Spoiler alert: I talk about Barbie here, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go do so and then come back and read this post. I’d hate to ruin the film for you.
I never watch TV or movies anymore. Except it seems on planes. I make exceptions for movies I have been waiting to watch, like Barbie. In truth, I had so wanted to go to the cinema for that one, particulary in the early days, when girls wore pink outfits. I have the perfect pink dress which was waiting for the occasion.
With all this time to kill on an intercontinental flight, and some big ass airline headphones sitting in my lap, you’d think it would have occurred to me to see if Barbie was an option. That didn’t happen until there appeared to be less than two hours to go. I decided to chance it, and just made it.
The movie was enjoyable. It also addresses some powerful messages about womanhood. Some of the speeches made on the contradictory forces pulling at women were fabulous though tragic reflections of ongoing discrimination. Male obliviousness in the real world, ours, and the real world in Barbie, and even more in Barbie land, is stark in comparison.
Enjoy this video of America Ferrera’s Barbie Speech
Enjoy this video of America Ferrera’s even more powerful Speech to the Critics’ Choice Awards
The movie presents these more challenging themes in a narrative which is essentially light-hearted, an occasional comedy of errors.
I didn’t cry, I don’t think I was supposed to, until the very end. That is the moment when Barbie confesses that she doesn’t know who she is anymore, what her purpose is. The Billie Eilish song What was I made for strumming along in the background. That song always gets to me.
The parallels to being a plastic doll, a woman, and the bridge between the two are not lost on this trans woman. Existential crisis. What is my purpose? That is the question Barbie answers with her decision to become human. Her first act as a human is to visit the gynaecologist, a rite of passage, and an intriguing end.
I don’t imagine that many of my readers are fellow Pagans, so also don’t imagine that you will have caught this intriguing article in the weekly newsletter about Barbie. The articles makes a connection between Inanna, the Mesopotamian Goddess of Love, War and Fertility, and Barbie, asking the question, is Barbie the modern Inanna? The article struck a chord, as it proved to be the most popular one of the year.
First, the plot line is eerily parallel. Once upon a time, a Goddess Queen develops thoughts of the underworld and decides to go there. She is much changed by the process but manages to return home. When she returns, she finds her lover has usurped her and she has to fight to regain her throne.
But the important parallel is more profound, and that has to do with the stripping away of Barbie’s sense of self, her confidence, self-belief, optimism, and put-togetherness in the face of objectification and male entitlement.
While Barbie the doll has been variously vilified and loved by women for generations, what emerges is that Barbie is ultimately a woman who lives for herself, not for children, not for a man, but for herself.
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Like you, my beautiful friend, I don’t often have much patience for TV or movies but I happened to watch this movie (it is available at home now) just a few nights ago. In some ways, I didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about this movie (or how it was somehow connected to Oppenheimer…media stunt, I guess?). I enjoyed the overall theme and female empowerment and exploration of female purpose, and I suspect that my lack of enthusiasm simply had to do with being unfamiliar with the product. Growing up, I had these two baby dolls that I was completely enamored with, and…a collection of my little ponys, of course. But Barbie wasn’t really on my radar as a kid so I don’t have the nostalgia that many others experienced around this. Anyhow, it did make me think about the conflicting messages that women are given today. One of my closest friends is a homemaker, raising three children (arguably the most important job in the world in my eyes). She is a warm and loving mother and her kids are very pleasant to spend time with. And yet…she often feels like she’s not “doing anything” for the greater good of the world, and by this, she means some sort of traditional job. I reassure her, telling her that raising kind, empathetic, thoughtful humans really is the best thing she could do for this world. Anyhow… I’m rambling a bit. Great post, beautiful! XOXO
Hello magical human! How are you? Like you I had horses, beautiful plastic horses. A big bear stuffed animal, and one or two male dolls that did stunts–and which mainly I mistreated. I was puzzled and fascinated in equal measure by my girl cousins who had dolls that were very different: a baby that you bottle fed and which then wet itself. Really? Other girl dolls, all seemingly aimed at defining the female experience as nurturing. Preparing “her” for a role. Propaganda. And Barbie. Propaganda of a different kind.
I like that Barbie is shifting and becoming a symbol of something different, some form of liberation. I don’t want to stretch it too far.
In the book on ADD which I reviewed ages ago, Dr Maté makes the point that the single most important job we have as humans is to raise well-adjusted humans. The curse of modernity is how much we fail at this. The disrespect of the homemaker role is central to that. I don’t like structural solutions usually, but I don’t know how we can as a society get to a point of equality unless we mandate income sharing. I think that there should be an obligation of a working spouse to hand over half off the income to a non-working spouse…or that there be a legal co-mingling of income…as well as mandated maternity and paternity leave–as much as one year…and that it be required.
