Happy anniversary...

I found today's anniversary interesting, if not particularly liberating.  This is Women's History Month and yesterday was International Women's Day, both very worthy of celebration.  Today, on the other hand is the anniversary of the first release of Barbie Dolls, March 9, 1959.  A doll that led generations of young girls to believe that true beauty meant being super skinny with big boobs and poofy hair.  Of course, I went through childhood during an era of Debbie Reynolds, Marilyn Monroe and other glamorous movie star paper dolls, so we probably also had misguided visions of what realistic beauty was.  I do have one sweet memory of Barbie Dolls.  When I was pregnant with our first child, due in September, I spent much of that blissful summer painting walls and arranging furniture in the smallest bedroom in our three-bedroom ranch starter home.  It was becoming the nursery.  For much of the time I had the window wide open enjoying the breezes and the voices of the two little girls who lived next door.  They must have been about six and eight at that time, and they loved to play with their Barbie Dolls.  Their mom had sewed lots and lots of cute clothes for their Barbies, and their shady patio held a Barbie house, car and other must have accessories. As I worked, and listened to their chatter, I day dreamed of my coming baby.  What if she was a girl? It wasn't something we knew ahead of time back then (hence the yellow walls in the nursery). Would she love to play with dolls? Play dress up?  Play house?  Sweet dreams that carried me through that summer.  As it turned out my first child was a boy.  He was a bright, wonderful boy but had no interest in Barbies.  A couple of years later, our second child came along, a beautiful little girl who, it soon became obvious, had very little interest in dolls, Barbie or otherwise, and, as an adult, was an Army helicopter mechanic, an Air Guard bomb builder, deployed twice, and, more recently a surgical technologist.  She's also a loving wife and mother. Maybe she didn't play with Barbies, but she is definitely a woman worth celebrating, way better than any day dream.