“This Years Girl” by Sally Edelstein Doubleday 1985 Double Page Barbenheimer

When it comes to Barbenheimer this girl was way ahead of the curve by almost 40 years.

As the anticipation of the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer these  2 seemingly diametrically opposed film genres excitement has built to a fever pitch, the phenomenon of Barbenheimer is trending on social media creating memes and merchandise.

Ironically I was juxtaposing storylines about Barbie and bombs way back in 1985 in my book This Years Girl that used paper dolls and their cut-out accessories as a metaphor for the way we adopt the newest fads, fashions, and implicit mentalities with the ease of folding over a paper tab.

This double-page spread shows my 2 boomer girls Robin and Judy playing with their newly acquired Barbie and Ken dolls in 1962, opposite their tips for surviving Fall Out Shelter Living.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I placed these 2 stories together.

“This Years Girl” by Sally Edelstein Doubleday, 1985

“This Years Girl” by Sally Edelstein Doubleday, 1985

While other girls my age coveted a Barbie dream house, I longed for a home fallout shelter, the greatest regret of my life. As the cold war was heating up at the dawn of the 1960’s I pleaded with my parents about the practicality of building a fallout shelter in our basement. To my eternal disappointment, a large clothes closet was built in its stead, the safety of a scratchy Woolrich woolen sweater from ravenous moths clearly more valuable than my own from a nuclear holocaust.