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

polygon.com:

I attempted to give myself a haircut when I was 4. Technically, it was a personal choice, but nearly 30 years later, I continue to attribute the 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. It made me feel cool, invincible, and like I could do anything. Around that same time, I received the iconic Cut and Style Barbie Doll by Mattel, featuring safety scissors, several sets of hair extensions, a plastic hairbrush, and some 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.”

There were a few core issues with my attempt to buck the system: I could only really cut some of my hair, due to poor reach and not being 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