It was one of two notable gifts, the other was my very own vinyl record.
This was my launchpad into storytelling in two very significant ways. First, it was the precursor to my radio years. Until 1979, I was using my sister's cast-off record player to play her old cast-off records.
For the first time I had something that belonged specifically to me. Granted it was Debby Boone, which I would later abandon for ABBA...
...but it should be clear by now that my life has been filled with interesting detours like that.
I spent the next few months pretending that my Superstar Barbie was performing her songs for sold-out crowds. I took over the big cabinet stereo in the living room, using those funky old 70s lamps as a spotlight, singing every note along with her, vicariously sharing the fame and the glory.
But she was a lonely superstar. This world, unlike my Fisher Price Little People universe, was unpopulated. In November of 1978, I got Ballerina Barbie...
And by Christmas a month later, when I was given yet another Barbie, some Barbie furniture and a radio, I was a girl ready to explore the possibilities.
Not because I wanted to tell stories necessarily. This was simply wonderful, glorious playtime. As a somewhat only child (several half-siblings, all of whom were adults by the time I was seven,) I learned early on to entertain myself. I read, of course, and I overdosed on cheesy TV. I was known to spend a Saturday or two pretending to be Jimmy's unscripted sister as he traipsed happily through Living Island....
... or slide onto my sofa just like I was hopping into the General Lee, as a yet-to-be-introduced Hazzard cousin.
I spun like Wonder Woman and ended each and every episode of The Incredible Hulk walking off into the distance, alone and forlorn.
All these stories excited me so much I wanted to take it a step further than what I was given. I loved the wonder of "What if." And I was known to explore this no matter what ended up in my hands. (Up to and including markers, but we'll talk about that later.)
Unlike my Little People collection, my Barbies were predominantly female until about 1980, when I got my first Ken.
I guess my mom thought it was inappropriate for me to play with a man doll. She probably feared girls that played with boy dolls ended up to be girls who wanted to play with men. And she might have been onto something, because I remember with great detail the very first day I had my Ken doll, when he and my Superstar Barbie shared their very first kiss.
My Barbie World really began around 1981. After my dad's death, we ended up moving into a house with a divorcee and her two kids. One of which, the boy, left behind his 12-inch Superman "action figure" (read: doll) He was a lot more agile, given his legs, joints, hands and feet all moved. By the time I took possession of the discarded toy, he was already missing a hand. It made no difference to me, he was yet another male in the plastic population, which had been pretty scarce up till that point.
That, along with my newest acquisition...
...gave my growing Barbie Universe another couple with tons of stories to tell.
Again, thanks to the heavy influence of General Hospital to my burgeoning creative mind, the stories were quite scandalous. There were affairs and indiscretions galore. I've been an #AngstaGangsta since I was nine. I'll never forget the summer in '81 where my character, photographer Kevin Sherman (Malibu Ken playing a double role), abducted Jenny Gold (Golden Dreams Barbie) and held her captive on an island while she was pregnant with her husband Bobby's child. (One-handed Superman.)
And I had the patience of a saint. The early, drawn-out storytelling of classic soap operas trained me well in drawing out the angst. (This might explain a few things for those who read my books.) Superstar Barbie and Malibu Ken may have locked lips upon their first meeting, but every story after that took its time.
If any of my female characters became pregnant, I took nine months to tell that story. I would use Scotch tape and tissue paper to widen their middles in increments as we all waited for the blessed event.
By the mid-80s, I was living out my fantasies through my dolls. I had a Ginger doll, played by the darker haired, Barbie bestie PJ...
...who married her very own Steve Perry, played by the raven-haired Western Ken.
They got married in November of 1985. It was very romantic. You totally should have been there.
They had an uptown apartment, which was basically the bathroom linen closet. My mom was a saint to indulge all my silliness. But then again, she was a single parent who worked 60-70 hour weeks just to keep me in clothes, food and Barbie paraphernalia, which can be a very expensive hobby. I got the RV...
