Put Nipples Back On Barbies (feat. Trixie Mattel)

• Legend, icon and literal Barbie Doll Trixie Mattel schools Fran & Rose on Barbie herstory and talks about being a prolific doll collector
• Plus, Rose's birthday recap, Taylor's Version fatigue, The Other Two and LAV summer beach vacation reads. And a clip from this week's Patreon, a special edition of Rose's Book Corner wherein the girls go deep on Sarah Waters' Fingersmith and the films adapted from it, including The Handmaiden. Subscribe if you're literate.

Shop our summer merch line. How porographic did your Barbie play get? Tag our finsta @likeavirgin42069

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Madonna. I know you listen to every episode of this
podcast and you heard it from Trix and Mattel. She
wants like a virgin Barbie.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
No, you know, if she does it, she's gonna push
through like a ray of light Barbie, and we're gonna
get blue jeans and like like a Hotten shirt. Kabala Barbie.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I want that.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
She's sheen am me, no me, not my name? Yo
yo yo? What is your childhood trauma? I have coo.
You know what's going down the floor like.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Round Welcome to Like a Virgin, the show where we
give yesterday's pop culture today's takes. I am Ra's Damu
and I am fran to Rota Virgins. You know you
will have heard our patch from Fire Island in our

(01:01):
episode last week. Also, if you're a patron patroon dot
com slash like a Virgin, you will have heard our
annual Fire Island episode. But our vacation is over. It's
back to real life. I had a great time. I
think you did as well. Fran Oh for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I mean I still feel like my body is like
catching up with all the things that I put it through.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
During that week.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Like honestly, vacation can be like I'm not going to
say exhausting, but like it's definitely like your body is
operating at a different level, taking in a different number
of drugs.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, I and in the sun all day.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, that was really the thing that got me the day.
The day we got back, I needed just a reset
day and I did like an intense body cleanse, skincare, routine,
hair washing, and like afterwards, laying on my couch, I
just felt fried, like both both physically because I got
a lot of sun and mentally like even though literally

(02:06):
all we were doing was laying around and relaxing, I
needed a day to sort of get back to I
needed to bring me to life, as Amy Lee said
on the emin Essence debut album. And then the next
day was my birthday. Yes that's right, Virgins, I am
now thirty five years old.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yes, and you celebrated by going to the place that
Carrie Bradshaw went to on her exact thirty fifth birthday,
which was a very mediocre Italian restaurant.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
It was really it was actually bad, Like my entree
was bad. My entree was bad because I didn't realize
I thought that I was ordering a pasta that had
spinach in it, and instead what I ordered was a
pasta that substituted spinach for noodles. No, it was fine.

(03:00):
It was not about the food. It was about the vibes,
and it was not about the food. No. But it
was a very lovely birthday dinner. And actually this was
one of the best birthdays I've had in years, I
think mostly mostly because I approached it very much as
just another day. I worked during the day, I went

(03:21):
to the gym, I did very ordinary things. I went
to a bookstore and ran into a lovely virgin who
gave me a great discount and picked up a bunch
of new books. And then I had a wonderful meal
with my nearest and dearest, wearing I have to say,
a pretty sickening outfit. There was a great day.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
We love that your outfit was incredible. Yeah, it was
cordial and it was simple, and that's exactly what you
need out of a birthday gathering. I feel like, you know, yeah,
the food, the food you we said, was like kind
of it was olive garden territory SERTs I thought were phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
The desserts were great. I love a tartufo. I hadn't
had forever. It was so good, and I think everyone
else I think I don't think anyone else had had
tartufo at that table, so it did gag them a bit.
For anyone who wants to know, we went to Il Cantonore,
which is if you remember the season four episode of
Sex and the City, The Agony and the Ecstasy. It's
the restaurant where Carry goes for her birthday dinner and

(04:23):
none of her friends show up and she has to
pay for her own birthday cake. The woman with the
birthday cake is here and she needs a bebate and
my friends did show up and it was lovely. We
had a great time and I also had sex that
night when I got home, and it was fabulous birthday.
It was really a perfect birthday. Was it was it with? Well?

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Was it with Recurring the World?

Speaker 1 (04:49):
If that's all we're going to say, that's all we're
going to say. The rest is for the Patreon divas. No,
the rest is for not people who listen to this podcast. Sorry,
but you know what we will talk about is the
fact that no is the fact that Taylor Swift released
Speak Now Taylor's version I am a little over the

(05:14):
Taylor's versions, I have to say, and I really felt
the fatigue with this one because I think I mean
a I didn't listen to it for basically a whole
week because we were not featuring it on Fire Island. No,
not to the.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Vibe we tried and then switched to just contemporary tailor
and Taylor's.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
It just I think we've lost the plot in a way,
which is that the actual point of these albums is
to literally re record the existing music in such a
way that it replaces the old Scooter's versions. And yes,

(05:55):
we get the new tracks and everything, and you know,
some of the ones on this album are good, but
it just sounds so much like the original that I'm like,
what is the point?

Speaker 3 (06:06):
And the bonus tracks, which like Hayley Williams and fallow
Way are amazing features to have on the bonus tracks, Sorry,
didn't really do it for me. I think the only
song that I will return to is I See You,
which was on the original or no, is that a
bonus track?

Speaker 1 (06:24):
But that's the bonus track? Yeah? I thought that she
made the music video the stupidest music video ever for.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I loved that bonus track. I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
It's a good song, yeah, but no, I don't know.
I godspeed to everyone going to the Eras tour. Peyton
just went like seems like she actually I feel like
everyone we know was like at the Denver show for Eras,
Rose is still looking for tickets though, no, I'm You're like,
I'm not anymore.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
I'm not. I'm seeing Beyonce next week. I'm good, love, enjoy.
I only have one big summer concert in me, and
that is the one I have been listening to speak
now Taylor's version, but I could just as easily listen
to Scooter's version and like be fine.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
I mean, yeah, I have I feel like I'm all
listened out, like I have so much music.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
It's just this shtick is getting old.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, and I don't want to listen to Reputation Taylor's version,
like that's gonna be bizarre? No, no, no, no. What
if she did all acoustic, Like how is she going
to do?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
That would be fab That would fab if like ras like, yeah,
an acoustic version of a reputation would be fabulous because
it would be different instead of just being a copy
paste of the music.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
I have a question y as a as someone who's
a little more of a tailor scholar than I am.
I feel like she said maybe in her documentary that
reputation was kind of like an era that she regrets
a little bit. Is that she said something like that before.
I feel like she's talked about how it was like
a really dark time and how she felt like reputation

(08:05):
was in reaction to or retaliation against something instead of
like actual art.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
I mean it was a reaction to the way she
was talked about post you know, like being quote unquote
exposed by Kim Kardashian and like the Kanye West of
it all. I don't know if she's ever said anything
about regretting it. I certainly don't regret it. Reputation is
one of my favorite Taylor albums.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's not. It's at the bottom of my list.
So but I, you know, whatever Taylor's version is gonna
look like, I'm here for it.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Speaking of Taylor and tunes, a lot of Taylor's music
was featured in the trailer for the second season of
The Summer I turned pretty Actually, Ryan when the trailer
dropped thought it was a short film that she had
made because he had no context for the show. The
first three episodes dropped on Amazon on Friday, and I

(08:57):
watched them all this weekend. And you know, I famously
don't love YA because I don't believe teenagers are real people.
But this is very compelling YA soap opera and there
is a lot of Taylor shot music featured in it.
So if you're looking for a very like no thoughts

(09:19):
had empty summer show to watch, that is a perfect one.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
I'm not going to watch it, but it does sound
is it kind of?

