Barbie (2023) REVIEW: We're ALL Barbie!💖
I may owe an apology to the woman who sat next to me in the theater😅
[Warning: this post contains spoilers for Barbie]
[Supplemental Warning for EXCESSIVE USE OF PINK!!!🎀]
I was laughing too loud in the theater when my friend and I saw Barbie for the first time. The woman sitting next to me at one point even asked me (very politely) to stop laughing so hard. I’d tried to stop after I saw her side-eying me earlier. But I guess I didn’t try hard enough. To be completely fair to her, I do have an obnoxious laugh, always have. I’m an excitable movie watcher, even when I’m watching something at home by myself.
My ADHD only exasperates things, so that even with my anxiety and crippling self-consciousness, I’m not always as courteous to my fellow movie goers as I should be. But I honestly can’t remember the last time someone has actually leaned over and asked me to stop. I kind of respect the hell out of that woman for doing that. And I’m sure this moment will be burned into my soul for years to come.
When I told my friend about it after the movie ended, she said, “I didn’t think you were laughing that loud.” What are friends for?
It’s fitting that this happened at a matinee viewing of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Not to turn a relatively innocuous encounter into a commentary about how women are expected to act a certain way in our patriarchal society, and are immediately put down when they don’t adhere to its insanely conflicting strictures, but…
No. I’m actually not going to do that. I have an obnoxious laugh. I should own that, while also acknowledging that I should be more aware of how it affects other people’s cinematic experience. I kind of wish I could have apologized to that woman. That’s the wonder of social anxiety and hindsight. Neither one really does you any good in the moment.
You’re probably thinking, “Isn’t this a Barbie review? You’re supposed to talk about Barbie.” I am. What I’m talking about right now, what I’ve been talking about, is a very small example of how hard it is to be human. To be flawed and sometimes inconsiderate, and to wish you could fix something only after the chance to fix it has long passed. To wish you could be better than you are, every single day of your life, and curse God or the universe for not making you more talented, more pretty, more special.
(This is getting a bit personal, but hang in there with me...)
To be clear, I’m not saying that I should just throw all caution and decorum to the wind and not give a shit about what anyone thinks of my loud, obnoxious laugh when I go to the movies from now until the end of time. At all. What I am saying is that this is, more or less, what Gerwig’s Barbie is all about. That, and pink. Pink is very important.
When Margot Robbie’s “Stereotypical” Barbie wakes up in her dream house every morning, she stretches her perfect plastic limbs, waves to the Barbie next door, takes a shower (with no water), and gets dressed (read: stands in front of a fully fitted-out wardrobe as whatever clothes that are on display appear magically on her body). Then she goes down to the kitchen (via pink spiral pool slide), holds out a plate to catch perfectly toasted plastic eggos as they pop out of the toaster, and pours herself cup of milk (there’s no milk). After giving her perfect hair a couple of quick brushes in front of her mirror frame, she walks out onto the roof, waves to the rest of Barbieland, and floats gracefully down into her convertible to start her day. The rest is anyone’s guess.
If that sounds like a lot…yes.
This is practically me on a daily basis. Minus the dream house, plastic limbs, sequined bed sheets, no-water showers, magic wardrobe, pink pool slide, eggos with no milk, mirrorless mirror, and floating down from my roof to my car. I don’t even have a car. Or a license. Or a house (I live with my parents). And yet, these minor differences are immaterial. Because, if you really think about it, we’re all Barbie, at least within the context of this film. Even you, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Even you.
Let me explain…
We all wake up in the morning (or afternoon), and we all do things that help us become more-awake people, whether that’s taking a shower, dressing up in clothes that make us feel good, or making breakfast that may or may not involve actual milk. Then, whether we want to or not, we go out and do things like visiting our highly successful friends at their places of work, or leading a group of prima donna scientists in a top-secret military project. The routine I’ve just described likely does not apply to every single human being, perhaps not even most of them. But I bet there’s at least a few of you who read that part and said “yep…yep.”
My point is that being a person is a lot. And it’s hard not to feel, regardless of who you are or what you do, that you could be doing more. That you should be doing more. This might just be a me thing, but the fact that Barbie herself says she isn’t good enough to do anything gives me reason to believe I’m not the only one who knows this feeling very deeply.
