Barbie or Oppenheimer? A Metro Weekly Forum
metroweekly.comdesires like these had to be sublimatedNo Barbies for me! GI Joes. Which I hatedBut used when the neighborhood boys would warBut sometimes I’d swipe Barbies from the girl next doorAnd I’d throw the doll back.
Didn’t need her, oh noI just needed the dress that I’d tug onto my Joe(In narrative terms, this is known as “foreshadowing”But I didn’t know that.
I only knew paddling.)–Penny Sterling, “How I Became A Guy!”Growing up, Caleb Copeland was, not unlike other boys, discouraged from playing with toys designed for girls. “Oddly enough,” he says, “my straight brother was the one who more often played Barbies with my sister.”From a young age, Copeland was afraid of being seen as gay, a fear that he carried with him into his college years.
Today, the 38-year-old identifies not only as queer, but as a “Barbenheimer,” a portmanteau of summer smash hits-to-be — one directed by Greta Gerwig, the other Christopher Nolan — that have been cast as opposing poles of popular culture.Another proud Barbenheimer?
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