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I was talking to the Virgins, I know, I.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Was just saying, for the record, is it like a
kind of to all the boys I've loved before?

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Coded? It's yeah, Well it's written. The book that it's
based onst written by Jenny Hahn, who wrote to All
the Boys. It's love Triangle, a girlye who is in
uh like, caught between two brothers. Brother. Yes, there's also
they're dealing with grief because the brother's mom died. It's yeah,

(10:00):
it's it's very good. Okay, Okay.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
You know what I finished this weekend, which I don't
think you finished, was the other two?

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Did you did you finish that? No? I watched two
and a half seasons of it in the span of
a week, and then got that midway through season three
and was like, no, I don't want to watch this anymore.
It's bad.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
The I will agree that a lot of the latter
half of season three is as you put it, ass
and I felt it, and I felt like the finale,
especially was a whole lot of assery, Like, I, so
how does it end? I'm not I skim skipped through
a lot of it. The show, especially in its finale,
decided to completely change genres and become a drama, a

(10:48):
like thoughtful, emotional, like personal journey drama about the moralistic
arc of these two characters and how they can reconcile
their misery and become like, I don't know, like people again,
and they get there. The redemptions are the redemption arcs
are really lovely, like they work fine, but the way

(11:11):
it's shot is totally completely different, And I feel like
the showrunner was maybe trying to do something that was
like profound and brilliant, but the way that the main
gay guy was portrayed and all of the internal struggle
that he went through about which was like obsessing over fame,

(11:31):
like getting overly involved with like the industry and like
and like you know, excommunicating all of his friends and
loved ones as a product of that. It feels like
something that the showrunner actually went through, and it felt
so transparently, something that the writer needed to just get
off of his chest to a degree that felt like Bros.

(11:52):
Coded Like it was like that scene in Bros. Where
Billy Eigner has that long monologue to the to the
his like kind of boo on the beach, talking about
like how people don't understand him, and I was like,
that's like lovely, but also like this is we know,
this is you.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
That's such a That's not the ending I would expect
have expected the show to have. I actually feel like
it would be much truer to the show and the
characters to not redeem them and to instead maybe give
them some kind of come upance. Yeah for being horrible people.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah yeah, I mean they definitely got punished for their actions,
which is nice. But no, I don't know. The show
is so like if Virgins ever wanted to watch it.
The first two seasons are amazing, some of the second
season is not great, and there are some episodes of
the third season that are so genius, so laugh out

(12:47):
loud funny, so much insider baseball like stuff that is
like relevant to like queer people, especially like gay people
that exist in media and consume gay media. Oh so
fucking funny.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
And well you loved you loved that Aid's Play episode.
Which I did not. I did not think was that.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
There was a spoof of The Inheritance that was fucking hilarious.
I thought, featuring Lucas Gage. I also thought the muliu
A bit was so funny.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Well, I did like that Simulio talked about eating Molly
shan It's pussy a lot. But other than that, I'm
never going to watch the rest of the other two
because I'm too busy reading gay monster porn.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Okay say more please.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
So I have been book Corner. This is Roses Book Corner,
which actually if you want to hear if you want
to hear me talk at length about books, you can
go on Patreon, Patreon dot com, slash like a Virgin
and that is the official home of Roses Book Corner.

(13:53):
But I have been reading a lot recently. I read
four books while we were on vacation. I'm on fire
right now and I've been reading a lot of lit thick,
so I needed a mindless you know, palette cleanser. And

(14:14):
as as virgins will know, I love a codpiece ripper,
which is our terminology for gay historical romance. What I
never have ventured into is gay is gay monster fucking
book tentacle ripper. Tentacle ripper maybe like eggsack ripper.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Not eggsac.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I have yet to encounter of sexy eggsac in these books,
but it could happen. So, based off of a TikTok recommendation,
I downloaded onto my kindle a book called Soul Eater
by an author named Lily Maine, and it is set
in a post apocalyptic America that is overrun by monsters

(14:59):
and the main care is a soldier at a military
base who studies monsters and they bring in like this
scary monster named Win, the soul Eater, who is like
in He's like super tall, his like grayskin and has
a hood so you can't see his face with there's
horns sticking out of it. And the monster like takes

(15:20):
a liking to him, and they end up escaping the
facility and they start fucking and fall in love and
he loves not to make it all about his genitals,
but but it's about his let's talk about his genitals.
So he has a slit where a penis would be. Oh,

(15:41):
and then when he gets aroused, a penis comes out
of the sort just like a shape of water. And
when and they're they're flip fucking. So when the when
the soldier wants to fuck him, he fucks the slit
like under the penis, so that basically like the penises
are like together in the whole. And this is great.

(16:06):
It honestly is like really hot and fun and actually
like a good story, like with well drawn characters.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I support you. I support this.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
I started reading this the first book last yesterday evening
around like five pm, and finished it this morning, and
then immediately started the second one. And there's I believe
seven in the series. So this is my new journey,
is reading a month porn. It is soul eater, soul sucker,

(16:39):
so there is definitely a lot of sucking going.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
On into it. Slash you should write one of those,
slash you should adapt.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking I need to maybe
start writing some porn. I actually am feeling very creatively
repped up right now from everything I've been reading, I read.
As I said, I read a bunch of books on vacation,
and maybe, like I'll go more in depth into them
on the Patreon at some point, but just to like

(17:10):
quickly talk about them. My favorite book that I read
while we were on vacation is Vladimir by Julia May Jonas,
which is about a professor at a liberal arts college
in upstate New York whose husband has been accused by
several women of sexual misconduct, and as that's happening, a
young professor comes to the school and she becomes totally

(17:30):
obsessed with him. It's a really sharp and incredibly written
takedown of like me too culture and wokeness and academia,
and it's like one of my favorite things that I've
read in such a long time. The voice is just
so perfect. I also read We Could Be So Good
by Kat Sebastian, which is a codpiece ripper about two

(17:53):
newspaper reporters in nineteen fifties New York City who fall
in love. I thought it was very sweet and I
really like to see their love story. And then I
read The Guest by Emma Kline, which is sort of
the like hot Girl book of the Summer. It's got
a very like saturated cover.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
We know what the cover looks like. And it's about
a sex.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Worker who is dating this man and staying with him
in his beach house and like probably the hamp Dens,
and he kicks her out, and so she has to
spend a couple of days just sort of going around
trying to like glom onto any man she can find.

(18:32):
And it's it's a really great character study. She makes
like bad decision after bad decision, and it's like you're
just like reading it screaming at her. And it's really
well done up until the ending, which was one of
the most disappointing endings of a book I read in
a very long time. It really needed like another chapter
or an epilogue or something. It was just so disappointing.

