Barbie: the feminist reset we all needed

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie hit the silver screen last month and transported viewers to Barbieland, a pink haven many young girls have dreamt of since they picked up their first doll. But this film is not just a story with Barbie and Ken as protagonists. The deep dive into the concept given life by toy company Mattel is also about how it shaped feminist thought over the years.

And yes, spoilers ahead…

Ask your mother…

With the movie teaser paying immaculate tribute to the opening scene in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – the new Barbie doll created in 1959 suddenly replacing the standard baby dolls than girls now, just like Kubrick’s ape, smash to smithereens – it was always clear that Gerwig’s film was going to be more than just a Barbie story. As narrator Helen Mirren comments, girls “could only ever play at being mothers, which can be fun… for a while.”

But then came Barbie, the doll that young girls could imagine their future selves as other than a mother. Barbie had no children. She burst onto the market in a black-and-white swimsuit, styled either as a blonde or a brunette. Early versions saw her wearing the stylish clothes of the time, and by the 1970s, Barbie was given career options… well before she became a surgeon in 1973, she had travelled into space in 1965, and by 1992 she was running for president, with an accompanying female vice-president in 2016 (the year Hillary Clinton ran for President of the USA).

Women today might feel the impact of these career-oriented Barbies on their young minds. More women today are in the labour market than ever before, young women get to be a ‘girlboss’, and not bringing up a family is a reasonable option when career comes first.

But Barbie also came to represent everything wrong with patriarchal society, as well, and academic and activist Maria Pisani, shares this sentiment.

“I never really played with dolls, and as a child of the 70s, and adolescent of the 80s, Barbie (and anything pink or remotely deemed to be feminine) came to represent everything wrong with patriarchal society. Over the years though, I came to feel almost as shackled by some strands of feminism as I did by the contradictions hurled in my direction by the patriarchy – each with their fixed expectations and ideals on what it means to be a (stereotypical) ‘good feminist’ or a (stereotypical) ‘good woman/mother’ and ‘stereotypically sexy’ – trying to put me in a box.”

Gerwig’s film does not shy away from this reality. When Margot Robbie’s Barbie goes to the “real world” to find the girl who was playing with her in doll-form, she meets Sasha, who immediately criticises Barbie for setting unrealistic beauty standards, calling her a bimbo and even… “a fascist”.

And later, Sasha’s mother gives the Barbie dolls a wake-up call with a now-famous monologue on the contradictions of being a woman. “You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin,” she says. “You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.”

Pisani says that she too has tried to navigate such contradictions as a mother, making sure that her three daughters have the space and opportunity to be whoever they want to be. “And I think this is the message that Barbie the film manages to put out there – it’s feminist-meets punk-meets queer – Barbie refuses to get into any box, she fights the patriarchy in killer heels, or Birkenstocks – anything goes. Feminist ideas are evolving, a reflection of their historical moment, and the diverse perspectives and situated realities of different women – I think the film provides a fun opportunity to explore these changes, and to discuss how patriarchy continues to damage women, and how it hurts all of us.”

Can you feel the Kenergy?

Unlike in the doll franchise, Ken is given a central role in the film. At the start of the film, Ken is nothing without Barbie and only happy when he’s around her. But Barbie gives him the cold shoulder – she’s more interested in being independent and hanging out with the other Barbies.

Ken tags along with Barbie as they leave Barbieland for the real world. Here, Ken discovers patriarchy (and horses…). He’s having the time of his life by no longer being the second sex in Barbieland, where it’s the Barbies who have all the fun and power, get to be president or sit on the supreme court. It’s the Kens sit at home or play by the beach.

But now in the real world, Ken loves seeing the men in control – men on dollar bills, carved on the side of Mount Rushmore, CEOs and doctors, and not just accessories for Barbies. So Ken tries to install his own patriarchy upon returning to Barbieland, convincing the other Kens and brainwashing the Barbies into submissive roles as maids and housewives.

This journey comes to a head as he breaks out into song and questions his existence, while in combat with the other Kens. “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility?” he sings.

For film director Martin Bonnici, it’s the highlight of the movie. “The song starts with Ken estimating his value in comparison to others. ‘I’m always number two’, ‘Anywhere else I’d be a ten’, but ends with Ken proudly proclaiming, ‘I’m just Ken and I’m enough, and I’m great at doing stuff’. What a journey!”

“And it’s not surprising that this song, or these statements, come after the discovery of the patriarchy. We (yes, all of us men) have been brought up in a society that tells us we need to compare ourselves to others at all times. That we are to judge ourselves not for who we are, but for how others see us and how we compare to others.”

So as the Kens in the film get defined by their relation to Barbie, even when they discover patriarchy, they are still focused on winning the Barbies’ attention. And indeed, the Kens end up going to war with each other after the Barbies start showing interest in the different Kens to which they were originally paired up with.

Conservative pundits have dubbed the film anti-male, but Bonnici says it’s anything but. “If anything it was the most beautiful way to show support to men. Barbie apologises for not seeing Ken, but more importantly, Ken realises that he is enough. So I’ll join the chorus and proudly say that I’m just Ken, and I’m enough.”