Barbie Smashes the Patriarchy, as Women Laugh Out Loud (video)
Barbie smashed the patriarchy and did it with big smiles, glittering fashions, epic dance numbers, and laugh-out-loud humor. The right is not laughing.
Just a few minutes into the Barbie movie, it is crystal clear why people on the right might not be fans and why women and girls are laughing out loud in movie theaters worldwide.
Barbie is a classic quest story. During the film’s first big bash dance party, “Stereotypical Barbie” (played by Margot Robbie) asks the dancing Barbies and Kens if they ever have thoughts of death (as seen in the trailer movie below). Her feet go flat, and her legs develop cellulite. The Barbie sisterhood decides Stereotypical Barbie is “broken” and must seek advice from “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon, the oracle in the quest). Weird Barbie challenges Stereotypical Barbie to choose “knowledge” over the status quo: choose the Birkenstock sandals over the pink high heels, leave Barbieland for the Real World, find “her girl” and cheer her up. Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) hitches a ride in the pink convertible (without Barbie’s consent, I might add) and the plot unfolds. [Major spoiler alert if you read farther.]
In my opinion, there are hundreds of reasons why women and girls — of nearly any age — will love the you-be-you, smash-the-patriarchy, value-your-friends message of the Barbie movie. They are the same reasons why patriarchal blowhards like Senator Ted Cruz, and others who want to keep women “in the box,” won’t approve of it.
The brilliantly funny McKinnon, as Weird Barbie, shows Stereotypical Barbie the “childlike map drawn in chalk” that Cruz is grousing about on social media. It’s a graphic design for a movie about dolls who come to life and need a map to get to from Barbie Land to the Real World. It’s not a political statement or a “Chinese Communist plot,” as Cruz contends. I also read that some people are professing not to like the Barbie movie because there’s a trans doll character. How could anyone even find a trans doll among the hundreds of Barbies and Kens dancing around in flashy, mostly non-traditional outfits?
The movie does have LGBTQ-friendly nods— not that there’s anything wrong with that. A the very beginning, a rainbow-colored Mattel logo fills the screen for a few seconds before the colors swirl around and dissolve into the traditional logo with red background. There are many rainbow-colored design outfits — including Barbie and Ken’s original Venice Beach disco era rollerblade outfits and Beach Ken’s “Kenough” colorful rainbow shirt at the end. (Did Beach Ken discover his true self after Barbie left him?)
Dream Big!
The Barbie movie tells all viewers to dream big, be who you want to be and help your friends and they will help you. The movie and the doll’s brand also have a clear message to girls: if you want to do something with your life other than get married to a man, live in a Dream House and be a Mom, that’s OK. Over 60+ years, Barbie has done it all.
Women in my age group were the first generation of Barbie fans. We can relate to the baby doll smashing at the beginning of the film, snicker at the references to dolls that didn’t make it like Midge, Skipper and Alan, remember our days of playing Barbies with our friends (and later daughters and now granddaughters), and bristle at how poorly women still are treated in the US today. Our Barbies were dreaming big in 1959-62. Ten years later in 1972, we were going braless on college campuses, protesting the Vietnam War, smoking pot, taking birth control pills and clamoring for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
Fifty years later, although no longer taking birth control pills, nothing has changed except for the names of the wars. Understandably, those of us in Barbie’s first generation were F*CKING READY for Barbie to smash the patriarchy, and she didn’t disappoint.
Smash the Patriarchy!
At every turn, the movie uses big smiles, glittering fashions, sight-gags, clever dialogue, laugh-out-loud humor, and epic dance numbers, reminiscent of old Hollywood, to poke fun at the patriarchy while elevating Barbie, her sisterhood, and her quest to help her girl. The humor is multi-layered. Clever double entendres [“Get back in the box!”] about sexism, the patriarchy, and corporate culture are mixed deadpan delivery of lines only a doll could say with a straight face [“Actually, I don’t have a vagina, and he doesn’t have a penis. We don’t have genitals.”] Old-fashioned sight-gags and vaudevillian facial expressions from the exuberant Barbies and the pouting Kens — particularly Beach Ken (AKA Kenough and Just Ken) — add a lot of laughs and a cartoonish atmosphere to a live action movie.