... but I never got the Barbie Dream House I wanted. Instead, I had to get creative. My pink shelves made for a fine mansion for my rich and fabulous characters.
I would sit beside those shelves forever, lost in my make-believe world, creating stories out of thin air while I watched such 80s classics like Three's Company, Facts of Life, Solid Gold and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And ... of course... listening to my trusty FM radio.
(And yes, that is one of the songs that sparks these kinds of memories.)
In fact, one of the ways my bestie and I first bonded was over our shared Barbie toys. He had the plane, which made him just about the coolest person on the planet to me at the time.
We spent the better part of 1980 carting our cargo the three blocks in between our two houses, using everything we could get our hands on to tell exciting new stories. He had Sport n' Shave Ken, which gave me another (long-haired) option for my lonely gals.
My Marie Osmond doll took the brunt of our deliciously demented creativity, plunging to her death on a regular basis from the top of wall that divided my living room and dining room.
He always "got" me. My bestie played right. Steven suggested if we ever did it again, we could turn the Barbies into giant aliens attacking my Little People village.
None of my characters were magical or had any kind of super powers or abilities. When I used Little People figures, it was to make them into children for the Barbies. I wanted it hyper-real, just like my stories now. They were couples and families and singles, struggling to find their way in this world, with love and family and purpose. That was way more fun to me than using my one-handed Superman to fight crime.
And nothing was spared to create this new world for myself. If I couldn't afford the Mattel accessories, I'd simply make my own. Pillows were beds, and my old 1970s Easy Bake Oven equipped my gourmet kitchen.
No closet or cubbyhole was safe. This fantastic world was as infinite as my imagination. Best of all, no matter how crappy my "real life" world was, or how disappointed I was in boys that were not made of plastic (except maybe for their cold, black hearts,) I could go back to this world and create whatever reality I wanted.
Though the most active years of this particular pass time lasted from 1981-1985, the Barbie years lingered until roughly 1986/1987. As I got older and my life took on scandalous elements of its own, I would play with these dolls less and less. (Turns out I *did* want to play with real men more than plastic ones.) But it was always my soft place to fall when Real Life became too intense. That's what art is to me. It's the ability to take the bad things in life and make it interesting and bearable. It also opened my perspective by living through all sorts of characters. I lived through all characters, good and bad, so it gave me the opportunity to understand why people do what they do, especially when they fuck up.
There is no ground more fertile than that.
This is why I have no problem plumbing the depths of darker, grittier material. And that is why I'll tell anyone who needs a warning to read a book to steer clear of mine. I don't know where these characters are going to take me, and I like it that way.
These characters, no matter what form they come in, come first to teach me something. All I can do is honor their stories, humbled that they chose me as their vessel to tell them.
In the case of the FULLERTON FAMILY SAGA, it was a responsibility that I took very seriously. This tragic family drama is both my most beloved, and my most hated, trilogy. For those who have read it, you already know the story. Rachel Dennehy and Drew and Alex Fullerton were cathartic characters I got to maneuver when I was going through one of the toughest periods of my life. I had just lost my newborn son and we discovered my husband at the time was bipolar. This angsty tale is full of heartache I wasn't able to fully articulate in any other way back then, and really didn't figure it out until after I rewrote the story last year. Needless to say it broke the heart of more than one reader, including me.
"If I could hunt down Ms. Ginger Voight I would hug her, beat her with my pitchfork, then cry on her shoulder. I can't remember the last time a book has affected me like this, so I guess no matter how I feel about how it all went down at the end, there is no denying Ginger Voight is an amazing author for bringing such strong emotions out of me through her pen alone." - Bookworm Betties Reviewer Jenn Green, who gave Enraptured, the final book in the trilogy, "5- Heartsick, Broken and Pi$$ed off -Stars"
If you're brave enough to wade into these waters, pick up your free copy of ENTICED, book 1 of the trilogy, at Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo or Smashwords.
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