Why “Barbie” is Great

Art by Trevor Pacelli

By Trevor Pacelli
Modern-day America often has the reputation of not giving minority groups the chances they deserve, and major corporations often are accused of exploiting those minorities for their own advancement. With that said, could this movie based on the most famous toy in the world really give a needed hope of advancement to girls and kids with disabilities who need their moment? Now, everyone has an opinion about Barbie, for better or for worse, because a major blockbuster like this has never existed, one made by women to give other women the affirmation that it’s okay for them to love the things they love.

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Yet, Barbie initially had the drawback of centering around a toy that since its 1959 public debut has been heavily controversial. Even before the doll was released to the toy market, a 1958 Mattel-sponsored market study revealed mothers thought Barbie had “too much of a figure.” Then there was the issue of diversity—the first Barbies of color weren’t included until 1980, and Barbies of different body types weren’t included until the 21st century. But these divisive setbacks didn’t stop Barbie from revolutionizing the toy industry. Before Barbie, dolls were only babies, meaning girls could only use them to play “mother.” The adult Barbie doll, on the contrary, gave little girls the chance to envision themselves in any profession. So apparently, feminism was solved!

Well, that’s what the Barbies living in the Barbieland of the movie naïvely believe. Of course, they would believe their reputation as Barbie dolls is perfect when they get all the important jobs, even if that means the Kens are treated as unimportant. Even though the thoughts of the Barbies and Kens are just being manipulated by the girls playing with the doll equivalents of themselves, it’s  mostly girls playing with the Barbies. So naturally, the Barbies get the power, not the Kens. But oops: the girl playing with Stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) is feeding her thoughts of dying, which causes her to malfunction. Her heels are on the ground instead of in high-heel positions, cellulite develops on her upper thigh, and she’ll soon turn “sad and mushy and complicated.”

During her journey outside of Barbieland to find the girl playing with her and fix her malfunctions, Barbie is sitting on a park bench, confused. She sees an old woman for the first time, to whom she says, “You’re so beautiful.” Director Greta Gerwig had to fight to keep this meaningful scene in the movie, insisting, “If I cut the scene, I don't know what this movie is about.”

Despite her distraught state, Barbie still manages to find the girl who had been playing with her, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). However, to her surprise, Sasha doesn’t thank her at all for all the Barbie brand has done to “solve” misogyny. Quite the opposite. Sasha calls Barbie a bimbo—a fascist beacon of sexual capitalism who set the feminist movement back fifty years. Yes, she’s an angsty teenager who enjoys pushing her insecurities onto everyone else, but Sasha still has a point. Barbie dolls continue to give women a toxic standard of perfection, ones that not even Barbie herself can meet. (And the voiceover narration uses a hilarious fourth wall break to hammer this point in by referring to Margot Robbie by name.) Yet ultimately, the movie’s not siding with Sasha as she makes these vicious accusations against Barbie, since Sasha later hypocritically says that women hate women and men hate women, it’s the one thing everybody on earth agrees on. By that logic, shouldn’t Sasha then be glad that Barbie set the feminist movement back fifty years? The writers’ intense self-awareness is what sets Barbie apart from other goofy comedies based on toys, as this one removes the pink-tinted glasses to explore the brand’s moral gray area.

Sasha’s mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), is one of those characters who also has something powerful to say about how the Barbie brand has influenced the feminist movement, seeing how she’s been stuck drawing unappreciated fashion designs for the dolls at Mattel’s corporate office. Since selling her soul to Mattel, Gloria had been put into a box like the employees working in cubicles around her—all without an entrance or an exit. The women of Mattel never have authority, even though Mattel was co-founded by a woman, who, by the way, secretly lives on the seventeenth floor.

All that Gloria had to put up with at Mattel gave her a new perspective as to just how challenging it is to be a woman in America. The speech she gives to the existentially depressed Stereotypical Barbie says it all: Our nation’s patriarchy has set self-contradictory rules that are designed to make women permanently uncomfortable with themselves. When women fear they will never be good enough, they’ll be easier for men to control. The Kens already took that philosophy into practice when they flipped Barbieland upside-down and turned all the Barbies living there into brainwashed happy maids. It’s like they’ve come to like this patriarchy.

The result of this societal clash between men and women is not meant to suggest that women are better than men, but rather that both a patriarchy and a matriarchy will hurt everybody. Someone will be shunned to the side while the ones at the top must meet an impossible standard of perfection. It’s incredible to see a major motion picture about a toy brand like this one celebrating humanity. Barbie likewise celebrates the toy brand’s legacy, yet still courageously criticizes itself, even to the extent of making Mattel (who financed this movie) the villain, albeit one that still gets an arc with a sense of peaceful compromise on their end.
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With all that said, I encourage you, if you somehow haven’t already, to check out Barbie. You may find that it can give you and your teenage son or daughter motivation and hope that there’s a place for them in a country that often treats them as an idea and not one who can create the ideas.
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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?