In my twenties and thirties, I was a pop culture fan…a hardcore fan, and if something ticked the boxes of being 1. In demand, 2. New and 3. In fashion, then you’d inevitably find me in a queue, at midnight, waiting to be the first to splurge more cash.
My forties have been a different affair, with life indoors making me realise a few home truths, not least that my lust for pop culture didn’t come from my own enjoyment, it was about fitting in with those around me. Having no one to influence me socially now means my real character and my real passions can finally become known. No longer listening to pop music, I now listen to 70s disco and soft rock classics. I enjoy The Kinks, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton, and I won’t apologise for it. Although I’ve always been a HUGE fan of wearing black, in my earlier years I went to New Look and purchased the most fashion-forward, skin-tight, black item I could find…then I got the matching shoes. Now I buy wide-leg trousers and bardot jumpers because I always liked that look from the 80s but never had the courage to try it in my younger years. Television, technology, sports, politics and even pastimes – I followed the crowd rather than my heart. Although I’ve gone about it in a relatively unhealthy way, I’m glad I’ve finally managed to shake my need to fall in line with everyone else.
HOWEVER…
The Barbie Movie, or Barbie as I should call it, caused an internal struggle in my newly independent brain. Everyone has been talking about it for months, and I started noticing the Barbiecore narrative gaining momentum at the beginning of the year. I shunned the idea of watching it at the time, but as the months wore on, I felt myself getting sucked into her perfect pink populous. For the first time in years, I hopped onto the bandwagon and got myself a Barbie t-shirt, and some pyjamas for my daughter (at 6 years old she’s still easily influenced). I hadn’t even watched the film at this point – not even a trailer – but still I felt myself getting swept up in the excitement.
The film was released in cinema in the UK on the 21st July, but my agoraphobic tendencies kept me away. It wasn’t until this week that I managed to stream it thanks to Sky Store. A rare treat for the midweek blues.
I think I expected something different, maybe something created for a younger audience (childrens movies have found a way of talking to grown-ups on the sly) so I still assumed I’d still enjoy it. But it wasn’t aimed at kids, it wasn’t aimed at Barbie fans or toy collectors or even women. For me, its messages were aimed at men.
Margot Robbie plays the lead ‘Barbie’ in the film, although there are many other Barbies around her all following their aspirational Barbie dreams, from mermaids to senators and construction workers to pilots. Margot Barbie (who plays the traditional, original style Barbie) finds herself unexpectedly in the middle of an existential crisis, questioning her place in the world, the place of Barbie as a product, and the relationship between the fictional ‘Barbieland’ and the real world outside.
All potentially obvious plotlines for a fictional toy to think about in their fictional land. But when the two lands merge, with Barbie and Ken visiting the real world on their own for the first time, the outcome isn’t what she or I expected.
Having lived in a world where she believed that, as a product, Barbie was uplifting women and feminist values at her core, making sure that little girls felt they could be whoever they wanted to be because the doll they played with was achieving the same, the real world gave her a shock.
Flip to Ryan Gosling, playing Just Ken, and you see why Barbie feels this way. The real world through his eyes is still built on a patriarchy that we’ve been trying to gain some control over for hundreds of years. Suddenly I realised that, in many ways, we’re still failing.
Barbie breaks down, realising that Ken (and men in general) have the power to do and be whatever they want, but Barbie doesn’t even know who she is. Having spent her whole life feeling confident and proud of her job making kids believe in their dreams, she suddenly realises that those dreams aren’t as attainable as she’d been led to believe. Ken, on the other hand, can’t believe his luck. Spending his whole life as the sidekick, he suddenly finds that the real world offers him opportunities that he never had, to play a leading role in life, and he becomes power-hungry.
I’m not well versed on feminism, I’m not even sure I know enough to safely call myself a feminist, but watching the movie caused some internal dialogue I hadn’t considered since I started following the crowd all those years ago.
Annoyingly, every time she spoke, I started hearing the opening vocals to ‘This is a mans world’ on repeat, and I felt empathy for Margot Barbie and her questions of the grand plan. Then I found myself envious of Ryan Ken, with his realisation that the real world is actually his oyster.
NOTE – I don’t want to ruin the film for anyone who hasn’t watched it, so the spoilers will end here.
I feel like Margot Barbie every single day. I’m mentally distressed about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I believe my life has been a waste and I haven’t done anything of value so far. I know there are barriers in place for me to progress, be seen, educated or even heard, long before anyone realises I have mental and physical barriers. Why? Because I’m a woman, and the hurdles for us (and any gender outside of male) are just higher than they are for men. So yes, I felt sorry for her, but no, I wasn’t surprised by her outlook. Most women understand these thoughts deeply and have come up against the patriarchy (even if it feels like a small interaction) many times.
Rather than feeling angry at Ken and the grease-lined roads to success most men automatically have, I envied him. I envied his realisation that there were possibilities, opportunities, goals and dreams available to him that he’d previously never dared to imagine. I envied that door opening for him when so many of us still find ourselves desperately pushing behind it and getting nowhere.
Based on what I saw I believe the crisis Margot Barbie experiences, her mental instability as a result of the ‘real world’, is actually one I live with daily, and that tiny reflection of my small life on the big screen was a huge eye-opener.
I don’t think we’ll solve gender bias or the need to further female empowerment any time soon, but if Barbie (the movie) can normalise mental instability within these confines, help kids understand that the world around them, their identity, and their feelings are all allowed to be complex, then the message is worthy of two hours of your time. But if Ken can also normalise mental instability for men, normalise their difficulty in admitting their worries, and that it’s ok that they don’t always feel ‘Ken-ough’, then the film has achieved something groundbreaking and rarely seen in the mainstream.
I’d love to hear what others think about the messages from the movie, especially around mental health, the place of modern gender roles, gender identity, and feminism as a whole. Leave a comment below if you have any nuggets to add that might help me understand all this better.
Am I glad I watched the film? Abso-fuckin-lutely. Did it make me laugh? A few times, yes. Did it make me think? More than I ever could have anticipated and for that reason, I openly recommend it and will (eventually) make sure my daughter sees it too.
I’ll just make sure I’m ready for all the questions afterwards.
Thanks for reading 💜
Creative Steph 