it semen? Heh heh.” (It was, in fact, not).
“Gawd, I’ve got jock itch. My balls, y’all!”
“Men don’t pee like that!” (In the context of me narrating a PC’s actions….)
You get the picture. I will say that sometimes I’ve countered with childbirth, and then, the conversation ends abruptly.
That got me thinking…Are there groups out there who try to have only players who identify as female? If so, is it the cooperative Barbie-a-la-nuclear-holocaust world I created as a kid, wherein tough times called for all hands eager on deck? Or is it more of a hog-eats-chicken-eats-hog sort of atmosphere? (Hogs do in fact eat anything; so do chickens). Does the essence of the game change if players are all female? Is it grittier? Less gritty?
I’d be interested in hearing from you about this, no matter how you identify. When writing Rustwater, we made some deliberate choices to let NPCs we created tell us who they were. The person on the old draft cover is Caroleen Steegman, a teenaged town executioner. She has a good friend who runs the local theater; their name is Mowbray, and they’re non-binary. I didn’t really have any agenda when writing up these NPCs; if you’ve ever created fiction, you know what I mean. These characters jump onto the page out of your brain. Mowbray has a backstory of their own; what binds them and Caroleen is their abiding love of family and what defines that term in the Rustwater setting. Like my Barbies, they’ve formed a bond based on loss and longing. They want to make a better world, yet they have hard tasks to make this so. That’s what we want Rustwater to be for our fans: crappy times, but decent people who have hope of making a difference in this shared world.
