Barbie is a Reactionary Movie Masquerading as Feminism

Do we really need another review of the Barbie movie? It’s a stupid movie, with serious plot holes, and virtually zero character development. The reviews defend the movie against right wing attacks, praise it for starting discussions about patriarchy worldwide, and laud co-writer and director Greta Gerwig for subverting gender roles and showing audiences what true acceptance and female support looks like. Gerwig achieves all of this through creating a satirical Barbie world that looks amazingly like the Barbie dolls and accessories we played with and coveted as kids from the 1960s through the 1990s. 

While Gerwig has succeeded so far in passing this choice off as satire and modern feminism, I have to call bullshit. It is difficult for children under 10 to understand satire. They are literal thinkers and take the movie at face value. Whether or not you think it’s right, the reality is that children as young as 3-years-old are watching this movie. Because this is a movie that has grossed over $1 billion and has become a cultural event that everyone feels compelled to bring their daughters to, we have to use an empathetic lens and analyze the movie from the perspective of the kids sitting in the audience. Mattel and the filmmakers chose to resuscitate the original Barbie for the movie (snatched waist, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, slanted feet, and focused on having the dream house, the car, and the fashionable clothes). 

Barbie Stereotype Redux

This decision to create a movie around “Stereotypical Barbie” is a slap in the face to changes in the Barbie line and the major strides towards inclusion and diversity in children’s media. Representation Matters has been embraced as a common sense idea (although children’s media is only scratching the surface of true representation). Barbie has had to makeover it’s image, atone for the sins of its past and the damage it’s done to female self-image for generations. There are a variety of skin tones, hair types and colors, and body types available for purchase. Long gone is the corseted waist and slanted feet. Barbie is now punk, full-figured, has curves, and wears sneakers. I expected the movie to use current Barbie dolls as the characters so kids could see the dolls they play with come to life. 

Instead, we get a return to tokenism and a backlash against diversity and inclusion. Casting Simu Liu as a Ken and Issa Rae as a (super thin) Barbie, and a Latina mother (America Ferrera) and daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) in a vast sea of white Barbies and Kens populating Barbieland is a giant leap backwards. Mattel and Hollywood are clearly tired of pretending to care about the majority of the children they ask to play with their toys and watch their movies.  

More Harm than Charm

How harmful is this movie? Let’s look at it from different perspectives. 

Think about the young white girls who are watching the movie receiving a clear message that the definition of beauty is completely unattainable to them unless they engage in self-harm. The original Barbie as a real human would be too thin to menstruate and unable to stand on her own. More than 90% of women that have eating disorders are 12 to 25 years old. 

Imagine the clear messaging millions of Black and Brown girls are getting from the film, that the definition of beauty excludes you and there is no way for you to be “pretty”. Again, this impossible Western, colonial beauty standard fosters self-harm through eating disorders, skin bleaching, colored contacts, chemical hair treatments, and years of inferiority and self-loathing. How do I know this? Because this was established through research as long ago as the 1950s. The “White and Black Doll” study was used as part of arguing the Brown vs. Board of Education case where the Supreme Court decided that separate wasn’t equal and that schools had to be desegregated. 

The research is so clear on this that it’s included as dialogue in the movie. However, sharp political analysis of all of the harm Barbie has caused generations of young girls is played off as teenage angst. The same character starts to smile again once she’s wearing pink dresses and has bows in her hair in Barbieland. 

One last perspective to consider: the trans girl. At the end of the movie, Barbie has to decide if she’d like to be human. In order to decide, there’s a montage of women with babies and children of different ages, there’s a woman in a wedding dress, a woman as a grandmother. The movie ends with Barbie being rushed to an appointment where we see Barbie check in for her gynecologist appointment. The idea that what defines women is having a vagina and making babies is anti-trans. All of the trans girls, excited to join in the Barbie movie hype, are being told that they will never be “real” women and everyone else is being shown that they shouldn’t consider trans women to be “real” women either.   

Caricature of Patriarchy

So what about patriarchy? Isn’t it a good thing that people are talking about it? There is a caricature of patriarchy that is completely confusing at best and makes a mockery of a concept meant to express women’s oppression at worst. By depicting patriarchy as men with horses and beer who play guitar and own everything (Barbie’s Dream House is Ken’s House now!) while women wear cocktail waitress uniforms, serve them beer, and hang on their every word, the movie does absolutely nothing to explain women’s oppression and the inequality that this young audience will have to deal with and struggle against throughout their lives. The concept of patriarchy is removed from its context of capitalism, which is class inequality. It’s seen as a joke that can be easily done away with if women validate one another. 

One of the key intended messages of the movie is that of validation. Both Ken and Barbie have to learn that they are good enough exactly how they are. But how are they? They are white, blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous, and dumber than dirt. Barbie actually cries because she thinks she isn’t pretty anymore and the other Barbies and the two humans adamantly reassure her that she still is pretty. 

The movie is literally putting female-presenting children in boxes and telling them to smile for the camera in movie theaters and teaching young girls worldwide that what it means to be a woman is to get married and have babies (in the context of abortion and gender-affirming care being under attack in the US and much of the world). This movie is a feminist nightmare. To see it otherwise is to accept that right wing ideas have taken hold in the government and in Hollywood and that we are powerless victims in the face of this. 

Amy Lerner is a longtime socialist and fighter for reproductive rights.