Barbieland: a place where we’re all called Barbie

(Multiple spoilers alert)


A pink box in the foyer of the cinema, a perfectly manicured physique and appearance from Margot Robbie, all of us rooting through our wardrobes for something pink. It’s gender-normative, it’s thin-figures, it’s giving major exclusivity with a marketing budget on steroids. On the face of it, it doesn’t represent us… and yet it did.

For those who played with Barbies, for those who just saw others playing with Barbies, for those who rejected Barbie and for those who secretly loved her even when it wasn’t cool anymore - we went to see the film because whether we like her or not, we all had a relationship with Barbie and well… we were curious. Curious about what it was going to say and how the heck could it get away with everything that Barbie represents in our body-positive, diverse, tolerant, wokely-soaked society?

So what was the Barbie movie actually saying?


“Do you ever think about dying?”

This was the pivotal moment in the movie where after approximately four-thousand “Hi Barbies” and a perfect day in Barbie-land, everything changes. Barbie is having intrusive thoughts from the real world, she is becoming more human as she experiences the emotions of Sasha’s mum, Gloria. We see Barbie grappling with the reality of being a woman in the real-world for the very first time as she says “It’s like I'm conscious… but it’s of myself”. For me, it was so refreshing to hear women’s struggles talked about as if they are not inherent parts of who we are. Barbie is learning what it is to be a woman in the real-world, step-by-step, and it is worlds away from her own utopia where women are empowered and confident.

Stereotypical-Barbie is not perfect-Barbie. The film does well to debunk this assumption. For me, the connection between Barbie and Gloria shows two imperfect women of different backgrounds (Gloria was played by Honduras-born actress, America Ferrera). Gloria is struggling to find her place as a mum of a grown-up daughter. Barbie is also struggling to find her ‘thing’ within the vocation-driven set-up of Barbieland. When we see them side-by-side, bonding over their cellulite and thoughts of death, you almost forget that they are from completely different worlds.


Far from the exclusive, privileged Barbie, we see in the film that Barbie loves women. When Margot cried, lamenting the brainwashing of all the Barbies in subservience to the Kens, I cried. Contrary to the words of Sasha “everyone hates women, even women hate women”, Barbie loves women. Barbies know all too well that when ‘Barbie’ wins the nobel prize award, it is a win for Barbie, not a singular woman but for women as an entire entity and sisterhood. Not only this, but when Barbie can show up confidently, so can Ken. It’s Barbie and it’s Ken. It’s a world where all of us are called Barbie and when one of us wins, we all do, even the Kens (and the horses).

Can we all just have a moment for weird Barbie? Did anyone else just think HOW COOL?! Weird Barbie had been played with a bit too hard and was living to different beauty standards and she just OWNED it. Living her best life in this house at the top of a hill, dedicating her life to helping Barbies recover themselves - all whilst in the splits. I think weird Barbie, to me, represents that bit of weird, wild and free that we’ve all got inside of us. That part that sets ourselves free from the impossible balancing act of being a woman and lives (in the splits) on the glass ceiling of who we used to be. 

At the end of the film, the Barbies club together with weird Barbie to reverse the brainwashing effects of patriarchy. They lure the Kens with something shiny in order to get the Barbies alone and transform them (with a killer speech from Gloria).

I think, in many ways, the film does something similar to us audience members. It entices us with wit, pink and whimsical dances in order to get us alone and de-brainwash us out of the snares and trappings of patriarchy, for men and women alike. For many, the hard-hitting messages in the film took excited and prosecco’d groups attending the film on opening night by surprise. We were enticed into our own un-brainwashing.

Whilst, some might say that the Barbie movie was preaching to the already-converted, with the hyper-masculine Ken’s opting to see Oppenheimer instead of getting de-brainwashed, I think the already-converted were the exact group that needed to see the film. The film was for those who are already convinced about the harmful effects of patriarchy, but needed reminding and needed an apology from the stereotypical Barbie who led to us to thinking of ourselves as less than her. Not just redeeming for Mattel as a company, but redeeming for parts of our childhood and our smaller selves who needed reminding that all of us are called Barbie and Barbie loves Barbies.

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