This one is complicated for me, and this is my third attempt at writing this review. There is just so much to unpack, and the impressions I had after seeing the film are in such contrast with the views I was raised with and carried with me throughout my life regarding Barbie.
My mother, a staunch feminist, raised me to understand that Barbie dolls represented consumer culture and were a man’s ideal of what a woman should look like. I was not allowed to collect them and only occasionally played with them at my friend’s house down the street. As a result, Barbie has never really been on my radar, and I have rarely given her much thought at all.
When the promotional trailers for the movie first came out, I assumed it was a kid’s movie and didn't pay much attention. I later read that it had subversive undertones and that it was written and directed by Greta Gerwig. I have seen two of Gerwig’s other movies, Lady Bird and Little Women, and loved them, so I was intrigued.
This movie opened up a dialogue I never thought I’d have. Is Barbie a feminist icon? I read one review that compared Barbie to Mary Tyler Moore, and that got me wondering if what I had been raised to think all those years ago was a bit one-dimensional.
Maybe Barbie has evolved with the rest of us. After all, she does wear many hats: Supermodel, doctor, Olympic athlete, wildlife conservationist, United States Air Force pilot, news anchor, astrophysicist, and humanitarian, just to name a few.
Mattel has long faced criticism over Barbie's unrealistic physical proportions and skin tones and how they might be affecting girls' body image. Barbie began as a blond 19-year-old white supermodel — but the definition of who could be Barbie changed as the years went on. Now there are curvy, petite, tall, and wheelchair-bound Barbie dolls alongside the original model. In addition to this, Barbie has many different skin tones and ethnicities.
Gerwig is asking her audience to examine a society where women are valued as human beings, leaders, mothers, and friends. She highlights this when Ken (Ryan Gosling) goes to the “real world” and discovers what life is like in a patriarchal society. He brings back those values to Barbieland, and transforms how society views women: Women should be men’s servants, not Nobel Prize winners or presidents.
Seeing Barbieland destroyed by the patriarchy and the Barbies brainwashed into thinking they’re objects for the Kens, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) falls into a depression. She decides she’s not beautiful, she can’t do anything, she’s worthless, she is suffering from an existential crisis.
This is encapsulated towards the end of the movie when America Ferrera’s character Gloria makes a speech:
“Somehow, we’re always doing it wrong. You have to want to be thin but not too thin. And you can’t say you want to be thin—you have to say you want to be ‘healthy,’ but also you have to be thin.”
“Women must dedicate themselves to motherhood, but motherhood mustn’t be their entire life. They should work hard to earn leadership positions, but not be too aggressive at work.”
Then, Gloria concludes,
“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so people will like us. If all of that is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don’t even know.”
I am sure I am not the only one with whom this speech resonated. The writing and the delivery of this speech are so moving. It hits you right in the gut because she's somehow speaking to very common experiences we rarely utter out loud. In the real world, keeping that perfect figure, career, motherhood, all with a dazzling smile, is way harder than it looks.
In the final scene, when Barbie bares her soul to her creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Pearlman), she grapples with the idea that she no longer feels like a doll and wonders if Ruth will allow her to live in the real world as a human. Ruth tells Barbie:
“You don’t need my permission; I can’t control you any more than I could control my own daughter. I named you after her: Barbara. And I always hoped for you like I hoped for her. We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they’ve come.”
It wasn’t until the final scenes of this movie that I understood the impact of its making. In the opening scenes, I thought I was in for something creative and a bit goofy, but I was in tears by the end. Barbie had me thinking for many days after, and immersed in review after review, searching for a way to express how this movie made me feel.
Walking into the movie with all the other people in pink made me giggle, but walking out of the movie with all my fellow pinkies was a different experience altogether. There was a feeling of solidarity, of like-mindedness, like we are mothers who love their daughters and want to see them live their lives without much of the baggage that we have had to carry and that we are here to support one another in our collective and individual goals, triumphs, and failures.
The overarching question in all of this for me, however, is: has my opinion changed about what Barbie represents? Has Greta been able to convince me that Barbie can be a symbol of empowerment for women instead of an impossible ideal? The answer is that I’m still not sure, but my mind is more open to the notion than it ever was before.
I would love to hear what you felt about the movie in the comments!
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