That being said, I’m probably more like Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie than a lot of people who will see this movie. I’m white. Blonde. Blue-eyed. Twenty-something. Not visibly disabled. Single. I have a lot of incredibly talented and accomplished friends. I think about death and mortality a lot. I like crying. And I don’t really do anything (at the moment).
Stereotypical Barbie is a toy, so she really can’t do anything of her own free will, and the same is true of all the Barbies. But even among the Barbies, she is one of the few who don’t have a special job or identity. None of the other Barbies judge her for this; in fact, they all love and appreciate each other for who they are, no matter what they do or don’t do.
But whether President Barbie is giving a speech or Author Barbie is getting a Nobel Prize for her work, Stereotypical Barbie is just there. Sitting on a couch in the Pink House oval office, or in the audience at the awards ceremony, or standing off to the side at the beach, greeting the other Barbies (and Ken). In fact, the only thing she really does that sets her apart from the other Barbies is throw elaborate dance parties at her dream house “with planned choreography and a bespoke song.”
Speaking of Ken, Stereotypical Barbie is starting to remind me a lot of Ryan Gosling’s interpretation of Barbie’s ubiquitous male accessory. The iconic tagline for the movie, “She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” is true for the most part. However, Robbie’s Barbie is also…just Barbie. [Pause for scandalized gasps.] Sacrilegious, I know. Behind the artifice of an excellently coordinated fashion sense, perfect hair, and makeup, Stereotypical Barbie is really just as shiftless and desperate for connection as Ken. She’s just better at hiding it.
(Side note: “I’m just Ken,” Gosling sings in Ken’s big musical number, aptly titled “I’m Just Ken,” “and I’m enough. And I’m great at doing stuff!” Truer words have never been spoken.)
Although Barbie has always existed on her own, separate from Ken, what this film shows beautifully is that it’s almost impossible to be just a woman in the real world. Halfway through, Barbie is at her lowest point (both physically and emotionally), and laments that “I’m not smart enough to be interesting. I can’t do brain surgery. I’ve never flown a plane. I’m not president. No one on the Supreme Court is me. I’m not good enough for anything.” Just reading this over again, I can already feel the tears coming. What Barbie is expressing in this scene is exactly how I’ve felt for most of my life. Since I realized what being a “successful” person really means, and what it takes to feel like you’ve done something meaningful and long-lasting that’s remembered and celebrated for years to come. What it means to “last forever.”
America Ferrera’s character Gloria, who isn’t a Barbie (just a regular woman), consoles her with a speech that will either make grown women cry or want to throw fists in the theater:1
It is literally impossible to be a woman […] Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy […]
You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas […] You have to be a career woman, but also always looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.
You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged […]
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.
(…I’m not crying, you’re crying!)
What this film ultimately advocates for is an “ideal” of womanhood that takes its beats from real women. Not just “successful” women or “pretty” women. Gloria’s proposal for an Everyday-Woman Barbie reflects this: “She just has a flattering top and she wants to get through the day feeling kind of okay.” And because Barbie has both existed between and transcended girlhood and womanhood since the very beginning, shouldn’t she be allowed to experience what it means to be human, in all its sadness and beauty?
I think the purest summation of Barbie’s core message (and another gorgeous emotional gut punch for me) is in Barbie’s final line:
I want to be part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that’s made.
Barbie is a film about what happens when a doll, which for decades has been caught in the crosshairs of the war between feminism and the patriarchy, being accused of being a capitalist tool of the patriarchy to oppress women and lauded as a representation of everything women can do and be, learns that this is the experience of every living woman and, in many ways, every living human in the real world. But it’s also about learning to accept and love yourself for everything that you are, all of your flaws and insecurities, all of your mistakes and personal triumphs, no matter how small. You are a woman. You are a human being. Barbie is about letting that be enough.
Oh, and the 2001: A Space Odyssey spoof at the beginning was really funny.
Thank you so much for reading (if you’ve made it this far)! As a bonus, you can listen to my personal Barbie playlist2 HERE:
Because I really am this obsessed (and I’ve spent many days working on it). 😅
OMG! I can’t say anything, there are no words left. I think you said them awe.
Beeyoutiful expression of both the world inside and the one outside, with Barbie as focal point of experience. I have not yet seen this movie. I believe I will do that now....Keep going, Celeste. You are FINE.