Note: Antonio Cerna is the founder and editor of Homo-Neurotic, The Gentleman’s Guide to Art, Fashion, Culture & Nightlife. It’s a great blog, so be sure to check it out.
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I was filling out one of those online surveys recently – my cousin always sends out all these emails like “get to know your family.” And you fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions was “what was your favorite toy growing up?” And I had to think about it because my memories of the toys I had growing up was very vague. The thing is I didn’t have…I don’t remember my toys that well. What I do remember is my sister’s Barbie dolls. She had tons of them. She had black ones, asian ones, every kind of Barbie doll. And I was intrigued by them. I was intrigued by these little humanoids that we would play with, these little people.
And I would design fashion lines for these dolls for my sister out of my mom’s old panty hose. Like, entire collections: this is the “evening look,” and this is the “summer afternoon look.” It was always a fall collection because the pantyhose were always brown or nude colored. So it was always very subdued color palate.
Then I went to go visit cousins and I realized and I learned that little boys are not supposed to play with barbies. I didn’t realize that that’s not what little boys are supposed to do. Nobody gave me a hand book. It was like, this is how little boys behave. I was just going with the flow and the flow was I like these Barbie dolls. So yeah, I was the little cousin who was playing with barbies. And now I’m gay. Thanks Mattel!
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