What I loved about Barbie
Including the one thing none of the other reviews are talking about
I saw Barbie with friends on Tuesday night. Three out of four of us wore pink and we definitely took a photo in front of a pink balloon arch. We did not order the signature Barbie drink, which had two too many kinds of pink juice in it for anyone to feel confident about a headache-free future. I cried. I HOWLED with laughter. I felt held in a moment of connection with a theatre full of strangers. I fucking loved it.
So many good things have been written about Barbie already which I’ll link to below, but here is my list of stuff I loved that absolutely no one asked for.
The opening scene of the movie, which not only dared to suggest that playing “mommy” wasn’t the funnest thing of all time, but that motherhood itself wasn’t much of a game either.
Perpetually pregnant Midge. I tend to think that defining Midge solely through her pregnancy, and confining her to the sidelines of the action was meta commentary on how our culture insists on disappearing mothers. But if that’s the case, was it too subtle? Would it have made more of a clear statement for the movie to have empowered Midge and imbued her with agency? I think that feeling icky about Midge and her lack of personhood was sort of the point, but eager to hear other perspectives.
Being reminded that Peaches ‘N Cream Barbie was my favorite barbie. I can still feel the nubby pleather of the white part of her dress.
Ryan Gosling in every goddamn frame. Do we all remember this Tumblr?! Destiny is real.
America Ferrera’s speech about the impossibility of performing womanhood correctly regardless of which audience we’re performing for! Especially this line: “You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.” Here’s my sister speech for the impossibility of performing motherhood as mothers in the US. We’re told breast is best but our workplaces (um, and capitalism) often make breastfeeding impossible. We’re told to prioritize our children but also given zero paid leave to prioritize those children. We must live with the cognitive dissonance of a country that puts “children first” (so long as putting “children first” means controlling women’s bodies) but puts guns first when it comes to “protecting freedom.” We must be gentle parents while also maintaining firm boundaries. We must trust our “maternal instinct” but only if it adheres to racist, sexist ideals of motherhood. We must be fun-lunch nutritionists and also prevent our own disordered eating habits from being inherited by our kids. We must nurture our children’s creativity by signing them up for the right extracurriculars and by allowing them to be bored. We must pour all of ourselves into our mothering labor but we mustn’t expect any payment, cultural respect, or even thanks for that labor because it’s a labor of love, which means we’d be bad moms if we wanted anything out of that labor.
The lack of liquids in Barbie Land.
The hilariously on-the-nose choice Barbie is forced to make between high heels and Birkenstocks.
Kate McKinnon’s splits.
Barbie’s immediate sense of danger when confronted with the fact of her objectivity under the male gaze in Patriarchy Land (ie the real world) and Ken’s immediate understanding that the real world was made for him by people like him.
Barbie mistaking a billboard advertising a beauty pageant for a billboard celebrating Supreme Court justices.
The movie’s implicit argument that gender binaries (and the prioritizing of one gender over others) is bad full stop.
The movie initially framing memories of playing with (and eventually outgrowing) Barbie as teenage Sasha’s memories only to reveal that the memories were actually Gloria’s (Sasha’s mom). I loved how this framing highlighted not only the fallibility of memory but the impossibility of ever disentangling ourselves from our perception of our children’s lives. Tears were shed!
The Ken dance sequence utterly transported me and allowed me to leave my thinking brain completely for a few blissful minutes that I will cherish forever.
The fact that this movie acknowledged again and again that it could never fully subvert capitalist patriarchy while also participating in capitalist patriarchy in order to sell a movie about subverting capitalist patriarchy. Its self-awareness, commitment to being a Movie Movie unlike any I’ve seen in years, and it’s sheer effort in trying to do the impossible blew me away.
Not really being able to intellectualize why the montage of women and girls at the end made me weep.
