IN high school, I collected stationeries. In college, pencils and erasers. After college, miniatures. Sometime in between that and the piggies, there were keyholders, fridge magnets, shot glasses, and liquor bottles.
The only constant collection from grade school up to the present: books. Which I’ve been donating to a school. So I can finally follow Marie Kondo’s advice to keep only 30 books.
What I loved during my childhood years was the comics section of a national broadsheet and comic magazines. Plus Chippy and Coke while reading them.
By the time I transferred to Cagayan de Oro when I was in Grade 4, my childhood sked began to include watching TV and movies, playing patintero and badminton, and attending birthday parties, but still no Barbie.
It was only when I got, uh, old that I began collecting not Barbies but piggies. I guess I’m simply making up for the lack of a child-appropriate collection when I was a little girl.
I expected the “Barbie” movie to be shallow after the doll version became a symbol of unhealthy body weight, unattainable and unrealistic perfection, and materialism.
Growing up in my mother’s hometown, I was completely clueless about Barbie. I did have a walking doll that looked so scary.
With the fabulous “Barbie” movie showing us how to live, collecting anything is now starting to look frivolous. But wearing pink and taking selfies at the cinema’s pink Barbie décor was not frivolous at all since they were part of the “Barbie” experience. Hmmm. By the way, SM CDO Downtown Premier’s cinemas had the best “Barbie” décor in CDO.
Aside from Gloria’s (America Ferrera) monologue, another scene that I noticed was “Barbie” creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) living on the Mattel office’s 17th floor. There’s my favorite number again.
Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” was not used in the movie. In September 1997, Mattel sued Aqua for calling “Barbie” a “Blonde Bimbo,” so, having the song in the movie was a big no. But Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice were able to insert it in “Barbie World” which served as the credits’ muzak.
Learning about the Mattel-versus-Aqua case did bring me back to reality, that Barbie is a business, and woe to those who are addicted to collecting all those dolls and their clothes, shoes, bags, dollhouses, cars, and other accessories.
A collection always starts with one particular item. For my books, the collection began with Nancy Drew. For the stationeries, the trend then was to exchange them with friends and classmates, and what to exchange if I didn’t have any? So, that’s how the collection started. For the pencils and erasers, I don’t know if I should thank Gift Gate which had several branches in Metro Manila then. Haha. If only I could remember the first piggy I bought, I’d have to put that inside a glass case.
I cried while watching “Barbie,” and cried again while watching “Oppenheimer” days later. With both movies opening on July 19 here in Pinas, I’m sure there were film buffs who watched both on the same day, giving them an experience that was as opposite as the Sahara Desert and the Arctic, the South and North Poles, hot and cold, high and low, vegan and carnivore, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, pink and black. This also sums up the way I feel each time I see my collections: keep or give, buy more or stop buying already, are they treasure or clutter.