(18:55):
It was like it just like crashed off a cliff.
And then the fourth book I read was like a
codpiece of report that is not worth talking about. It
was aggressively fine. But I am going to Florida this
week to visit my family, so I'm sure I'll be
doing a lot of reading while i'm there, and you know,

(19:15):
stay tuned if you want more recommendations. Well, we have
a very exciting episode today. This is a long time coming,
both in terms of the fact that this movie has
been promoted forever. Barbie the Doll has existed for a
very long time, and we recorded this episode months ago.
But we have Trixy Mattel on the podcast today talking
all things Barbie. Yes, and we have to say, just

(19:39):
because we are who we are, we are in support
with this strike.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, SAG hello is striking.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
This is huge.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
All of the videos we're seeing a fran dresser are amazing,
even though she's kind of an anti vaxxer, but she's amazing.
And this is not promotion for the movie Barbie. This
is a historicization of Barbie as an idyl and icon.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Ok Yes. And we will probably behind the scenes be
figuring out how we are going to approach talking about
new media in the wake of SAG and the W
A G A both being on strike. So this is evolving.
We're still figuring it out. But no scabs on this podcast.

(20:23):
No scabs, no thank you.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
This is a tricksy is a long time coming as
a guest, iconic iconic, So let's let's do it.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
This episode is about and for the dolls.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
That's right, pre Barbie movie, pre social media, pre like

(21:05):
I don't know, Jeremy Scott's boardby collection, pre all that stuff.
I just I wanted to I wanted my zippers to
be this big compared to my body, you know what
I mean, even proportionally. I wanted to be a tiny
plastic thing. And I think it was like a maybe mentally,
it was like an escape route from the human experience.
It's like what if I also just had no thoughts,
you know, like what if I also had.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
What if my head was squishy too?

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, I was squish my head. What if my knees
you know, snapped? And then when I started like I
guess I got the cart before the horse, and like
in my later twenties, I started being like, well, I
take all this inspiration from America's favorite fashion doll, but
what do I really know about it? And then for
like a good year, I pretty much read every nonfiction

(21:50):
book about Mattel and Barbie that is in existence, everything
from the biography and autobiography of Ruth Handler to studies
about child development to the history of Barbie. And I'm
probably mentally ill and so when I get focused on
something I really like, hit record and learn everything about
it very quickly. And so now I just like, I mean,

(22:12):
I really know everything about Barbie. I think I know
everything there is to know. So what do you want
to know? That's why we brought you on.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Now we're going to test your knowledge. No, we're not
here to getcha, but I am really interested to get
maybe like, why do you think Barbie was so groundbreaking
as a toy and why has she endured the way
she has.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, there's a few reasons. Right, number one first of
its kind. Right until Barbie came along in nineteen fifty nine,
little girls were encouraged to pretend to be moms. That's it.
All dolls were babies. So that's like the number one.
This is the first toy that had women imagining they
could be nurses or flight attendants or doctors or like anything.
Not to mention you have to imagine in nineteen fifty

(22:55):
nine a toy to have breasts and no husband and
have her own apartment and be a mo which means
she has her own income. Extremely scandalous, Like it's basically
a porn toy for children at the time. Yeah, but
this was at a time where a woman's second biggest
fear is that her daughter's going to be like overdeveloped

(23:17):
and slutty and like too independent. Her number one fear
is that she's going to be ungroomed and unmarriable because
a husband was a meal ticket. So even women who
are a little conservative is like, well, if I get
my daughter this doll, maybe she'll become interested in styling
her hair and dressing herself. Like it was a way
for women to communicate like, hey, I want you to

(23:38):
be comfortable in your life, and if you want that,
this is the template. Like this will get you fed,
this will get you a house. Like that was sort
of the communication there under the surface. And so that's
the number one reason I think that that that's turned
into now every adult has a Barbie memory, and you
want your children to have the experience you had. So

(23:59):
now it's like a rite of passage where it's like
she's old enough for a barbie, let's get her a barbie.
I mean, you give your kid the tool to imagine
anything happening to them. Because originally, I mean the doll
was invented when Ruth Handler would see her daughter using
paper dolls to play out like adult scenarios. She was like, well,
why doesn't this exist in the three dimensional The other

(24:20):
reason it's so popular is because, I hate to say it,
the good and bad press that comes out every five
or ten years. You know, this year we're gonna get
obsessed with Barbie's body not being big enough, and this
year we're gonna barbiecore is gonna get big again. So
it's going to go through runways for like a year.
Like every few years, it pops researches again in fashion,

(24:41):
or there's a movie about it, or an SNL skit
or just it's such a common link. I mean, the
average little girl in the United States owns eleven dolls.
Eleven Barbies. Wow, yeah, an average jealous So the numbers
like everybody has a Barbie story. And the flip side
of that is, let's say every woman has a little

(25:01):
bit of body stuff, right, things about their body they
struggle with. If everyone owned a doll. I'm not saying
it's fair, but it becomes the common thread that I
think becomes a scapegoat for a lot of conversations about
the culture as a whole. I don't like my body,
I don't either did you have a Barbie? Me too?
It must like I think that's a little too reductive.

(25:22):
Body things and stuff like that is more than just
some toy you had. It's commercials, it's movies, it's you know, everything.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
So that coverage girl has eleven dolls? How many dolls
do you have?

Speaker 2 (25:37):
That's what I was gonna have. I'm about probably like
six hundred little girls. Now more than that, like probably
six thousand little girls, which means not if but when I.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
You're every woman, Wait, is it six hundred or is
it six thousand a half?

Speaker 1 (25:52):
No?

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I probably have. I mean, if we're being honest, I
probably have. We're talking the body, like how many plastic
dolls do I have? Because then there's clothes, which is
a whole other thing. Yeah, it's not even quantifiable. Oh wow,
So they're not They're not like in short or anything
or like, is it like like a filing system. Are
they all in a safe yeah? Are they invent?

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Are there?

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Is there an archive in our inventory? Or they're kind
of spread out? Like at the motel and the reception,
we have maybe three two or three dozen of my
my real vintage collection. So if you go in there,
some of those dolls are like they amn near on
a thousand dollars, don't steal them. And then at my
condo where I keep at my like uh drag studio,
that's where I have like most of my vintage ones.

(26:35):
That's where I have I have a number one Barbie
deep in the closet, buried because that's a very valuable piece.
Mind sent signed by Ruth Handler. Two. So I have
a lot, and I'm always looking. I mean, I've stopped,
I've started narrowing. So now I'm in the middle of
getting rid of my nineties because most of what I
collect is like sixties mad Barbie. So I'm getting rid

(26:56):
of a lot of my nineties Barbie right now because
I just I need to thin the herd. All collectors
do this.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
It's like her Flop in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
No Barbie in the nineties, I believe is honestly the
Golden era, because we're talking like tan, orange skin, blue eyeshadow,
this big white hair, and every look is like ice skates,
roller skates, ice cream glitter. It's nuts because for a
good like mid two thousands to twenty fifteen, it was,

(27:29):
in my opinion, the least interesting time Barbie was in
jeans and T shirts, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Ooh, normcore Barbie.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Kind of like, I mean, there's important things they do now,
like career of the Year Barbie. It will be this
year she's a robot technician. This year she's running for president,
and like.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
That year podcaster.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Maybe she's a podcaster. One year she was like a
music producer, so she had like a little keyboard in
a computer and headphones. But I of course like the
heightened versions. So like when Barbie a few years ago
started doing the extra dolls, It's like, that's fierce when
they're in like fur coats and pumps, and because Barbie
used to be so aspirational and theatrical, and I feel

(28:12):
that for a while it was getting really joggers and
T shirt as a collector. It wasn't only the collector
dolls were cool. But want I like a world where
I can walk through Target and see dolls that I want,
you know, I want those to be cool too. Yeah,
it's hard. I mean the dolls are made from plastic,
and plastics made from oil and natural oils are all

(28:34):
loose going up in price, and when you have like
I'm sure Walmart or whatever is like we'll buy this
meny dolls from you, matel but they have to be
under ten dollars to beat this price point. Then it
makes the toy company and the not the decorators, the designers,
and the toy company like they're limited because they have
to make a doll that's accessible. They can't spend all

(28:56):
the money because then it's gonna be one hundred fifty dollars.
Like I am fine with that, but yeah, you're like whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, but a little like Mary Sue shopping a target
in you know, like Kansas City.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, like it's have you ever been in like a
CBS and they have like an eight dollar doll where
she's just in this from suit. They still have to
have an impulse purchase level doll. Yeah. For the kid
who's like nagging at the store, is like can I
just have one?

