Dreamer

Hello dreamers and good evening. I hope you had a great weekend and that you are recharged for the upcoming week.

In the light of my last articles, Feminity and Girlbooss, I’ll end the series with the talk of the moment: Barbie the movie (2023). We all know this movie, as the brand Barbie, was made to empower women all around the world, to fight patriarchy, and to give a voice to us, doubled X chromosome.

However, there are a lot of big question marks about the movie. No, I’m not a troll right now, I’m just a woman who wanted to see what the younger generations aspire to.

As a disclaimer, I didn’t liked Barbie. I think I had a doll or two as original Barbies, but wasn’t really into the trend as a child.

Now, with all the press around it, I had to see it, and unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed. The cast was amazing, both Margot Robie and Ryan Gosling played their part at their the most, and honestly, all the actors. The story and more exactly the message behind it was what didn’t “hit” me.

For the ones that haven’t seen the movie, in the next part there are spoilers about the Barbie movie.

The story revolves around the evolution of Barbie dolls and the fight they “won” when they allowed girls to dream and become anything they wanted. Ok. The Barbie brand made a difference to girls and women around the world allowing them to be anything in a world of men. However, for to dolls, the mission was complete there and they lived happily ever after in the Barbieland. Or so they thought so until a real woman, linked with Stereotypical Barbie, got a little depressed and the Barbie felt it too.

The beloved blonde went on an adventure to see why things are wrong and to fix them. In the background, it also starts a story about Ken, the accessory of Barbie. The male doll goes with Barbie in the adventures where both of them find out that patriarchy still runs the place, but is better hidden.

As Barbie tries to find her human, Ken goes back to Barbieland to take over “the world” and install patriarchy. Say what? I mean why start a fight between dolls if he was an accessory or if he loved her as he claims?

Anyhow, after she runs away from Mattel, Barbie gets back to Barbieland, or how she finds it, Kenland. She discovers that patriarchy it’s there too.

Now, she runs away from Mattel and she discovers it’s ruled by men, not like Barbieland by a woman. They try to capture her and to make it all go away, even thou they don’t have the same option as with Midge, whom they discontinued and made everything go away.

After she got away, she has an existential crisis in Kenland, when she realizes all the Barbies are brainwashed and she can’t save them.

Barbie only gets back when her human tells her about how women in reality have to deal with standards. And I think that’s the only hot topic the movie hit. However, the speech was a one-time moment, with not too much credit. The only fuss around it was that it helped all the Barbies get out of the trans.

After that, the story revolves around Ken who tries to install patriarchy and we find out it’s only because Barbie didn’t give him the attention he needed, making her the center of the story. Probably, this part was meant to underline to fight against patriarchy, however, to me it seemed like it was Barbie’s (our, women) fault that patriarchy was installed in Barbie land (or in the real world).

The movie ends with Barbie back in charge, but giving Kens a bit more credit than being an accessory and with stereotypical Barbie becoming a real Woman. What?

I wasn’t really impressed with the movie, which also reminded me of a musical.

I think it wasn’t insisted too much on the real problems like the standards Barbie doll created (it has only reminded in the human’s speech, Barbie’s talk with the girl, and in the part where Barbie notices that she gets Cellulite and flat feet), but only on patriarchy.

As I said, I give the movie credit for putting the finger on the fact that even though it seems women have rights, patriarchy only found a way to hide it better.

What really pissed me off, was the sexualization of Barbie. How in the name of Earth can you end the movie with the favorite doll of many generations, who allegedly worked for women’s rights and choose to be a normal human, going to the gynecologist, after she stated that as dolls, they don’t have genitals? Just how?

In the ecological talks, I won’t go down the rabbit hole, because I haven’t had the chance to fact-check all the news about the pink pollution this movie created.

But, besides that, yeah the movie was a good one. Not as good as Barbie and the 12 Dancing princesses or Fairytopia but still.

Yeah, please note that I’m not a movie critic and it’s just my personal opinion about this movie. I also have one on Oppenheimer, but about that, we’ll talk tomorrow.

Until then, have #adreamerlife,
Cristiana Apreutese