“Barbie”: A Girl’s Doll
"Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything."
Walking into the theater, premiere day of Barbie, gave me a feeling I’d never think I would ever feel. I was finally going to watch a film based on the woman who was by my side as a girl. I am forever grateful to my mother for making Barbie my earliest and literally speaking my ‘at hand’ best friend.
Driving seven-year-old Dezeray to the store to pick out a Barbie doll she wanted. My parents had to live with a habit of always picking up the phone. They always had to meet the end to their your child crying. Pick the child up from school and head to the nearest Barbie section. My parents had only known this to be an act of providing comfort for their child.They would gift me any Barbie I picked out—gifting me a new friend. With this solely, I will literally forever and always be a Barbie girl!
To many others Barbie was more than just a best friend. Barbie embodied everything a girl could be. Barbie is an empowering symbol for girls all around the world, past and future generations. Thanks to Barbie little girls can be whoever they want. Barbie broke those patriarchal expectations for girls, and their mothers who previously had Barbie do that for them too. Barbie showed them they could explore space, be a doctor, or a scientist—anything they could ever possibly dream about, Barbie showed them it was reachable. “If Barbie can be anything, you can too!”
“I’m not good enough for anything.”
I just want to take a moment to say how completely fulfilling it was for me to see America Ferrera, a Latina woman, getting to deliver a Greta Gerwig written monologue. Though I’d be lying to say, it was the best one I ’ve seen from her entire filmography. That would easily go to Saoirse Ronan’s monologue in Little Women (2019). I do think Gloria (America Ferrera’s character) having to constantly repeat patriarchal struggles to various Barbie’s made the monologue fall immediately flat for me. The repetition makes the monologue lose its rawness. This powerful moment, giving the monologue that would get Barbie back on her feet, and out of her existential crisis, becomes less intimate and more silly.
Though it’s kind of understandable. This Barbie movie, being tied with Mattel, promised to target itself to a larger and much younger audience than previous Greta Gerwig films. Barbie in some ways gave us too much “sellable feminism” moments. It’s like putting “girl power,” on a t-shirt and calling it enough feminism for their day. This is not what Barbie would have wanted—it's clearly all Mattel’s fault!
(I still love you Greta Gerwig).
This criticism is not me coming out to say, I hated the Barbie movie. I didn’t dress up for the premiere to sit in the theater disappointed. I knew this was going to be the movie of the year—this is considering Dune (2023). Margot Robbie performance and Greta Gerwig directional touch is never ever to be doubted—ever. Margot couldn’t have done Barbie any better. What a fantastic performance from Ryan Gosling too! I truly appreciate Greta and Noah’s silly dialogue, creativity of living in the “Barbieland,” and Michael Cera’s ten minute screen time.
