I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World by Eve Ensler Read Free Book Online

’cause I could mess up and get my hand caught in the machine.
    They hate it when we hurt the machines. They hate it when anything happens to us ’cause it slows everything down. That’s how LiJuan died. There was a fire one day and she was scared to leave her station ’cause she needed the job to feed her family and she was burned too badly.
    But I can’t lie, I couldn’t really write you a letter ’cause I can’t read. I’m thirteen and I have been working since I was a kid. I speak good Chinese, I just can’t write it or read it.
    But I have a lot to say and I think I can help you.
    You may not think some poor girl who only makes a few cents an hour has anything to teach you. But I know a lot aboutBarbie. I am one of the people who makes her head. I actually see what goes into it.
    As you can tell by now I have found a way to get this message to you. It isn’t a letter or Internet or phone. It’s what I call
Head Send
. Can you feel it? It is very strong. I started doing it when I was five. You have to think a thought very very intensely and then you have to imagine someone receiving the thought and then you close your eyes and concentrate and your head sends it.
    Because I make Barbie’s head I
Head Send
my thoughts into each one of her brains. So whatever girl gets her will hear my thoughts.
    I have made many, many heads so my message is in a lot of places. If you listen very closely to your Barbie—put her head to your ear like a shell—you will hear what I have to say.
    Many, many of us girls are needed to make Barbie because three Barbies are sold every second. They told us this the first day of the job. They said girls like me were working in a lot of countries to make Barbie perfect. Her body comes from Taiwan. Her hair gets stuck on in Japan. Then she comes to China to get clothes and get her head put on her body. They said that 23,000 trucks a day go back and forth to the harbor crammed with Barbies so they can all sail to America and get packaged in pink and sent out.
    They told us what we did here in China was the most important part and that we had to do it fast or we would not keep up and then little girls couldn’t get their Barbies.
    At the beginning I used to worry about this and I would always be very nervous. I cut my hand a few times in the machine.
    Then I saw a picture of Barbie’s dream house and it made me start thinking about where I live. I live in a nightmare house. It’s not even a house, a dormitory. It’s like prison Barbie, all us girls shoved into one ugly place. I started thinking about how one Barbie costs 200 yuan, but I work here where it is so hot, all day, six days a week, and I don’t make that much in a whole week.
    I have never been anywhere else but I do not think anyone really looks like Barbie. She is so skinny, I heard she can’t even get her period. And my cousin who lives in America told me that Barbie makes the girls who own her stop eating because they try and look like her.
    I started thinking about how it’s actually hard to love Barbie the way she is now. She is very tough, so much plastic. She’s not cuddly at all. She can’t even put her arms around you. You have to do things for her: worship her, dress her, buy her things. She wants everything. She is very greedy and needy. That’s how they get you to spend more money.
    Listen, it’s not Barbie’s fault, she doesn’t even have a chance. So many people control her—from the first plastic mold to her final accessory. In many ways she has less freedom than even me. She has no ability to walk away. Her legs probably wouldn’t hold her up anyway. So many people abuse her. You know, there is a whole group of Barbies—here at the factory we secretly call them the unfortunate ones—they get sent to Barbie headquarters in Los Angeles and a room of Barbie experts throw them and kick them and bite them to see if they can take it.
    My cousin also told me that many girls love their Barbie at the