By the winter of 1964 the four sisters next door had already divvied up the Fab Four for future wedlock and crowned Barbie the Queen of whatever activity her wardrobe suggested. The toy manufacturing terrorist organization Hasbro had long decided that the one inch plastic soldiers sold by the platoon to boys were of such low profit margin that Japan and Taiwan could have them.
Hasbro, however, knew that there was no greater appetite in the world than an American boy’s hunger for war and destruction. The only question was how to satisfy and hopefully addict boys to a unique weapon, game or whatever that would require countless upgrades or ammunition. Their answer was a doll for boys: GI Joe.
Hasbro realized that they couldn’t call Joe a doll. Gender confusion was a capital crime in the early 1960’s so the bros at Hasbro created the term “Action Figure” which in England was changed to “Action Man.”
Since GI Joe lacked reproductive equipment the neutral term “figure” remained both more accurate and more confusing at the same time. Countless boys wondered if they could be in the military when they grew up even though they had genitalia. Many boys, like my younger brother and myself, who had investigated our neighbors unadorned Barbie doll realized that Barbie and Joe were the same down there.
My younger brother, hypnotized by commercials transmitted between Three Stooges shorts, requested a GI Joe while on Santa’s lap that December. Santa came through and on one of those rainy winter days when we would venture next door to play with the sisters the dolls came out.
All of us were transfixed the moment my brother and the eldest sister Elizabeth turned Joe and Barbie to face each other. Nothing seemed to happen at first. Plastic can be very emotional but almost never mercurial. Barbie and Joe played it cool.
I never felt affection for either doll. They didn’t portray gender beauty or virtue. They lampooned it. In a way, the dolls reflected the rigidity of our stereotypes.
By my high school years boys and girls were wearing similar unisex fashion clothes and hairstyles. Women wearing pants found their vaginas sealing up just as the doctors had warned. Long haired boys developed breasts and their penises shrank to clitoral dimensions. As gender disappeared in the late Baby Boomers political changes were taking place as well. Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party embraced the death of gender but they were defeated by Ronald Reagan and the Cowboy Republicans.
Conservative orthodoxy at the time believed that only the constant handling of firearms, power tools and sport utility vehicles could maintain American manhood so a mega defense buildup began. Gun laws, building codes and clean air regulations were eased or erased. As the waves of testosterone began slapping our shores again and newly skirted women’s vaginas opened like Morning Glories in sunshine a Golden Age of conflict free matrimony, prolific pregnancy and idyllic college romance reined for two generations.
But Life and the World have a way of balancing things out. This excess of problem free bliss allowed Americans to indulge and each year our girth grew. Now our obesity is destroying our gender. Testosterone abhors a belly and our shapelessness and abominable abdominal overhang hides if not smothers our sex. Psychologists and shoe salespeople report increasing incidents of citizens with neutral names like Pat and Terry forgetting their gender and standing in the middle of stores screaming for shoes.
Appropriate footwear.
And isn’t that what we all want?
Throughout these decades of sexual identity mayhem only Barbie and Joe have remained relatively unchanged. True, Barbie has put on a little weight and her breast bumps have succumb to the gravity of popular criticism. Joe has remained tight lipped about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Trump’s You’re Out of Here Because You’re Queer.
So, for those of you who don’t currently know a G.I. Joe, Satire1 interviewed one of the original twenty two million Joes produced by Hasbro in the mid 1960’s. Our Joe is a veteran of the Vietnam War, Grenada, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan and ten pre pubescent American boys. He is presently unassigned and possibly retired.
S1
Private Joe. What are your thoughts on President Trump’s tweet that he will discharge every member of the United States armed forces who is suspected of being transgender or does anything to blur the lines of gonadial destiny?
Joe
S1
Would crossdressers in the ranks compromise our security and by they’re very presence draw sneak attacks from China, North Korea, Iran, Germany, Russia, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, India and Norway?
Joe
S1
Would fully embracing the individual’s right to choose their gender identity jeopardize hard earned protections for women like Title IX and minority contracts?
Joe
S1
As a doll, you probably don’t go to the bathroom but can you understand how women of a long oppressed minority might interpret men of any color or preference as invading what little public privacy and dignity this society affords them?
Joe
S1
Now that biologists have determined that gender is a delicate balance of the estrogen and testosterone that fluctuates in each human being not only throughout our gestation as a fetus but throughout our entire lives and is at least calling into question the concept of a lifelong fixed polar gender identification do you refuse to wear pink because the United States Armed Forces do not have uniforms in that color or because you feel that it looks and/or is girly?
Joe
S1
What relationship is demanded by the Constitution of the United States of America between individual citizens and their fellow citizens? Between individual citizens and their local government, state government and federal government?
Joe
S1
Can I quote you on that?
Joe
Don Arrup
Satire1
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