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Well, the ones that I got to get, Like when
I was a kid and like wasn't allowed to have dolls.
It was like when I had a couple dollars and
I was like didn't have supervision. That's when I was
able to like buy the you know, Walgreens Aisle Barbie
and then hiding that I kept in my closet that
my parents didn't know about and would play with them

(29:45):
in secret.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Right, Oh wow, that was that's your doll origin story?

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Was that is my doll origin story. It's like covered
in shame because of like you know, like the you
know whatever it was saying about like my gender, like
my queerness or whatever. You know, it was very, very shameful.
I knew that I was not allowed to have them
because I already did too many girly things, and you know,
like I think my mom kind of looked the other way,
but I knew that it was wrong. And now I

(30:12):
look back on it and like, of course I wanted
to play with dolls. Hello, Like why is it? Why
was it so shameful?

Speaker 2 (30:18):
But it really was, honestly, Well, it's not a two
way street either, Like if your daughter wants to talk
a truck, no one cares, But if your someone wants
a barbie, it's an issue.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yes, say that.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
I'm so glad earlier that you brought up the kind
of like the boy girl toys and McDonald's, because that
was such like a moment in the culture, like like
and and the kind of fascism required for me to
get a NASCAR toy as a child, like.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
I don't want that fucking Nascar toy, Like, how dare
that was so rude?

Speaker 3 (30:46):
I was like that it was it was violence, honestly almost.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
There was something almost more aspirational for me too about
like the McDonald's Happy Meal Barbies, because a lot of
times the hair was plastic and sculpted, so it was like,
she's almost like a religious totem. She's like a little
statue of the perfect woman. And I mean, as a kid,
I really was just worshiping the dolls. I mean before
I understood, before I understood that she was sort of

(31:16):
at that point in the nineties, Barbie was almost doing drag.
She was parodying femininity on such a high level. I mean,
miss Yvonne Barbie peg Bundy. There was this pocket of
like women doing drag that was like I think probably
a response to women's movements like in the nineties, like

(31:37):
shaved heads and tape over the titties. And there was
this beginning conversation about what we expected women and like
me and me from Drew Carrey, it's like, when we
show what women are supposed to be like, and we
pushed that a little bit. We show how stupid it
is to expect women to do anything or be any
type of way. You know, That's something I'm always wanting
to explore with Tricksy, especially in the beginning, was like,

(32:00):
if my waist is this big, and my titties are huge,
and my hairs and all this is if you look
at me and see a woman, I think that's actually
very illuminating that, like I read, doesn't do I look
like your mother or your sister? No, So like it's
interesting that you see women when I look fucking crazy.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
I'm sure you look like someone's mother or sister.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
And I will I will say, like when I got
out of Texas, They're like, your hair reminds me my mom.
I'm like, can I see it? And I have to

(32:49):
say so, I actually watched her unboxing of your number one,
of your number one Barbie, the original was it nineteen
sixty five Barbie just off the Fountain nineteen fifty nine?

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
I have to say that the original Barbie, her mug
was pretty cunty, like she had like like thin brows
and a side eye, and she had like, you know,
like thick eyeliner leg She.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Looked kind of her face is giving a little like she's.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Like you sure, and I'll say she's she's a little
severe looking for a child's toy, I will say. And
that's part of why, you know, in nineteen fifty eight,
when the handlers were showing Barbie toys used to be
purchased this way. There would be a toy convention at
let's say the Radison San Diego, and all the toy
store owners in the country would fly to town and they

(33:38):
would go hotel room to hotel room, and they would
get pitched new toys by little toy developers. And that's
how toy stores would stock shelves. They would try to
predict what's going to be big or like, this isn't
out yet. And Barbie was a brand new thing, and
you have to imagine they thought this is gonna be
a major hit, and they barely did numbers. I mean,

(33:59):
everybody was mortified and grossed out by this doll when
it was shown at the nineteen fifty eight toy fair.
So then the first run of Barbie, which is that
number one with like the really cunty face and she
looks not even nice, she looks severe. That run of
those was under three hundred thousand pieces like maybe two

(34:19):
h and fifty because it was never Nobody thought it
was going to be a hit except the people making it.
And if you don't know this too, this is crazy.
Mattel was one of the first companies to realize you
don't have to sell to the child. You have to
sell to the parent, because that's ultimately who buys the product.

(34:39):
So Mattel was the first company, basically one of the
first companies to put commercials for toys during the children's
cartoon hours. Nobody had thought to do that. Like if
you sell it to the child, the child will sell
it to the parent. Basically that's how you get a
toy sold. And so that's part of those commercials is

(35:02):
like popping up during cartoon breaks. Is what made it
go from like a toy at a convention that no
one cared about to like basically Ferbie in the nineties,
like clamoring to a sensation. Yeah, and I mean only
a few toys have broken through like that if you
think of like easy Bake oven or there's only a
few toys that have had a complete whirlwind in Mattel.

(35:26):
Mattel in the first three years went from nobody to
the I think that the number one toy company in
the world in like three years. But she was initially
a flop, which is kind of great, a total flop,
like less than a flop. People being like you're joking right,
Like this all has nipples. This is disgusting. This, this
is just sickles. Maybe the og Ones had at least,

(35:50):
like I think the original prototype had nipples and they
removed them before they went to shelf.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Oh, I imagine they were hard nipples and not sort
of like a rubbery song like deep.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Brown and like this big around. Yeah, dinner plates.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Put nipples back on barbies. I'll say.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
If you watch the documentary Tiny Shoulders on Hulu, it
opens with like a reenactment of that. I think it
was Ryan who owns the patent on Barbie, who he
did own the patent on Barbie. He basically picked up
the doll, took a nail file and shaved off the
nipples and was like, no, it's perfect, and that's kind
of like the lore of how they did it.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
No, which they still are.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
People are still hung up on nipples.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
So oh yeah, I mean you get my nipples sanded off.
This weekend, I did not have a good time.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I know, now are all the girls just standing off
their nipples? It's the culture there are.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
I want to know, what which of the barbies do
you know within your knowledge that were like controversial or
like recalled or like created hubbub I know, like one
of the things that I was thinking of was like
kind of I want to say, like in the aughts,
there was a pregnant barbie that was recalled because she
didn't have a wedding ring. That was like a huge

(37:05):
thing and it was like I can't get pregnant out
of wedlock or whatever, and they were all recalled.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Are there any other like controversial barbie stories like that?
There's a lot, And I want to say, I don't
work for Mattel, but I will descend them until the
day I die. This is a doll that's been out
for seventy years. So if you're going to judge the
dolls of sixty years ago by the standards of today,
you're always disappointed. Okay, Like, but you know when they
did slumber Party, there was a slumber party barbie that

