During the early days of the pandemic, the couple had walked by the garden-sized body of water and seen Barbie and her crew posed in all sorts of ways that reflected current events, holidays and movies. In April 2020, two dolls in boxing gloves stood in a ring fighting the coronavirus. In October of that year, zombie-appearing dolls lurked in that space. A month later, dolls resembling President Biden and Vice President Harris stood against a backdrop of the White House surrounded by Barbies holding signs that indicated they had voted.
On the day Looney planned to propose, he and Benjamin walked from their home in Dupont Circle to the restaurant Le Diplomate. After they finished dinner, as he had done many times before, Looney suggested they check out what Barbie was up to.
“My goal was to try to find something quintessentially D.C. without the monuments or the politics or the White House,” Looney, 29, told me on a recent afternoon. The Barbie Pond allowed him to achieve that, he said. “If you’ve never lived in Dupont, you might have no idea what the Barbie Pond is. But for those who have lived there, it’s such a staple of the community.”
Three longtime friends create the installations at the pond, and over the years, they have mostly avoided public attention. They have declined most media interview requests in the past. But this isn’t just any moment. This is Barbie’s moment. So, I reached out to them recently. They agreed to share the story of the pond on the condition that I identify them by only their first names — Craig, Jon and Brent.
“We are three grown men playing with Barbies, and we’re totally comfortable with that,” Craig told me. “The running joke between us is ‘Is it time to hang it up?’ We’re not really serious because we get so much joy out of it. We also keep getting feedback from people that it means something to them, and we don’t want to let them down.”
The work at the pond started small and without consistency. The homeowner, Brent, put some cake toppers in that space, and it drew some laughs. He then kept placing figures there and eventually started using Barbies. Craig and Jon joined the effort about a decade ago, and the three now regularly work together to create the scenes. They try to put up a new one each month.
Other displays have shown Barbie and her crew celebrating Cinco de Mayo, Pride month and Hanukkah. There have been Barbies in drag and Barbies wrapped in American flags. There have been Ken dolls that appear pregnant. That display went up after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade. A sign next to those Ken dolls read, “Things Would Be Different IF …”
I asked Craig whether the displays draw much hate, either in person or online. He said they surprisingly don’t. He said the Instagram page has accumulated more than 30,000 followers, and many of the people who live near the pond are protective of it. People have even left dolls and thank-you notes at the site.
Looney said he and Benjamin are planning to get married next year. They still have plenty of details to figure out about the wedding, but they know one item they will have with them that day. They plan to display that wooden cake topped with Barbie and Ken.
This content was originally published here.
