HBIC: Head Barbie in Charge

2 - Repair

IMANI HAD LEFT the Barbies in limbo. Not only because they were starting the year off with an entirely revamped roster, but because this so-called sisterhood had been founded on the tackiest of beliefs. Dire changes needed to be made. First order as Head Barbie in Charge, Ally had to make the Ghetto Barbies as classy as ghetto could possibly be. That meant dropping the word entirely. That may have been all good and well for past Barbies, but Ally couldn't see herself passing on such nonsense to the next generation. Barbies were perfect, made by man. They had perfect faces, perfect waistlines, and perfectly arched feet. They lived in dream houses with handsome dream men. There was nothing even remotely ghetto about them. In order to salvage the remains of this broken down sisterhood, Ally enforced a strict beauty code. None of those cheap jumbo packs from the local beauty supply store and no boxed hair dyes. Only the finest could touch a Barbie's head.

As for their clothes, faux furs and rhinestones were a huge don't. If diamonds were unaffordable then their ears just weren't deserving enough to wear them. There was nothing worse than seeing the underlying layer of rust that appeared on a girl's necklace after repeated wear. Only the shiniest for a Barbie's neck, wrists, and ears.

Born to one of the most respected doctors in his field and a socialite whose daily facials were laced with 24-karat gold, Alyson Ann Polk was born into the lap of luxury and hadn't come to appreciate it until now. After a phase of keeping up with the tired trends of her working-class peers, she'd finally made use of the bountiful fruits of her father's labor, trading in her ripped denim for silk and cashmere. Regular people had no choice but to be trendy. Their low-quality threads came apart in the wash by the end of the season anyway. Ally's diamonds would last for years to come. She wanted to instill the same principals in the Barbies that her mother had instilled in her. It may have cost her a pretty penny to look like a million bucks, but it would one day attract a man whose black card would compensate her for her efforts. Cheap appearances were only going to attract cheap men who would never take them anywhere. If she allowed the girls to attract wannabe thugs like the sisters before them, they would live out the rest of their lives expecting less and accepting lesser.

Tammy and Kim hadn't once protested to the changes Ally had made for the group. Unlike Bunny, they understood they were young ladies who were becoming too old to be shopping at Citi Trends all while ripping hair from the cheerleaders' scalps in their off times. It didn't seem like Tammy had taken offense to the nickname, but it was clear from the sharp glare in Bunny's eyes she may have overstepped her boundaries. Ally was just trying to help the girl. As soon as she introduced herself to eligible men, they were going to think she had grown up eating her hotdogs in white loaf bread. Ally didn't make the rules, she just opted to follow them. Unless Tammy chose to give Nicki Minaj a run for her money by becoming another raunchy and slick mouthed rapper, there was no other logical way to be successful.

That was the responsibility of the Head Barbie, which Bunny knew nothing about. The new girls would have been headed toward a spiraling path of confusion, carelessly tossed into Bunny's tornado of greed had they been in her care. Imani, Candy, and Latrice had made the right choice. Ally was the Head Barbie and she was going to have to get over it and get used it.

It was clear from the moment Kim had shot her arm up and aggressively took on the first challenge that she was just what the Barbies needed. In fact, she was all the Barbies needed. Ally had intended to keep the roster at three, rather than the traditional four. After all, Destiny's Child had grown to the height of their success once they had stopped trying to fill every spot. Surely, the same would have held true for them. A trio of classy and fashionable girls was way more deadly than a mob of four chickenheads with brassy locks and itchy scalps. Determined to disagree, Bunny had protested the matter, yapping about how the Barbies had always had four girls and how she was getting away from what Imani had intended. As awfully as she had treated Imani, Bunny had no room to talk about Imani's intentions. She had blackmailed her own sister, but she believed the simple and yet brilliant idea of tweaking the headcount was a threat to their integrity. The Ghetto Barbies were a car wreck in desperate need of a tow. Ally was that tow. Tammy had slid her way into the clique, but only time would tell if she was a quality addition.