(37:33):
came with a scale and a diet book and the
inside or the back of it said donate that hasn't
aged well. I don't think it was an issue at
the time, but it was, you know, as not age
at the time.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
They were like, oh my god, thanks for reminding me
not to eat well.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
I wear a lot of vintage clothes, and I mean
when I shot vintage, I'm like, we're women seventy pounds
and I'm like, I think they were like, clothes are
this big, nonstretched, fabrics waste.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
It's like when you go to like a medieval museum
and all the doors are like this tall, and you're like,
totally people were extremely short.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
They were, and then you know, there's there's so many
I mean, there was a doll called teen Talk Barbie
where if you pushed a button on her back, she
said phrases. It was in the eighties or the early nineties.
One of the phrases she said was math is hard,
and that was controversial for a female toy to be said,
like women can't do math, but yes, math is math

(38:29):
famously hard. That's what I'm saying. I'm like the apologist,
So don't ever expect me to get mad, because I'm like,
you know, there's things that are a little more transparently,
like an oversight like there was an Oreo Barbie, that
there there was an Orio Barbie. She came as black
or white, and like a black Barbie called Orio Barbie.
I would you know, No, I'm sure they didn't love

(38:52):
that that happened. And then earing Magic Ken, they said
he was gay. It depends if you want to say
that's controversy or not.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
He would so I own an earring Magic Ken and
he was I actually have it on my desk.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
I was he looks. I mean, I don't think he's gay.
I think he's a response to Vanilla Ice, who was
so big at the time. Well it looks like Ice,
so well I okay, So the story that I read
online and I don't know if this is like I
only read like, you know, one article about it.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
But like that they they were trying to like, you know,
rebrand Ken. They didn't know if they should sell Ken
dolls anymore, if they should find a new doll that
wasn't named Ken or whatever. And they surveyed teen girls
about what they wanted in a Ken doll, and then
and teen girls and like you know, young girls were like,
this is what I want, and they like you know,
gave a bunch of recommendations. Yes, they gave a bunch

(39:41):
of recommendations on the styling. And so for the virgins
who can't see, this is a this is a you
know what do we got like platinum highlight kind of blowout?

Speaker 2 (39:50):
We got a notch? Is that a notch? And as
I wrote, now ear rings. But also like also, this
is exactly how Vanila I is dressed exactly top.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
And motemnr on his inner lip that says come pig.
He's holding a bottle of rush.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
This is but this is like a blue pleathar vest,
a lavender messher and a literal cock ring around his neck,
Like what is going on like this? I'm not surprised
girls voted for this because like I mean tricksy and
I'm sure you know this better than anyone that like,
the main market for drag and like lots of queer

(40:29):
culture is teenage girls.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Oh, gay men don't even like me. I'm the audience
is thirteen year old sister girls cis gender women periods.
That's what's interesting with all this like discourse about drag
being appropriate for kids. I'm somebody who accidentally has the
maybe the youngest audience. But I have never said I

(40:54):
liked kids or pulled punches when it comes to saying
disgusting and horrible things.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
So I'm just talk about you how you don't like
children one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
And I mean when I get on stage, I talk
about like rimming my dad. So I've never I've It's
not a bait and switch where I've pretended to be
kid friendly. Now I've always said I'm not kid friendly.
But then they come to the show. So what am
I supposed to do? You know, I'm not going to
kick them out because when I was thirteen, I felt
like an adult and I wanted to watch adult shit.

(41:25):
So whatever.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
There's also and they have disposable money for merch exactly.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Hello, you know, hard just to eat gay guys to
do anything. Well, what if something better comes along? Like okay, fine,
don't come you know, But I mean, ask any working
drive queen if they make more money at a brunch
with a bunch of gay guys or a bunch of bachelorettes,
ask them who they make more money with, and they'll
play the truth. You know. I recently DJed like I
recently picked up a little DJ gig in Australia, and

(41:52):
sometimes I like to pick up DJ gigs under the
radar and not telling you when I'm going because I
just want to play for fun and not like have
to be tricksy in a way, you know. And I
picked up a DJ gig at the Steamworks in Perth
and I just went out of drag DJ at Steamworks
Perth and a few people recognized me and said hi.

(42:13):
But all in all, it was like so refreshing to
be ignored by gay guys again and drag like, because
that was my experience for the first like ten years
in drag was just like gay guys barely paying attention
to me. And now it's mostly not gay guys and
they're very much paying attention to me, which I love,
of course, But it was like it was a reality

(42:34):
check to just play for gay guys ignoring me again.
I was like, how this makes me appreciate the audience
I have because these guys at Steamworks could don't care
if I'm dead or alive, and what songs I play
do not matter, So.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
I've never been as long as there's a rhythm for
them to you know.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Oh, and I was playing all my nasty music that
really wouldn't fly at like a dance club. But I
was playing like you know, gross, like spoken wordy, nasty, nasty.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Wait.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
I have never been to a Steamworks branch. Did they regularly?
I didn't know they have DJ sets at Steamworks that's
a thing. I've never been to one either until this one.
And it was it was like it's like a it's
a steam it's a sauna. What is a Steamworks for
the virgins? It's just like it's I mean, I'm not
the expert. This was my first time at one. It

(43:23):
seemed like a bathhouse. Basically, it's a little private rooms
with a spa and a steam shower and a gym,
and it had a little The one in Perth had
a little mini nightclub basically had a room with a
bar and a little dance floor and a DJ booth
and it was a nice DJ booth. It was it
was like four CDJs, like really nice, brand new equipment.

(43:43):
I was like, I was like, this is really nice.
And I was like I've played at other bars in
Perth and they don't have as nice of equipment as
the DJ equipment at Steamers.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
All right, like yeah, we're getting scrills in next week,
I know.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
But it was just it's it's if you ever like
are out and you think it's me behind, if you
see like a ball guy DJing, it probably is me.
And I just didn't advertise it because I just wanted
to just be invisible. But I love that. I mean,
you you a legend.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Kind of like doing a incognito set at steam Marks
is kind of reminding me of like when Bette Midler
used to do when she was like the kind of
singer for bat gay bath houses in New York and
stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Oh yeah, and I was like the only one there
with clothes on. Yeah, it was like I had a
T shirt on, and I was like vastly overdressed. Like
also's naked people were on the dance floor naked, just
naked dancing, and I was like, all right, work, that's
so fun.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I also was like I can't swing you.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
I can't take pictures with any of you because right
now in the States they literally google drag queens and
pull a picture and it's usually mine and they put
on the news and call me a pedophile. So like,
I can't take any pictures here. Like then again, at
a at a bar place like that, pictures are prohibited anyway, so, right, Rose,
have you ever been to a steamworks?

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Not a steam works, but I've been to many bath
houses many, she's.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Any bath house, water in the kitchen and get naked.
I'm just I'm just imagine.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
I'm just imagining just like on a dance floor naked
that I feel like logistically that could be dangerous.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Well, I mean to be fair, when I've been at
a bath house, I certainly haven't been on the dance floor.
I've been doing the other things that you do at
a bath house, right.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Other things that you do at a bath house. Like
I like the idea that somebody has like a steamworks
membership and uses it, like it's the fucking why they
go there to actually use a treadmill and shower and
leave mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
And they're just sort of like they're like they're like
on the elliptical and there's like someone getting railed in
the background, and they're just like listening to like our
podcast while they work out.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, they're listening to like NPR, Yeah fresh Air.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Yeah, that is kind of my my gym in Brooklyn
and on a gym that I will not name, like
I joined when it like in an in an earlier
stage when it's it's not as crowded as it it
wasn't as crowded as it is now. And like I
signed up and I was like, oh, this is a
family gym for like local Brooklyn people and like you know,
their dads or whatever, and and you know, I've been there.