Having children needs to be seen as a social responsibility too.
I am sorry that your friend questions her self-worth. Naughty husband for not helping to change that narrative. But this is how our society works unfortunately. But I would agree that child-rearing is absolutely the most critical task.
In my own life, my mother was put under enormous pressure to raise children, had minimal income prospects and my father was a deadbeat in terms of paying alimiony, and the protection of women was much smaller in those days. Thank goodness my mother had family to fall back on. But her need to work meant that I was raised by nannies and a maid…nannies and maids when I lived with my father, and very loosely by the maid when I lived with my mother. And then my mother was super keen on finding a man, so I didn’t see much of her on prime date nights. I remember watching her get made up and being struck by her beauty. She was an absolute stunner. It’s sad too, because she never knew it, never believed it.
Her little sister was a well-known international model in those days, gracing the covers of many magazines in Europe and the US…but my mother was far more beautiful. Far more elegant, taller, more feminine. When you see them standing next to each other at her sisters wedding, you can see how my aunt could feel (and how she told me) how gloriously beautiful my mother was, but that she never got over the “ugly duckling” feeling of being a tall woman.
I remember over dinner one time when I was in college and agaonzing over this gorgeous woman I really wanted to date and with whom I had been on a handful of blissful dates with…and she told me that “never be afraid to talk to the most beautiful woman. They are by far the loneliest.” It was her truth, lived and felt.
I had a Barbie that I found at the playground…naked, her clothes were gone, she was a bit scratched up, left behind. I took her home. But Barbie was taken away and thrown away as it wasn’t “appropriate”.
There is so much here that I don’t even know where to start, gorgeous. I will say that I have found what your mother wrote to be true…that often, the most beautiful women are the loneliest. In many cultures beautiful women become more of an object, than a real-life human with needs and interests. They are taken out, paraded around, and then put back on the shelf, much like a Barbie doll. At one point in my youth, I was asked to model, and my mother said no. She didn’t want any part of that life for me and I am grateful now for her wisdom. My mother was a stunner, just absolutely beautiful. Even now as I write this, and look up at her high school senior portrait which I have hanging in my living room, I see her raw beauty. But she chose to invest herself into her children. She gave us everything and I will be forever grateful. I wish I had become a mom and followed in her footsteps. I was too busy chasing diplomas and status, and now, with a chronic health issue of my own and my husband sick, it just seems like it’s too late. There is a part of me that feels hollow, empty.
Oh my dear beautiful Nora, what a poignant message. It made me cry. This feeling you invoke of things slipping by, things slipping through our fingers, and of course time is the only thing we can never have more of…How I feel your words.
We follow the path we do because it is the right path for us, and we must forgive ourselves for our own failings or mistakes…we take the best course of action we know for what we need or think we need or think we want. It is hard on the self to question the decisions that a younger us made. Everything was different then, including how we felt, what mattered to us.
My mother also was not supportive of my early modelling years. She hated that it took from my high school time, my friends time, and she was obsessed with keeping me from being gay…from male predators she imagined would attack me. As it happened, no such thing ever came to pass, although other models hit on me–boys not girls. That wasn’t on.
Its funny how we can feel our thoughts and feelings from so long ago…You are beautiful inside and out, you have tasted love, and taste it every day more and more. This is the meaning of life. To drink from this cup, to be reminded that you have the greatest thing of all in your grasp is to know that your life is full and beautiful. Sometimes the pain serves to make us more aware of that.
I am here for you, in any way, shape or form.
Thank you for this beautiful, connecting response, dear one. I am here for you too <3
I love the expression “dear one” so much. It is a deeply pleasure-triggering word that comes from my meditation practice. Do you know Sarah Blondin? She has the most soothing and glorious voice of any human. She uses those words all the time, and I sink right into it.
I feel the truth in your words, and it is something I have long felt from you. I feel people at times stronger than I see them or read them…you are one of those people. In my spirit world I increasingly hear women’s voices. Talking, laughing, putting out beautiful and joyful sensual feminine energy. I know that your voice is one of them, my spirit sisters…and I know that this extended family is guiding me and supporting me particularly in my darkest moments.
You are appreciated.
There is a beautiful Arab proverb which says “the measure of a [person] lives in what they have created and in the loving memory of those whom they have touched.” May that be your truth, and may you know it for you already have it.
A great review. I absolutely adored this film as well. I was never a massive fan of Barbie dolls but really connected with its strong message. Here’s why I loved it:
https://huilahimovie.reviews/2024/05/24/barbie-2023-movie-review/