A couple months ago a friend invited me to see the Barbie movie. I appreciated the invite but wasn’t remotely excited about going.
Why torture myself? Feminist me at a Barbie movie? Never.
Until I read the massive buzz and learned that my daughter (25), the last person I expected to see it, wanted to go.
We chatted about the movie’s premise and I told her as a feminist and a Devil’s Advocate, I’d heard Barbie was over the top, excessive male bashing, a radical feminist roar.
So I asked her to let me know what she thought.
The following morning she texted:
“It was great, super whimsical, a satirical world contrasted with the complicated reality of womanhood. I think you might find the story over the top, but it conveys some very important messages every woman can relate to.”
When Taylor was little for the most part she ignored the few Barbies I gave her, the character versions like Cinderella and Belle.
My feminist values justified that Disney Barbies were merely cute merch from iconic family films, and that my daughter was too young to internalize the impossible beauty standards Barbie projected.
Which of course isn’t true.
Beauty and gender role expectations douse kids from day one. But I’m a fun mom and personally I liked the character Barbies.
About fifteen years ago my husband got on me after I bought a black Barbie for a (white) friend’s (white) daughter’s birthday party. Without asking the parents.
“It’s not your place to bring up race. She’s not your kid.”
I insisted the parents wouldn’t mind. But he was right, I was wildly presumptuous. it’s just that I was tired of seeing mostly white Barbies.
That’s long since changed.
My daughter never paid much attention to Barbieland. But once she turned into a tween I told her Barbie was an unrealistic bad female role model.
Growing up, indirect feminist messaging was everywhere in my house. Mostly from my dad. Where he got this I have no idea. My grandparents weren’t exactly poster parents for feminist ideals. I just remember, as kids do, loving them. Although Grandpa was apparently a bit of a tyrant to Grandma.
My dad outlawed nearly all TV, notably smut and female-demeaning fluff, like beauty contests and soap operas. Anything he thought mushed the mind or dumbed down women. So of course because it was forbidden, I watched all of it behind his back. The Waltons, PBS and Little House on the Prarie passed.
If my father caught me watching Miss America or Days of Our Lives he’d say, “What the hell is this crap?” Then he’d turn off the TV and tell us to go read a book.
But I was allowed Barbies because no one was paying attention to toys and feminist messaging back then. The few Barbies I owned were the original 70’s blond, buxom, high-heeled, no-waisted models.
I loved her look. The clothes, the shoes, the cool RV camper and the girly hair salon kit. I lived in Barbieland for a time, although I don’t remember ever wanting to look like her, except for that waistline.
Today Barbie is a liberated bad-ass. But she’s also an individual. Ambitious CEO or homemaker, bougie or boho. A little or all of the above.
I was a stay-at-home mom but I was also career-driven and ambitious before, during and after I stayed home. I’m polite, crude at times, blunt, feminine and feminist. That used to be called an enigma. Now it’s called being who you are.
I wear make-up, high heels and short skirts but I love my hippie thinking. I’m aging with unapologetic vanity. Willing to shout my age but not enter it gracefully. I once thought Botox was an atrocity, now at 58 I embrace it. This doesn’t feel anti-feminist. It feels natural.
The Barbie movie is wildly popular with feminists and wildly unpopular with conservatives. Critics call it a hay day of male bashing, extreme “wokeness,” an angry movie (softened by an iconic beloved doll).
“The Barbie movie has smashed box-office records, brought dress-up back and put feminism in the spotlight.
Specifically, it has many asking: Has a doll long criticized for perpetuating outdated gender norms and unrealistic body image become a feminist icon? Has she always been one?
For context: The movie takes place largely in Barbieland, a candy-colored, women-centered utopia where Barbies hold the positions of power (all of the jobs, really, except for “beach”) and Kens are essentially peripheral. That’s painted in stark contrast to the “real world,” of course.” NPR. Rachel Treisman (Host). July 27, 2023. Is Barbie a feminist icon? It’s complicated.
I’ll decide what I think once I see the movie. I’ll be fair. I make a point not to knee-jerk fist-pump with my progressive friends and family on any subject.
And I can laugh at myself, so I can certainly laugh at any woman or man who acts the fool or bimbo or whatever light caricature I’m presented.
I am however, dead serious about equal rights.
Despite its bad reputation, feminism has never been about pushing men down. That’s a paranoid ultra-conservative reductionist narrative that translates into “feminists hate men and are bad for family values.”
Huh?
I like men. Some, not all. I like women, some not all. It’s the person, not the gender that makes me like or detest someone.
Feminism has never meant, at least in later waves, male-bashing or getting off on emasculating men. It does mean unraveling patriarchy and ending culturally manufactured and reinforced male toxic behavior. Which by the way hurts men too (Big Boys Don’t Cry)
Feminism on the whole is simple.
It means equality for both genders. Not at the expense of one, but to the benefit of all.
“Today, (Mattel’s) online store boasts Barbies modeled after inspirational female figures — from Jane Goodall to Naomi Osaka to Laverne Cox — and people with disabilities, from a doll with Down Syndrome to those that come with props like hearing aids and wheelchairs. — NPR. Rachel Treisman (Host). July 27, 2023. Is Barbie a feminist icon? It’s complicated.
Barbie: Hilarious satire, sympathetic to both men and women.
By Laura G Owens
On August 16, 2023
In Social Commentary, Social Issues
(Minor spoilers)
Last week I blogged that a friend invited me to see the Barbie movie with a group of women.