(46:08):
I've been there for a while now.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
And like after like a month or two, I was like, Oh,
everyone here is fucking Like everyone here is looking and
fucking and this is a gay gym. And the way
you're describing is kind of my gym because like the
actual like cis hat like Brooklyn dads are just like
like you know, in the steam room, like don't mind me,
I'm just getting my steam in. I know you guys
got to do your business, but like I'm just a

(46:30):
dad or whatever. It's I love the it's really as
a coexist moment. Well that was the other thing I
was DJing somewhere. We're to be honest, most people there
were trying to keep a low profile, and most like
straight guys and stuff, they don't know who I am,
and if they figure out, they're not gonna telling why.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Way, so right exactly secret safe with me. Tricksy I

(47:09):
do really want to know, because you know, we are,
as we've said, like we're kind of in the year
of Barbie right now, or like one of the year's Barbie,
because Greta Garway's Barbie film is coming out this summer.
What are you, like, are you excited? What do you
want from it? Like, do you or do you have
any suspicions now that we've got a couple of trailers

(47:32):
out about what it could be about, like what's I
haven't even.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Watched the trailer because it feels like I don't know.
I want to go and blind. And I also, you
have to understand, anytime anything Barbie adjacent ever happens, my
phone blows up. And so I also am like already early,

(47:56):
like inundated about it, Like you're hearing about this movie
constantly for over a year. So it was like by
the time the trailers out and everything's reacting to it.
I also, this is so crazy and this is my
own damage. I also feel like, great, now everyone's a bandwagoner,
do you.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
I like it as somebody who can name the year
in the name of every outfit in that trailer, I'm
sure I'm like, oh, did you like it? Did you
like that movie?

Speaker 1 (48:19):
You're gonna be sitting theater like you're all a bunch
of fakes, Get out of here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
But I also I love the Sims, for example, and
I hate when people who love the Sims do nothing
but shit on the Sims. The same way I hate
when people like I love drag Race, but there's too
much of it, there's too much. Like I hate people
complaining about the wealth of something they like, like as

(48:44):
if it's the Hunger Games and President Snow forces people
to watch drag Race, Like when people complain about too
many drag Race, I'm like, don't watch it, Mary, who
fucking cares.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
I'm definitely forced to watch drag Race. So it's definitely
a state sanctioned like three to four hours drag race.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah. And if in New York, if you don't watch
drag Race, every franchise AOC gives you a parking ticket.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
No, actually you get you get tax breaks for watching
drag races. But I actually, I have a very open mind,
and I'm sure I'm gonna go see it when it
comes out, but I have no expectations, and I go
into things wanting to like them. So I'm not a hater.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
I'm sure that Barbie can't imagine.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Nobody's gonna hate this movie except the most hardcore, annoying
Barbie fans where they're like nothing was ever going to
be good enough for them. I no matter what, I yeah,
I want.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
I was going to ask you about the trailer. I
would love to know your take on it. If there's
something that happens. I won't spoil it. But there's something
that happens in like the first five seconds of the
trailer that is so gratifying, and it's like it's like
it's just like an Ahama.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Where you're like, oh, this is the movie I'm gonna get.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
But I will say, you know, you were talking earlier
about like Barbie of the nineties, the blown out hair,
like the golden era of Barbie. That definitely he does
feel like the Barbie they are channeling. Obviously, they're tapping
into a lot of different eras of barbiees and making
specific references to barbiees throughout the years, but you can.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Tell it's like a nineties movie.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
And I do feel like Ryan Gosling's Ken is very
earring Magic Ken, like I think it's it feels like
a reference.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah, and I mean yeah, yeah, he looks gay. I
think that's intentional. It's also a business and I think
it says a lot about nineties Barbie that when you
draw car if you drew a cartoon of Barbie quick,
you would draw nineties Barbie. You wouldn't draw two thousands
of Barbie without draws. Yeah, you would draw this girl. Yeah,
so now he has something to do with When I

(50:43):
dub nineties Barbie like the golden age of Barbie, I'm
not being like it's my preference, and so it's true.
I think it. I think they actually etched her in permanently,
because the other Barbie you think of would maybe be
be simsuit Barbie from the fifties, Like that's the other
barbe you think of. But when I think of Barbie,
I mean I think of like I don't know, like

(51:04):
roller skates, cassette player, like gymnastics ninety shit, that's the
Barbie that I think of. I But like I said,
I have no expectations, and I think it's like I'm
just excited. I mean, I really, to my core, to
my bones, love and respect Barbie and anything, any little nibble,
any little I'm happy for it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
But are you furious that Margot Robie was cast instead
of you?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
I do think it's funny to it's interesting to think
that wasn't an originally Amy Schumer. I think that that was.
I think that that was in the works. Yeah, I'm
pretty sure I.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Think it was. Originally.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
When I first heard about the movie, I heard that
Amy Schumer was playing Barbie like four years ago, and
then I'm I love I love Morgart Robbie. I'm sorry,
like Suicide Squad, she gives Okay, she's amazing Suicide Squad
movies and it Tanya Girl Girl Girl Once Part a Time.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Hal.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
But you know, I'm just gonna say this too. I
don't like good movies. This year I watched like like
Tar the Whail Triangle of Sadness, Like that is not
for me, that type of movie. I watch it like
stank faced, like this sucks, and then like but but
I'm like, let's rewatch the original Super Marios movie, Like
that's my level of movie that I love. And so

(52:23):
I know I'm gonna like this was it.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Like me, You're like me, I prefer I draw this division.
I like movies not films, and I think that's a
very clear difference between the two. I like the populist entertainment,
and I definitely think I do think because of who's involved,
Barbie is going to straddle the two like it's going

(52:45):
to be because of the Barbie of it all, it's
going to be accessible. But I also think because it's
Greta Gerwig, that there's going to be something intelligent there
by the.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Way, the way that I thought Greta Greta Gerwig was
Greta Thumberg, and I was like, oh is it not.
I just was like that climate girl. I was like, yeah,
Like I'm not like a smart film person like David
is like the Ring of the Letter bled. No, I
just watch what I watched. I re watched The Office

(53:18):
over and over again.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Marco Robbie is really good at being unhinged, and you
can tell that this is going to be a slightly
unhinged Barbie like without you know, leaning to into it.
Like they're definitely making it a weird movie.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
And we had a hard enough on the.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Pod and she talked a little bit about it and like,
I don't think I realized, like how fucking stacked this
cast is like do a lipa in this movie like
so many people where I was like, oh, you're in
this movie, like and so now it's like Sarah Yes, but.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
It's also it's also like The Ocean's eleven Yes, where
it's like it's the Knives out of it All, where
you're like, we need to get seventy five as actors. Now.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Yeah, the only way you can have a hit these days.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
It needs to be all unknowns or all like literally
Barack Obama has to be in.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
It all stars, all winners. Yes, totally, but you.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Know, honestly, and this is a little bit of a throwback.
The best Barbie we've ever seen in film, hands down
and TV because you know, we've seen Barbie Perry in
our SNL. Although I love those Epsenel skits where they
have like the Barbie Instagram account. Have you seen those?
Those skits are amazing. The best Barbie we've ever seen
in cinema or media or whatever is Barbie from Toy