The Barbie movie is a feminist manifesto cloaked as a fairytale quest. Barbie tells viewers: dream big and don’t settle. That’s why the right is in a tizzy.
As someone who saw the Barbie movie twice on opening weekend, I have comprised a list of the Top 10 Reasons why the patriarchy doesn’t approve of the Barbie movie, but I do.
Little girls might cast off motherhood for a career! Barbie opens with a monochromatic, sepia-toned desert scene where bored little girls play “house” — ironing, cooking, and taking care of baby dolls. The narrator (Helen Mirren) says that before Barbie, dolls were primarily baby dolls. As an adult doll, Barbie changed the games for girls, literally.
When tall, slender Barbie (actress Margot Robbie) arrives on the scene with her iconic blonde ponytail, flaming red lipstick, black-and-white-striped bathing suit, stylish sunglasses, and black wedgie sandals, the sullen little girls gaze up at her like the monolith in 2001 a Space Oddessey and begin smashing the baby dolls. I grew up in the Tiny Tears/Barbie transition era. Who ever thought girls wanted a doll that cries and pees?
Ruth Handler, Barbie’s inventor and President of Mattel for almost 30 years, said that she noticed her son had more opportunities than her daughter to create different types of pretend games with the variety of traditional boy toys he had. She created Barbie, and named the doll after her daughter Barbara, to spark girls’ imaginations by giving them more variety and more roles to play in their games. Barbie opened up new pretend worlds and new real worlds to girls.Barbie is about dreaming big and not settling. As the narrator says, Barbie started out as a doll in a swimsuit and became so much more. As movie intro talked about dozens of Barbie’s careers over 60 years — doctor, teacher, astronaut, cowgirl, president, vet, reporter, firefighter, whatever — they showed a collection of classic Barbie career outfits and dolls over the decades. In the early 1980s when my daughter and her friends played with Barbies, I noticed Mattel had branched out and was offering Barbies with different hair, skin tones and body types. Hawaiian Barbie was my favorite of that era. She had gorgeous, long wavy black hair.
Not only could Barbie could do anything, she was no longer stuck with Stereotypical Barbie’s controversial body shape, high-heeled feet, white skin color, blonde hair, and blue eyes.
Barbie is financially independent. My Beat Generation older cousins Diane and Patty were single working women in the early 1960s when I was a Barbie fan. They were my role models. They were slender and stylish with their beehive hairdos, sheath dresses, pumps, lipstick, cigarettes and Ken doll boyfriends. They were a riot as our babysitters. We watched American Bandstand and danced the jitterbug.
I had no idea until recently that my favorite cousins didn’t have the same financial and legal rights that my Barbie had when she bought her first Dream House in 1962. Barbie came on the scene in 1959 and bought her house before American women could open their own bank accounts!
My Barbie and her doll friends planned trips to Europe and New York City. They had jobs, changed clothes a lot and played in the Dream House pool. Sometimes one or two Kens would show up. I guess when I was a kid, I thought some part of the Barbie Land story was reality. Back in the early 1970s when I was first advocating for the ERA, I had no idea how much more work needed to be done before women could have Barbie’s financial independence. By far most of the people living in poverty in the US are women and their children. The work is not done. We need the ERA to get equal pay for equal work and to end government-based discrimination.The Barbie movie has more female characters than male characters. Or it seems that way. I didn’t count. It is a breath of fresh air to see a movie in which at least half of the characters are not cis gender men! I have lost count how many boring, cookie cutter action movies I’ve seen that have 20+ male characters and one to three female characters, who fall into the predictable architypes of Mother, Wife, Girlfriend, Whore, Evil Villain or Underling/Employee.
The Barbie movie makes fun of the patriarchy and male fragility. In Barbie Land, the Barbies hold all of the power. Barbies outnumber the Kens. Barbies hold all of the jobs from trash mover to Supreme Court to President. Barbies own the houses and make all of the decisions. The Kens are powerless pouting dance partners in Barbie Land. The Barbies are independent, and the Kens are clingy and always seeking the Barbies’ attention and approval.
The jealous Kens show off and compete on the dance floor, viying for a smile from Stereotypical Barbie. At the end of the dance party, Barbie ignores Ken’s lean-in for a kiss and his suggestion that the dolls have some alone time. Barbie waves toward the her Dream House full of Barbies and says, “Every night is girls night.” (The male/female role reversals in Barbie Land are meant to be glaringly obvious, and the dolls really play it up.)
