Michelle Newstar

I chopped Michelle Doll’s hair to just below the shoulders. I could have curled the hair, like Human Michelle’s in my guide photo, but I’m not an OOAK artist, I’m just trying to make lesbian couple in less than two hours.

I put Michelle Doll in a Barbie Basics 1.0 Little Black Dress and called her complete.

I also trimmed Rosie Doll’s hair a little, giving her more layers around the face but my method was too random to offer anything like a tutorial for creating said layers.

Now it was time to introduce the couple to Leah. She already knows what it means to be lesbian or gay so I didn’t have to cover that ground. I called her over to my laptop where I showed the picture of Rosie and Michelle, both wearing all black, at an event (see above) and explained to Leah that they are real people and they are married. I told her that Rosie has children already. She doesn’t realize yet that she might someday question how two women make a baby so that part went smoothly.

Then we went from the kitchen, where I’d been dyeing cloths and swapping body parts, into her room to play.

A few months ago, Leah’s cognitive abilities reached a point where she became able to describe a rough outline of what she wants to have happen in a play scenario before we start playing. I asked her for the outline and through some additional questioning on my part we came up with the scenario that two married couples with children had just moved in across the street from each other and they needed to meet. We agreed that after the introductions there would be a birthday party for one of the kids.

I put together my family and she put together hers.

Then it happened – the moment when we had to deal with freakish nature of one of the married couples.

When Leah’s family arrived at my family’s house, I learned that her family was made up of a human father, a mermaid mother, a superhero son and a rock-star daughter.