(54:38):
Story two when they go through the toy aisle and
there's tour guide Barbie. I mean that whole scene. But
you know, because we get Barbie in the form of
Gwendy and small soldiers, we get Barbie, like we get
a Barbie without saying Barbie in a lot of types
of media, and in Toy Story, we actually got branded Barbie,

(54:58):
which made it so fun and they wrote her so funny. Yeah,
that was like formative, like that whole scene as a
kid watching where they like go down the Barbie aisle.
I was like, Wow, there's like these moments where like
my creativity or like my vision jumps leaps.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
That was one of them.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
I would say. One of the other ones was the
Jeremy Scott like think pink Barbie collection. When I saw
that runway, my mind, like, I think my head exploded.
I think my fontanelles gave out and my brain shot
out of the back of my head because I just
had never I mean, I guess I love heather At
and it reminded me of Heather Ret, but I had
never love love. I mean, early heather At is very

(55:42):
very barbiecore Barbie Court.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Heatherat is a fashion brand that used to exist and
I went to one of their shows like when I
first moved to New York, and it was like a gag.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
I yeah, I have no ing, I've never heard of them,
but I'm curious just as a collector. Like something that
I was really shook by when I was like, you
know when I watch your unboxing video, was that you
you actually unbox these Barbies? Do you like take all
of your dolls like out of boxes and like unfasten
them or like I thought it was like a collector's

(56:17):
thing to like not unboxed toys. It's like a very
like I don't know anything about collector world.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
It's like what how do you decide like whether to
unpackage or unpackage, like what to undo and not undo
what you preserve? Well, nineteen fifty nine Barbie, it's not
like she came shrink crapped. Yeah, like toys, toys back then,
we're just you could just open the lid of it,
you know, like it's in the box. It's just a
box sell of my toys. Like I have a Francy.

(56:46):
I have a mod black Francy. And you know, black
dolls when they started making them were always harder to
come by, and they were made in a lot smaller numbers,
so a lot of times the black doll is worth more.
I have like a black Fancy and she's wrapped in
plastic like some of them if they come in the
store plastic. Some of them have I have really old

(57:08):
cool ones that have like the price tag from the
store on it on the plastic in the box, my
nineteen fifty nine, Like it was clear it had been
open and handled before, so it wasn't like the steaks
were me peeling back plastic, you know. But if I
like something now, I'll just get two so that I
have one in the closet in one I can fuck
around with.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Oh that's smart. I've been thinking about this recently because
I'm sort of like in my collectible era. I'm like
going back and finding toys from when I was a
kid that I didn't get to have and buying them now.
And I did recently buy And I know you'll appreciate
this tricksy because I know that you like Buffy. I
bought a Willow action figure recently and it's of her.

(57:50):
It's Vampire Willow, and I have it in the box.
I have it taken it out, and I do want
to play with it, but there's a part of me
that wants it to stay pristine in the box. And
I mean, I have told this story on the pod before,
but when I used to get toys as gifts when
I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
I would tape them back up into the box to
like preserve that. It was like really psycho behavior. No,
I think, I honestly think that the packaging, to me,
is part of the collectible. It's not a shell. I
think it's part of it. I think it being packaged
is part of and the way it's packaged is also
part of the time capsule of it. This is how

(58:28):
things were packaged at this time, and with Barbie especially,
every aspect of it is a time capsule. This is
what women wore. Oh, Barbie was a flight attendant. That's
because at this time women that was one of the
first jobs that women were doing. Like, every part of
it is a time capsule, and so the packaging is
part of that, the fonts, the colors, the wording. So

(58:48):
most of the time I don't want to open it.
But because I collect mostly like sixty two to let's say,
like seventy one, because I collect that era, a lot
of what I have is not boxed, and if I
have it boxed, it's worth way more and I have
to like care for it like in a safety deposit box.

(59:08):
Like I have my number I have my number one
on display here, but it's not my number one. It's
a reproduction of a number one because I want people
to ask about it and I want to say, yes,
I really have it, but this isn't it because I
don't trust you in my home.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
It's a conversation piece. Yeah, when you die, do you
want to be put into a sort of life size
Barbie box and wrapped in plastic? We can, because it happen, but.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
That's kind of giving Dori and Corey. Don't you think
wrapping a body in plastic?

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, you know, maybe glass?

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, maybe I will. Oh my god, this is horrible,
but uh.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Maybe.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I don't know how I want to die. I probably
want a pink coffin though, for sure, or a pink eurn,
like I want. Pink means a lot to me, and
it's my you know, it's sort of my my trauma
bond with that color is so extreme and like it
means so much to me that you know, everything being
pink makes me. I mean just the color pink makes
me happy. I mean that's like corny and most people

(01:00:13):
when they're like the pink Lady of Hollywood or whatever,
it's like a sign of like, ooh, that person's wild
when they're like, I'm all pink every day, but I
love pink, and so I don't know. But then again,
one time I saw it was like the show Obsessed
or with this woman. If you guys ever seen that
episode of that, that woman her husband died and she
would lick her finger and fund dip his ashes, and

(01:00:35):
she was addicted to eating his ashes. So if David
doesn't do that, if David doesn't do that for me,
he doesn't love me. And they were like, well, what
happens when you run onto the ashes? And she was like,
I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Is I'm going to do that to you when I
kill you?

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Oh yeah, oh thank you, that's so sweet.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
But I'll also snort your ashes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Oh yeah, I mean you'll get a I don't even
know how that would make you feel.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Probably it will be in the hines on Fire Island
and I'll be like, this one's for Fran. Actually, this
one is Fran.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Am I am I an upper or a downer?

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
What do you think? I think you start as an
upper and then we go down?

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Okay, love, Yeah, that's a that's a good. That's a
good little arc.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
I wow.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
I mean maybe I'll be in my doll collecting era too. Now, Rose,
now that you're doing you should, I mean, if I could.
If you guys are really anybody who's listening wants to
really nerd out. There's this book called Forever Barbie by
MG Lords, and it's basically her like deep dive into
the cultural, societal whatever significance is of Barbie, and she

(01:01:38):
really elegantly illustrates the extreme butterfly effect that that toy
had on the world, because in some ways Barbie influences
the world, but in many ways, Barbie is just reflecting
what's going on. So like in the sixties when like
or like in the early seventies, when like Brady Bunch happened,

(01:02:00):
suddenly Malibu Barbie happened and she happened to look a
lot like jan or Marsha Brady, and then like you know,
there's just there's ways where you can track when Barbie
is mirroring what's popular in the world. And then because
Bardie's around so long, you can track ways that Barbie
itself because in nineteen fifty nine, what was Barbie style.
Barbie style was reflecting the fashion of teenagers of the time,

