Bianca and Space Ken

I saw the name Bianca someplace today and it reminded me of playing with my cousin Shelby once when I was a kid.

Shelby was my Aunt Katherine’s daughter about the same age as me. She had two dolls; one a normal looking Barbie and another off brand doll from much the same mold that she had named Bianca. The only thing I remember about Bianca was that she had red hair and she was named after a friend of her mom’s. Aunt Katherine insisted I go play with Shelby while she and my mom played rummy. I did not want to play dolls with a girl but boredom took over and I tried to join in.

She gave me a beat up and weathered Ken doll that was clearly not as well loved as the other two. At some point I shaped some aluminum foil around Ken’s shoulders like a short jacket, gave it some peaks or fins down the back and declared he was now an astronaut. Shelby disliked my deviation from her narrative and took Ken away. She also took the foil off of ‘Space Ken’ and put it on Bianca instead and declared she was now ‘Space Barbie.’ I still tried to suggest a few ideas to Shelby but she rejected them all in turn:

“How about we pretend that Ken is from another planet and is visiting Earth for the first time?”

“No, Space Bianca is a princess, and princesses don’t hang out with aliens.”

“Okay, how about this:, Space Ken is Space Barbie’s robot protector and he can shoot lasers from his eyes.”

“That’s stupid,” Shelby said. “Bianca is a Space princess, and Space princesses don’t need robot protectors.”

“Well, what’s your big idea for Space Barbie and Space Ken?”

“I want to play with my dolls the way I want to play with them. Bianca and I are just fine without Space You.”

Later that day, my Aunt Katherine asked me why I wasn’t playing with Shelby? I told her the whole story, including how Space Ken was MY idea and that Shelby had rejected everything and didn’t even want to play Space anything, let alone Space Barbie and Space Ken.

Aunt Katherine listened, and then sniffed critically at me and said, “She can do what she wants with them dolls, but I’m here to tell ya Bianca could never go to space, she smokes too much, if you ask me.”

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