I appreciated the invitation but Barbie? Pass.
Until I read all the hype and learned that my 25-year-old daughter, a mini-me feminist, the last person I expected to go, planned to see it.
While watching the movie I laughed, clapped and involuntarily cheered to the point a curious (but not angry) teenage girl turned around. I nearly did a standing ovation when the credits rolled.
Not that it’s that good, this is Barbieland we’re talking about.
But in some ways the movie is brilliant.
Campy and ridiculous with feminist messaging wrapped throughout. Women laugh and nod because they’ve lived it, men laugh and nod because they get it.
Growing up I loved Barbie. The 1970’s blond impossibly thin-waisted, exaggerated beauty and boobs original. I loved her hair, clothes, perfected make-up, high heels and glitz.
The full girliness of all of it.
But as an eventual feminist and mother to a daughter (I bought her a few Disney character Barbies), Barbie wasn’t exactly my idea of female body positivity and empowerment. She was an impossible beauty ideal and bubble-headed arm candy.
And while I love a good satire I assumed the movie would be nauseating.
When my daughter was little we watched every Disney movie, and never once did I suck the fun out of the boy-saves-girl Belle or Cinderella tropes.
Why would I?
Until middle school, the entry hell of puberty, full of fragile self-esteem, gender expectations, and overwhelming insecurity.
That’s when I taught my daughter about the fight for equality, and the importance of being assertive (to the degree her shyness allowed). And that creating boundaries doesn’t mean “bitch or difficult,” it means self-respect.
And that it’s okay to have a healthy squishy body (all while I worried about gaining weight).
It’s clear I haven’t been paying attention to evolving Barbie. She’s grown into an individual and kept pace with every complex wave of feminism.
“Third-wave feminism, in the 1990s, took a more complicated and nuanced view of the world, writes M.G. Lord in the LA Times piece, “Yes Barbie is a feminist, just don’t ask her creators.”
“It enshrined, among other things, the idea of a woman’s right to control her own sexual expression, and, you could even say, her right to pleasure. When it came to Barbie, this form of feminism advanced the daring idea that some women might actually take pleasure dressing like the dolls, a practice that some second-wavers might have interpreted as retrograde and submissive to patriarchy.
The largely online movement of fourth-wave feminism that began around 2012 had a big impact in Barbie’s world. It embraces intersectionality and body positivity, challenging the idea that there is only one ideal body type.”
The movie is over-the-top ridiculous, but with playful unexpected existential messaging for both our plastic protagonists (we see Barbie lying on the ground trying to grapple with “Who am I?”).
No major spoilers, but she gets a taste of the patriarchal real world outside her female-centric Barbieland and she’s devastated.
Ken too, experiences patriarchy and becomes fast addicted to the highs of the boys club, finally appreciated as alpha male-powerful, rather than merely Barbie’s beach buff lovesick shadow.
The movie isn’t, as some conservatives insist, a male-bashing bashing angry feminist roar. It’s real-life flipped upside down inside a matriarchy.
Outside her pink utopia, Barbie deals with catcalls, ass-grabbing, sexual harassment, and being patronized and dismissed.
One man who commented on my first post wrote:
As a *cishet male, I was not remotely offended or threatened by the movie. Definitely not “male bashing”. I hope we see more movies like this. I hear Mattel is already planning a sequel” ~ Daniel.
My guess is the movie’s message didn’t threaten him, it merely illuminated what he already knew.
While another man added this thought-provoking critique:
The movie is for men, perhaps a bit of a Rorschach test for their ego. While my husband won’t attend a women’s rights rally, he respects strong accomplished smart women. His activism is in his beliefs and behavior.
During the movie we watch Ken go rogue then struggle with toxic masculinity “bro” nonsense. Ultimately we leave the theatre understanding the value of not, bashing men, but rather, bashing gender expectations.
The movie is a good time but in no uncertain terms, a feminist film, although one covered in candy-coated bawdiness, “I’d like to see what nude blob (Ken) is packing under those jeans”
Co-director Greta Gerwig doesn’t shy away from the fact that she made a feminist movie.
Mattel does. Hoping no doubt, to avoid scaring off some viewers.
But controversy invariably draws crowds and Barbie is a box office smash.
Some people are going because of its feminist messaging.
Some because they think the movie is the antithesis to conservative family values. “See, more wokeism indoctrination!”
Most people, like friends I talked to, go because they liked Barbie growing up, or their kids want to see the movie.
A friend’s teenage son went and afterward told her, “Mom, my friends and I liked the movie but it was a little….feminist”
He wasn’t disgusted, she said, he was confused. Not a bad thing for a teenage boy to admit when clobbered over the head in a funny way, with a reality he doesn’t fully understand.
Barbie today is every woman. Every color and shape. Every career, or homemaker. Every position of power. Glamorous or earthy.
The movie isn’t remotely an “All men suck” diatribe. No-thinking woman thinks this, as no-thinking man believes all women are “bitches.”
What we shouldn’t miss is the message for Ken.
That, while Barbie is no longer the poster girl for a one-dimensional female ideal, Ken too, has always been more complex than what people expected of him.
Ken isn’t threatened by feminism, because Ken finally knows who he is.
*This two-part identity means that a person is both cisgender and heterosexual. A cishet person identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, and they choose romantic partners of the opposite sex.
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