(01:02:22):
and now Barbie style is its own style, yeah, which
I think is really interesting. Yeah. I mean that's as
we've noted.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
That's like why you know, the barbiees of the of
the aughts were wearing north faces and ugs as as
they should be Tom's shoes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
You know, not Tom shoes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Yeah. Next, like I bet you next year Barbie's are
going to have those dumb puffy red boots that are
going to be big. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Yeah, I guess the thing that maybe the thing to
end on is like I'm thinking about, like what's the
what's the Barbie of the twenty twenties, Like, like what
is cool? I know that you know, she is her
own style obviously, but like hypothetically, like I don't even
know what twenty twenties culture.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
It's kind of like twenty twenty five Barbie. Okay, here's
what here's what is it? What he's wearing. She's wearing
a pair of Margiala tabbies. She's got a bottle of Estradle,
and she's got she's got a microphone set to do
her podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Oh yeah, and but she DJs on the weekends for sure,
totally and by DJing, I mean, she just has a
MacBook and she literally is on Spotify. Yeah, yeah, she's
on Spotify. Yeah, And I think I think they can
of the twenty twenty threes. It's like, you know, Trimex,
it's ozempic, it's it's injectable. Tanner, it's a unit, it's

(01:03:34):
a mile unit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yes, he's on a.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Turkey for the hairlines. Your size too, yeah yeah yeah.
But but I mean, if we're ending all jokes aside,
like when you really sit and think of like the
massive impact. We always talk about the impact Barbie has,
but when you really think about the massive positive impact,
I mean, this toy opened up a possibility for women

(01:03:57):
to imagine their life to be anything at a time
where they were only encouraged to imagine to be moms.
I mean, it really is incredible, and I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
For the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
To be honest, the Doll of twenty twenty three is
going to probably be whatever most popular look for the movie.
That's what's because you know that Mattel is going to
make outfits of all of those for sale.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Yes, damn.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Like yeah, I feel like now people for the next
year and or two, Like, just as you said, barbiecore
is going to be back again, and we're all going
to be dressing like Barbie's and you know, Bigbocre has
been back for a while. You know, I think of
like faggots with white walls and gold fixtures and plants
in their houses, like that is so like needs to
be retired. That like geriatric millennial approach to like living

(01:04:40):
is so tired, no whispers, Yes, it's so tired. And
so I think Barbiecore is a reflection of I mean,
we experienced this at the Trixy Motel. Maximalism is swinging
back so hard and what's more like fabricated and fun
and bouncy and synthetic feeling than like Barbiecore. I mean.
And what's funny is it's gonna surge and it's gonna

(01:05:02):
go away, but not for that long. I meane, Barbiecore.
Now it's gonna be all these cool articles about it,
but it's always around.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
It's around, She'll really about.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Yeah, all pink is the same as all blacks. Some
people were all.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Black, some people were all think that's the binary. Those
are the two genders. Slide into our dms and let
us know, are you a Barbie girl? Are you just ken?
Did you play with dolls when you were a kid.
Are you a doll?

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
We want to know? You can also buy our merchant
Like a Virgin for twenty sixty nine dot com and
become patron at Patreon dot com slash Like a Virgin
four weekly bonus episodes. You can follow us at Like
a Virgin for twenty sixty nine on Instagram, and you
can follow me anywhere you want at ros Daumu, and

(01:05:54):
you can follow me at Franz squish Goo anywhere you like.
Like a Virgin is an iHeartRadio production, and our producer
is Phoebe Unter, with support from Lindsay Hoffman and Nikki Etour.
Until next week, Au revoir Bye, good bye, Well and

(01:06:18):
here's a clip from this week's Patreon episode. You can
become a patron at Patreon dot com slash Like a Virgin.
The book that we're talking about today is one that
I mentioned on the main show earlier this year, Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters, which I finished a month ago now
at this point, just because of various scheduling things, it

(01:06:39):
took a long time for me to read it, and
then took a while for us to actually record this episode,
so thank you virgins who actually did read the book
and have been anxiously awaiting us talking about it. But
we are going to be talking about it today, and
we'll also be talking about the two films that were

(01:07:00):
that were adapted from it, the BBC mini series also
called Fingersmith, and then the film The Handmaiden, And.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
These are so I just for the virgins have never
read the book. I have never seen the miniseries. But
The Handmaid in its adaptation, which is very different from
the book, we'll get into it is extremely different. Is
one of my favorite queer films ever. Like I think
it's like such a good point of reference for anybody
that considers themselves a sinophile in the queer space. It's

(01:07:32):
like to meet required viewing if you want to brush
up on like queer cinema in general, because like part
Chan Wook is, I mean, such a phenomenal director. But
beyond that, it's just like you don't see WLW romances
like this ever, like not even.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
In a case do see WLW sex scenes like this
in porn, which I think is part of the problem. Well,
and we'll we'll get to my thoughts on the hand
Made And I first would like to talk about the
book to give you some context for when we get Yes,
please to conversations. So Fingersmith is a two thousand and

(01:08:11):
two novel written by Sarah Waters, who is a renowned
British lesbian author. She primarily writes historical fiction, and most
of her most celebrated work has lesbian themes lesbian characters.
Her novel Tipping the Velvet, which is her first book,
is my favorite book of all time, Oh Fingersmith, really.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Of all time, like all time meaning, like of all
time meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
But it is among like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
A top ten books of all time. I assume it's
not like the number one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
No, it is the number one. It's my favorite book.
My job is I've said this on the podcast before. Okay, no, no, no,
I'm not doubting you. I'm just I'm just always learning
and relearning your favorites and your tops, which I love well.
I mean, is that that surprising because as we've talked
about on this, I love historical fiction and specifically queer history,

(01:09:04):
and this is really well written queer historical fiction, which
is usually not the case. Like usually it's like you know,
a mod it's like Roman honest ripper. Yeah, yeah, the
the term that we coined. So you know, I loved

(01:09:25):
Tipping the Velvet, and Tipping the Velvet is very much
about queerness, but it's much more and and it's about identity,
but it has much more to do with gender, because
Tipping the Velvet is all about cross dressing. It's about
these performers, these female performers who dress up as men,

(01:09:48):
and this woman who like become this woman who becomes
a rent boy when she's like cast out by her lover,
she starts dressing up as a man and engaging sex
work and then you know, becomes sort of like an
in house concubine of this rich lesbian who has this
circle of other rich lesbians. So I loved Sarah Waters,

(01:10:17):
and I had probably seen like an article or something
talking about Fingersmith earlier this year. So I bought it.
And it was very hard getting into because the beginning
is very slow, and I sort of like waffled on
about it for a while, and then like one day

(01:10:41):
I finally just like sat down and really powered through
the beginning, and once it picked up a certain amount
of steam, I just could not put it down. And
so the novel is set in the Victorian era in England.
The there are two protagonists, but the one whose story
we follow from the beginning is an orphan named Sue

(01:11:04):
who is part of a family of thieves and criminals,
and she has been raised by this woman missus Sucksby,
and their family are all these like pickpockets, and they're
called fingersmiths. That's where the title of novel comes from.
And on a dark and stormy night, this family friend

(01:11:24):
called Gentleman comes to their house and says that he
has a job for Sue. He has been posing as
an aristocratic man in this countryside estate, helping this man
who has a large book collection, and he has discovered
that this man has a niece who has like a
huge dowry to her name, and he wants to cheat

(01:11:47):
her out of it. So his plan is that Sue.
He will recommend Sue as this woman her name's Maud,
as her new mate lady's maid, and Sue will help
him woo her and marry her so that he can
get access to her, so that he can get access
to her fortune, and then she will and then she

(01:12:08):
will help him prove that Maud is mad and have
her dumped in a madhouse so that he can you know,
run them UK with her money and Sue will get
a portion of the funds and that will be her
payment for you know, running this con with him