Barbie

The opening scene in Barbie is a hilarious parody of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with little girls playing with baby dolls as the primitive apes at the dawn of man. Then suddenly, like the mysterious monolith, stands a giant Margot Robbie as the original 1951 Barbie doll, in her black and white striped bathing suit, smiling down at the girls. Her sudden presence sends the little girls into a violent frenzy to destroy and toss their chunky baby dolls and delicate tea sets. With a final dramatic toss of a babydoll high into the air, we know that the world will never be the same for girls again. 

As a kid, I was never a Barbie girl. I only saw the negatives in her and gladly pointed them out: her waist absurdly small, boobs back-breakingly big, legs and arms way too long and could barely bend. And her feet! I was enraged that Ken could have normal flat feet, but Barbie’s were always contorted so she was always on her toes! That’s not how real people look! It creeped me out and sent me back to my dinosaurs and Legos. I was a tiny, angry feminist who hated Barbie because I thought she represented an absurd standard of female beauty.

But my sister was a Barbie girl, and girl did she have Barbies! She kept a whole tote full of Barbie dolls and their excessive accessories under our bunk beds (when they weren’t strewn out all over our room). There were tiny colorful outfits, millions of tiny high heeled shoes, so many tiny hairbrushes and one ever came with a plastic dolphin. But one I remember her wanting and playing with most was Teacher Barbie, complete with her own little blackboard and two students at desks. Maybe it’s a good thing my sister didn’t see Barbie as a male fantasy of female form, but a role model. A girl who can be anything. My sister is now a kindergarten teacher, just like her favorite Barbie. 

Greta Gerwig tackles both the empowering and sexist ideas of Barbie with hilarious and spellbinding wit. In Barbieland, the Barbies rule and the Kens are sweet, complacent background figures. Barbie is the president, the doctors, the whole supreme court and wins all the Nobel prizes. Ken is just Ken, and all the Kens seem to accept this except the one played by Ryan Gosling. He wants to be Barbie’s boyfriend, wants more of her time and attention, but she is busy having a perfect Barbie life and having girls night every night. Who could blame her? But when this perfect stereotypical Barbie (played by Robbie) wakes up one day and her perfect routine just isn’t perfect. She even has flat feet! So she seeks advice from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who tells her to go into the real world and try to help the girl playing with her. So Barbie sets out for adventure! And Ken tags along. 

Barbie was sure that she and the other Barbies had made life better for women in the real world, but finds that’s not the case at all. In the real world, Barbie is immediately met with ogling eyes, smirks and cat calls. For the first time in her plastic life, she’s feeling unsafe in her surroundings. Meanwhile, Ken is feeling empowered for the first time. He’s astounded that people call him sir, or ask him for the time. For the first time in his plastic life, Ken is seeing a place where men hold power. So he runs back to Barbieland to tell the other Kens what he’s learned about Patriarchy so they can spread it. 

The thing about Ken is every girl and woman understands how he feels. He lives in a world where he is just an accessory to Barbie and will never be the main character. Until he saw patriarchy at work, he never believed he could be more than, beach. So many girls grow up feeling like a downtrodden Ken, stuck on the sidelines forced to cheer on the boys. And when we finally see a strong woman leading, doing, being all that she wants to be, it’s inspiring. 

While Barbie is rated PG13, I consider it a very light 13 and would take tweens to see it, especially young girls. One of the most endearing qualities of the Barbies and Kens is their childlike innocence, they’re made for kids. Sure, the “beach off” joke will probably fly right over kids’ heads, President Barbie drops a perfectly bleeped MFer, and Barbie does acknowledge that she does not have a vagina and that Ken doesn’t have a penis, but that’s as off-color as the jokes get. There is no violence, except when Barbie punches a man for groping her (as she should!) and the Ken battle (they throw Barbie stuff at each other, like pool floaties!). 

Gerwig wrote such an intelligent and fun script about flipping and analyzing gender experiences and I don’t think anyone who actually gives this film a chance should feel offended or talked down to. Sure, at times it is a rallying cry for women and a punchline straight into men. I can never listen to Matchbox20’s Push without laughing again. But I think it’s smart and healthy for men to watch Barbie, a movie specifically not made for them, and try to understand a woman’s perspective a bit more. Best of all, there is a loving tribute played to Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator. There is a lot I love about this film, but her presence really brought Barbie to a higher emotional level. 

“Humans have only one ending. Ideas live forever.”