Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig

Director: Greta Gerwig. Review by Rhiannon Grant

I have never owned a Barbie. I went into the cinema with roughly the views articulated by politically-savvy teenager Sasha when she first meets Barbie: ‘You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented.’

I haven’t been convinced otherwise. I was impressed that the big companies involved were prepared to have those things said so explicitly. The argument they make to counter this, laid out in an opening sequence where girls abandon baby dolls in favour of a giant swimsuit-wearing goddess, is that Barbie is a grown-up doll, and, by modelling many different roles, empowers girls to enter many different careers. Alongside this they also try to counter the idea that Barbie’s white, blonde, slim, impossibly-long-legged beauty is the only acceptable body type. Barbies of colour, fatter Barbies, and a wheelchair-using Barbie are all present, and supposed to be equal. A black Barbie is president – although it’s a pretty minor role with only a few speaking lines and no significant agency.

Our main character, ‘Stereotypical Barbie’, is, as even she knows, still the stereotype. So is knowledgeable ‘Weird Barbie’, who has been made ‘ugly’ by being played-with too hard, but is still white, slim, and blonde. White supremacy and other forms of structural oppression are embedded even in Barbieland. In my opinion, the film did not succeed in challenging the harm Barbie does to people’s assumptions about bodies and beauty.

What about inspiring girls to imagine themselves in many different roles? On the face of it, this seemed like the most convincing case made in Barbie’s favour, because human beings do benefit from seeing what others can do. Barbie, like many Quakers, wants to help others – but her way of going about it is naïve. Sasha rightly objects to the unrealistic ideal Barbie sets up for women’s bodies, and when it comes to careers, the film doesn’t help itself. The depictions of career roles in the ‘real world’ are stereotypical: men focus on making money while the only named non-Barbie women are a receptionist and a doll designer. When Ken tests the theory – he has seen men being CEOs, doctors, and lifeguards, so he goes to get a job – he learns that he also needs relevant education. Furthermore, the careers the dolls model are shallow to the point of nonsensical. For example, the alleged democracy in Barbieland involves physical takeovers to enable voting by only one gender at a time. This makes sense as a depiction of play, but wearing a ‘President’ sash does not teach anyone anything about politics.

It’s not easy to see how any of this could be rescued, and indeed, the film’s conclusion is voiced by Sasha’s mother, Gloria. She gives a rousing speech, snapping the Barbies out of subservience to the Kens. ‘I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us,’ she says, ‘and if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.’ I don’t know either. I appreciate that truth-telling is encouraged, but it also demonstrates that truth isn’t enough without action.

Rhiannon is a tutor at Woodbrooke.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment