Is Barbie feminist... enough?

Two nights ago I had a rare mid-week evening out, at the cinema. The energy was high and there were lots of all-pink outfits, pink balloons and glasses of bubbles. It was the premiere of Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, whose other well-known films (Ladybird, Little Women) are iconic. There’s a lot of chat online about whether the movie is too woke and too feminist, or the opposite - is Barbie really feminist enough? Doesn’t she perpetuate unrealistic stereotypes of an ultra-slim white woman with a perfect life?

As the credits rolled, my friend said, “I wasn’t sure about the ending. It seemed like they didn’t know how to finish it, as there was a lot going on in the movie…” I agreed. The next day, I tried to unravel the multiple feminist threads that run through the Barbie movie. In particular, what is at the core of it? What is it trying to say?

Barbie represents many different personas and possibilities

Barbie, both in this movie and as a toy, is an astronaut, a supreme court judge, and the President of the United States. She’s a scientist, a nobel prize winner, and a beach-goer in a classic black and white swimsuit. Does Barbie represent an idealised view of how woman can have it all? Do Barbie dolls put pressure on girls to imagine a perfect future for themselves, that doesn’t reflect how the real world works? The movie points to the possibilities of many different versions of Barbie – she can be any of these things. It’s a given; she just is. This is juxtaposed against the real world where instead of women and girls having the upper hand, men do. One of the characters in the movie talks about wanting to create an ‘average Barbie’. An average woman going about her average life, as most of us do. In essence, the film holds two ideas together, at the same time: Barbie can be a toy that encourages girls to dream big; but she should reflect our averageness, too. How many women will really be Nobel prize winners or Presidents?

A sea of pink cinema-goers.

I need to wear more pink, it’s a joyful colour.

Barbie is far more interesting than Ken

Barbie has many friends in the Barbie movie, and they are all women. The women hang out and support each other, and spend quite a lot of time at the beach (the ideal life, really). “She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” is the tagline on the movie posters. If you played with Barbies, you might’ve had a similar experience to me – I had a number of Barbies, and just one, lone Ken. In the movie, the Barbies outnumber the Kens, and barely pay them any attention. The movie has a prominent message of the importance of female friendship and subverts the male/female gaze.

What it doesn’t say: Barbie unfortunately represents capitalist waste and environmental degradation

You might’ve heard that the Barbie movie caused a worldwide shortage of a particular shade of hot pink paint. It also used a large number of costumes, and it will generate several million dollars of Barbie doll sales. In 2021, over 86 million Barbie dolls were sold, with a whole lot of plastic and carbon emissions to boot. The children who are playing with these dolls are going to be the ones bearing the consequences of climate change. And so will their children. The fact that children’s dolls can create so much waste and so many carbon emissions is entirely anti-feminist to me.

The real world is messy; playing with Barbies doesn’t need to be

It is far easier to have control in Barbie’s world, where you get to move dolls from one point to another and create your own scenarios. My Barbies went camping in their white and pink campervan and rode a battery-powered horse. They went to work, wearing beautiful gold high heels while carrying a shiny gold handbag (almost thirty years later, I can still visualise my favourite pieces).

When girls play with Barbies, they get to create whole worlds where they’re not answerable to anyone. They don’t have Ken dolls dictating anything or taking up space. Those girls can be as successful or as average as they like. It’s a perfect world, in miniature.

The Barbie movie is hilarious, chaotic, emotional, and it has its flaws: but it strives to be real about our experiences as women. So yes, I do think the Barbie movie is feminist, and more importantly than that, it is unapologetically messy, just like real life.

Have you seen Barbie? What did you think of it?