I didn’t have a Ken doll so my Barbies had to do each other.

One of my favourite Barbie games was to pin a hankie across the corner of my Barbie case to create a “shower” (yeah, I also had to get creative about accessories) and have “Ken” (again, played by another Barbie) walk in on Barbie while she was having a shower. Filled with lust by her anatomically incorrect nakedness, “Ken” would grab Barbie and they’d start making out.

I don’t think I knew how to go any further.

Personally, I think those who think Barbie is a bad role model have it all wrong. Thanks to my Kenless world, Barbie introduced me to lesbianism and gender bending. And judging from the stories other women have told me, we’ve actually learned a lot from Barbie. Especially when it came to sex.

In fact, Barbie was the first sexually liberated woman I knew. She did it whenever she wanted, however she wanted, and wherever she wanted and Ken (whether the real deal or Barbie in male drag) just had to go along. Heck, Barbie’s very existence is thanks to a German doll named Bild Lilli, a comic strip character who was a prostitute that wore high heels and fancy clothes. How could Ruth Handler not have expected little girls to shove her in the camper with Ken for a little game of hide the salami when she created Barbie for Mattel back in 1959.

Okay, Ken didn’t have a salami, but that didn’t matter. Sexual experimentation with Barbie was all about exploring those wonderful vague, unformed, okay-I-know-this-feels-good-but-I-don’t-really-get-it feelings of early adolescence.

As Christine told me, “I remember my Ken and Barbie necking, and I know I had Ken lie naked on top of Barbie. I didn't know what to do next.”

Of course, some of us were a little more sexually advanced than others.

“Our Barbies and Kens were usually bi-sexual, with multiple partners over brief periods of time,” AB tells me. “There was orgies, foreplay, S&M, orgasms - everything.”

AB says her “sophisticated” Barbie play might have had something to do with the fact that she played Barbies until she was 14 and, by then, had discovered her dad’s porn stash for inspiration.

Some women, clearly more sexually educated than my perverted wee self, even practiced responsible Barbie sex. Susan’s Barbie was a secretary, she tells me. “At one point I had her getting ready to go into her male boss's office. I remember knowing that Ken-Boss-Man was going to put the moves on her and making sure that my Barbie grabbed a birth control pill from her desk drawer and popped it before going in to his office. I have no idea how I knew about birth control.”

Barbie also trained us early about some of the harsh realities of dating. 

“Barbies were like 30-somethings in the world of dating: a bunch of
good looking dolls all vying for the attentions of one available guy - and all the time not realizing he doesn't even have a decent package,” laughs Sylvia.

For some of us, this anatomical reality was more than a little disturbing. 

“Other than the slap, slap, slap of making Barbie and all her buddies fuck -- highly unsuccessfully given their hard bodies and inflexibility -- I was deeply concerned that they didn't have the right parts,” Helena tells me. “So I burned genitals and nipples on them with a hot wire. I was a pre-pubescent pyro pervert.”

Barbie brought out the macabre in other young girls as well.

Marilou used to like to bury Ken and then have Barbie, his widow, neck with GI Joe during the funeral. She also liked to hang Barbie from the shower, turn it on and have GI Joe rescue her in his big rubber raft (Okay, so there were two available hot guys).

What did I tell you about learning things from Barbie?

And it wasn’t just we girlies that got some early sex-ed from Barbie.

Woody told me that when he was about six, his brother's nine-year-old friend showed him what GI Joe liked to do with Barbie. “He put his head between her legs, and kept moving it from side to side, and up and down,” Woody retells. “When I asked why GI Joe was doing this, he replied, ‘because he loves it, and so does Barbie.’”

It may have confused him at the time, but that nine-year-old boy was teaching him a very important lesson at the time. Because trust me, um, Barbie does love it.