All of this changes, when Beach Ken wanders into a school library in the Real World and discovers the patriarchy rules the world — not Barbies. He’s so excited by the idea that the Kens could take charge of Barbie Land that he watches the black corporate SUVs take Stereotypical Barbie away.
While the Barbie sisterhood is preoccupied with helping Stereotypical Barbie and her quest, Beach Ken teaches the other Kens about the patriarchy and their right to be in charge. President Barbie tells Beach Ken he can’t change all the laws in one day and disenfranchise the Barbies to benefit the Kens. To which, the now defiant Beach Ken says, “Literally. Figuratively. Watch me.” Bubbly, colorful Barbie Land quickly becomes macho, chest-thumping Kendom.
Overnight, the Supreme Court is flipped from all Barbies to all Kens. The power of the Kens and the patriarchy is cemented into the legal structure. Kens own all the Dream Houses and make all of the decisions. The Barbies become subservient to the Kens, are isolated from their sisters and forget they ever had power. (Sound familiar?)
When Stereotypical Barbie complains about the changes to Barbie Land, Beach Ken says flippantly, “Every night is boys’ night.”The Barbie movie makes fun of Corporate America (albeit with their involvement, marketing and permission). Barbie and Ken have multiple run-ins with the law on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. After all, they’re dolls who don’t know how to act in the Real World and never had to pay for their own clothes. Headed by the hilarious Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO, the toy company’s board is all white men in matching blue suits. When they learn that two dolls have escaped from Barbie Land, they send the black SUVs to capture Barbie.
Corporate America wants Barbie “back in the box” and under their control. She almost falls for it but jumps out of the box, suggesting that she should find Beach Ken (who just watched her get carted off and didn’t help her). Even Corporate America (CEO Ferrell) tells Barbie that she doesn’t need Ken, and that it was always all about her. He orders Barbie to “get back in the box,” and she escapes. A chase ensues with the Mattel Board members looking like the inept Keystone Cops.Barbie “meets her maker,” and she’s a Jewish grandma. Often in the classic quest story, the person on the quest has a spiritual awaking or a vision. When Barbie is running away, she opens a door and ducks into a room to find a dimly lit 1950s era kitchen with a diminutive grandma sipping tea at the table. This is, of course, Handler (Rhea Perlman). She tells Barbie her origin story and shows her how to avoid capture to continue her quest. Handler appears toward the end of the movie and helps Barbie make the choice between staying in Barbie Land, where every day is perfect, and joining her girl’s family in the Real World.
The Barbie movie makes fun of feminine and masculine stereotypes. The primping, the fancy clothes, the perfect hair, the big house, the pink convertible — Barbie’s world was lavish, over-the-top and self-absorbed. Kendom, with the sweaty chest-bumping, the aggressively competitive sports, and the silent, subservient girlfriends, was also lavish (in a less stylish way), over-the-top and self-absorbed. Obviously, neither Barbie Land nor Kendom is an equitable place to live because they both were controlled by a single group. Will Barbie find the Real World to be more equitable than Kendom?
Ken is not the center of Barbie’s universe. It’s the rare movie plot that doesn’t have a female lead who is subservient to the male lead, like the Barbies in Kendom. From the beginning, Barbie makes it clear that Beach Ken is a friend, but she has many friends, many interests and boundaries. In an immature tit-for-tat, Ken later lets Barbie know that he also has other friends. These dolls are not ready for a committed relationship, regardless of whether society thinks they are destined to be together or not. Too often family, friends and society push people into marriage and relationships they’re not ready for.
In the end, the guy doesn’t get the girl. Toward the end, Barbie tells her maker, Handler, that she doesn’t love Beach Ken.
Barbie chooses the Real World with all of its uncertainties and imperfections like flat sandals, an anatomically correct female body and human friends (her girl and family) over life with Ken in the Barbie Land Dream House.
When Barbie leaves Ken behind, the doll casts off the myth that life in a Dream House with a man she doesn’t love would be better than living alone. Ken, wearing a multicolored outfit with “Kenough” on it, smiles and waves good-bye.