When I started seeing trailers for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie pop up in theatres, I felt solidly “meh.” The initial promos seemed aesthetic-rich but vague on plot, and I watched the growing internet hype with mild befuddlement.
At brunch, I listened to an upper-end Gen Zer who was breathlessly excited to see the movie. When I asked what in the film’s marketing spoke so deeply to her, she zeroed in on the part of the trailers where Barbie asks her friends in Barbieland if they ever think about dying, which she found infinitely relatable.
“I mean, who hasn’t felt that way in Bushwick on a late weekend night?” she said.
Well, me, an elder millennial whose Bushwick Saturday nights are long over. But I’m not a hater! I was happy that she felt excited to see Barbie – I just didn’t really get it. Maybe this movie just wasn’t for me, which is fine!
After all, my generation of feminists has been historically more likely to worry about the impact of letting children play with the impossibly proportioned doll than to hail her as a feminist icon for having many careers in lieu of a husband.
As a frequent theatregoer, I knew I’d likely see the movie; I just wasn’t on the same vibrating wavelength as my acquaintance and a lot of other women who seemed to feel similarly about Barbie.
But then the film came out, and it was everywhere. Reviewers were praising its feminist message, and groups of pink-clad women were having what looked like an absolutely fantastic time going to see it together.
And then there was the money. This movie by and explicitly for women was making so much money you almost could hope the film industry might get the memo on the power of the female consumer. (Although, as actor-turned-director Randall Park recently pointed out in a Rolling Stone interview, the takeaway for Hollywood decision-makers seems to have somehow become “make more movies about toys” instead of “make more movies by and about women.”)
Oh, and also conservative men started to get mad at the film’s portrayal of the Ken characters as expendable side notes to the Barbies’ journey — which was a little funny, since it seems like 90 percent of Hollywood movies treat women as exactly that with impunity. It was also a little amusing to see adult men getting angry that a movie about a dress-up doll largely associated with little girls wasn’t catering specifically to them.
I love a good cultural phenomenon and I love to see women having fun, especially fun that isn’t reliant on male approval. So when I finally saw Barbie the second weekend after its premiere, I was ready to get on board. (It helped that I went to a private screening where the theatre seats were redone in pink leather.)
And the movie was fun! The script was clever, the sets and staging inventive, the performances on point. (I especially enjoyed Issa Rae’s delivery of each and every one of her too-few lines.) In the end, I had a great time watching Barbie.
It wasn’t perfect, but we tend to hold women and their work to the impossible standard of being all things to all people.
Whenever I notice that the criticism of something a woman does is becoming especially vitriolic, I try a thought exercise where I ask myself, “Do we treat men in this situation the same way?” Many people seemed to be expecting an awful lot from Barbie and Gerwig that they don’t demand of the Martin Scorseses or Quentin Tarantinos of the world.
Still, perhaps hypocritically given my last point, I do have one gripe with the film.
It’s not the movie’s only problematic moment – OK, we get it with the “cellulite is gross” jokes – but again, it’s a doll movie, so I didn’t expect it to be beyond critique. And the flaws don’t negate all the things that the movie does very well. But this one line bothered me, and it has continued to bother me in the weeks since, as people share the quote on social media like it’s a heartwarming sentiment.
The line comes when Barbie stumbles into the otherworldly kitchen of Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. While drinking tea, Barbie asks Ruth (played by the amazing Rhea Perlman) for permission to become human.
Comparing Barbie to her own daughter, Barbara (for whom she named Barbie), Ruth says she doesn’t need permission. Then she delivers the line I’ve since seen praised widely as “impactful” and “profound”: “We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.”
It sounds meaningful I guess, on the surface, and is delivered like a sage truth. Some people I’ve spoken with were emotionally affected by it, and I respect their point of view.
I also can’t speak to having a daughter specifically; I’m raising a son. But as a mother, when I heard this line, I instantly wondered why the hell I’m supposed to be content to be left behind. Why should social progress only benefit one generation of women, or any other marginalised group for that matter? Why can’t all of us move forward together?
The line conveys a message that seems at odds with the rest of the film. It’s America Ferrera’s character, a mum, who gets to deliver the script’s big ol’ feminist monologue – which is so powerful that it’s able to “deprogram” the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies.
Her character doesn’t stand still – she gets to serve as a feminist role model for her daughter, rather than meekly watch her daughter surpass her. (“Bye, honey! Have fun! I’ll just be here in this ... ghost kitchen!”)
In a movie with a shouted “feminism for everyone!” as its thesis, Ruth’s line felt to me like a whispered addendum excluding mums from the party. It seems like par for the course in a society that expects women to quietly disappear once we have kids, subsuming our identities into the sacred role of motherhood.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but mums are also still women, and we need and deserve the benefits of gender equality just as much as the future men and women we happen to be raising.
While I certainly appreciate the sacrifices that so many women made to help create opportunities for future generations, I prefer to live in a world where nobody has to stand still.
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