My Safe Space Is A 2000s Barbie Computer Game
Written by Gina Wurtz
Image Courtesy of Barbie as Princess Bride CD-ROM (2000)
When I was a kid, we didn’t have iPad apps, AI TikTok series, or YouTube shorts. We had one family computer and a plethora of games. Among them was my Barbie collection. Barbie was launched in 1959 as the first doll in the US with adult features, as a way for young girls to imagine themselves as something besides mothers. Since then, Barbie has become the president, a doctor, an astronaut, a teacher, a veterinarian, a scientist, and so much more. In 1984, Mattel took Barbie’s many possibilities into the virtual world with its first computer game. Barbie’s cyber reality only grew from there, and by the 2000s, they’d created an alternate universe for children to dive into from their very own living rooms.
Today, giving a child unauthorized access to a computer can lead them down many rabbit holes, few of them safe. One scroll on social media will show you the hellscape the world has turned into. If it isn’t instant news updates about ongoing wars, it’s much too convincing AI videos, misinformation, and senseless social media arguments. That’s why I find myself yearning for the days of sitting at my family computer and playing Barbie computer games. Because for me, those Barbie games were and are my safe space.
The current tech space feels quite bland, and I miss Barbie games, as they taught me how to live in color. Barbie Fashion Show was my outlet for channeling my endless creativity. When the game begins, famous designer Cookie McFarland visits Barbie’s design studio seeking a last-minute replacement designer to help her with a fashion show. As you may remember, Barbie’s fashion design career takes flight, and throughout the game, the player has full creative control over the clothing, models, and stage design.
The game gave a voice to children who likely didn’t have much of a say in their lives at that age, but even as adults, women don’t always have the agency we deserve. Revisiting Barbie Fashion Show often has me saying,“ This is the adulthood I was promised!” In the“ real world”, working in creative industries can feel like you’re constantly being talked down to and belittled, as though the people at the top of the ladder don’t take you seriously enough to trust your vision. However, the game presents us with the feeling that our opinions matter, our ideas are good enough, and that we deserve the opportunity to show them to the world.
The fashion game also came out in a time when creative expression was at an all-time high, which is the main reason why people are so nostalgic for the 2000s right now. Each fashion show Barbie put on was themed, and instead of the beige palettes that have made up the clean girl and minimalistic trends of the 2020s, the fashion shows were vibrant and energetic. Some themes included rockstar and futuristic, which looked a lot more like the 2000s futurism we were promised and less like the digital dystopia we’re currently living in.
That kind of creative expression was the foundation of so many other Barbie games, too. In fairytale-inspired games like Barbie as Sleeping Beauty and Barbie as Princess Bride, the character lived in kingdoms, under pastel skies, and among woodland creatures in the forest. Fairy tales are sold to girls at a young age as the ideal, despite being unattainable, but I do believe it can be beneficial to have girls explore worlds where nothing bad will happen to them. These games were as special as watching a Disney film, but the interactive aspect strengthened the ability to feel transported to another realm.
“Fairy tales are sold to girls at a young age as the ideal, despite being unattainable, but I do believe it can be beneficial to have girls explore worlds where nothing bad will happen to them.”
It’s the imagery from these games that I have used most to create safe spaces in my mind. There is a technique referred to as Safe Place Imagery that is recommended by some therapists, including UK-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapist Sarah D. Reese, in which patients are guided to create a safe space in their imagination to cope with stress and anxiety. When the world feels scary and overwhelming, I go to a room in my mind that has purple and pink skies, woodland creatures freely roaming around, and angel-like figures that resemble the magic fairies in these games.
Not only does it help me escape from the noise of the outside world, but it’s a place to nurture my imagination, something we need in society now more than ever. It also provides me with a sense of freedom, another aspect of the Barbie computer games that I admire. There’s freedom in designing on your own terms, frolicking through fairytale kingdoms, and riding horseback in Barbie Horse Adventures. In the Mystery Ride edition of the game, Barbie must help her best friend Teresa find her missing horse, Lucky, before the upcoming horse show. The gameplay consists of Barbie riding through the countryside, jumping over logs, trotting through the water, and exploring caves until she discovers Lucky at a local train station and brings him back home.
I might have the freedom to come and go as I please as an adult, but the safety blanket of Barbie world doesn’t exist in the real world. According toFemicide Consensus, 122 women were killed by men in the UK in 2022, and horror movies have taught me enough about why it’s unsafe for anyone to go wandering off alone in the woods. In Barbie Horse Adventures: Mystery Ride, while there is a horse thief on the loose, the game poses no other threats.
I’ve kept my Barbie collection safe and sound throughout the years; some call it hoarding, I call it physical media preservation. Sadly, I don’t own my 2000s desktop anymore, so when I want to revisit these games, it's through YouTube Let’s Plays or pure imagination. But I keep revisiting them because I want to keep their memory alive, and I have to keep their memory alive for my own sanity.
At the 2025 Grammys, during her acceptance speech, SZA told the audience,“ Please don’t fall into despair.” This was crucial advice. If we spend too much time keeping up with the news or scrolling through our algorithms, we are going to fall into despair, and nothing can get better from a place of hopelessness. It is not naive to channel the whimsical worlds we encountered as kids; it’s actually very powerful because, from a state of childlike optimism in the face of adversity, we can build a better reality. That’s why it’s important to nurture our imaginations with the things that brought us joy as kids. Revisiting the Barbie games that defined my childhood is my avenue for keeping hope and passion alive.
