To think America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie isn’t that great?

[Prrambulate]

BARBIE SPOILERS BELOW

Everyone seems to be raving about this moment in the Barbie movie - possibly worthy of an Oscar nomination, and a quintessential characterisation of what it’s like to be a women in modern society.

I thought it was lacklustre. There are parts of it that ring true - the incessant need to be likeable - but they’re kind of cliched. And other parts I just don’t agree with (love your kids but don’t talk about them all time, ie retain a semblance of identity beyond motherhood. Isn’t that a good thing? And who’s saying we always have to be grateful? I feel there’s much more collective understanding now about the challenges of being a woman and/or mother…)

*

Speech:

”It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

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. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. 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. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.

It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

I sense the OP doesn’t like being disagreed with

I really liked one of Barbie's first moments in the real world when she looks at an older woman with all her life showing on her face and says very sincerely "You're beautiful."

I'm not saying the film is the ultimate in feminist analysis, but as someone born in the 70s, I feel an affinity for second wave feminism and the sheer fun of the sisterhood v the patriarchy. There was something of that vibe in the film, though second-wavers were not generally fans of Barbie herself, to put it mildly.

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

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. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. 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.

So, two paragraphs about being beautiful and thin.
But the paragraph about being a mother and they leave out the fact that you HAVE to want to be and be a mother.
Why would they leave something so big and important out, while so much talk about looks?
That made the whole speech seem extremely shallow.

Chelsea Handler’s ’this barbie is chilfree’ twitter post showed the sheer vitriol and misogyny childfree women face.
https://twitter.com/chelseahandler/status/1683146826684448768?s=20
Check the comments.
Nothing but anger towards woman who made her own choice.

It would have been really powerful had they shown a light to the path less traveled on.
That you don’t have to be someone’s girlfriend, wife or mother.
That you can actually be independent and have amazing life just like that.

This really didn’t start, go nor end up anywhere, really.

Me too. Nearly walked out, only stayed for the Kens. Not suitable for anyone who has not scientifically reached the age where the brain has not fully developed due to the damage it could do to the impressionable. I felt sorry for all the men in the audience.

I get what you're saying OP and thought similar. I didn't think the rant was very original, given the viral video that went round a few years ago saying nearly exactly this. And not brilliantly written either - MNetters can be far more eloquent!

But saying that, a woman I went to see it with found that the best bit of the movie, so clearly it's reaching and staying with a part of the audience.

For the PP who are team ken - really? The Kendom subjugated the Barbies and reduced them to sex objects who's only role was to serve the Kens. At least in Barbieland (also not perfect) the Barbies were just indifferent to the Kens, in the way that preteen groups of girls are to boys who they're not that interested in playing with.

People don't go to the movies for insightful new philosophy. They go to be told stuff they already think.

I agree, OP. But I’m a 45 yr old radfem .

I think this is probably aimed at the social media-lovin’ younger generation who like their feminism fairly light and delivered in cute, relatable little quotes.

It was a mildly entertaining film and I quite enjoyed it, but groundbreaking it wasn’t.

Hands up who wants their daughters to grow up thinking the best way to make their boyfriend treat them better is to go with his best mate - using/ damaging the both young men and themselves in the process? Anyone?
That is just one of the takeaways from this film for 12A viewers.

My point isn’t that lots of films do that - it’s that this film employs irony / metaness as a kind of defense mechanism. You want to make any criticisms of Mattel, for instance, and you can’t really, because the movie has already acknowledged that, lampooned them, and moved on. And so on.

I don't think this was the takeaway.

That part was a distraction

How did you take that away?

The film acknowledges that patriarchy harms men just as much as it harms women and shows the effects of toxic masculinity on a naive, impressionable mind (e.g., teens encountering the likes of Andrew Tate). The Barbie's use the Ken's toxic masculinity against them to snap them out of it, they have their big battle and realise that it's stupid and they're just hurting each other.

I liked that in the end Barbie rejects Ken even though he tries to say that they're supposed to be together because they're Barbie and Ken, instead they go off to be just Barbie and just Ken.

I think @Prrambulate means this shutting down of any non-supportive debate around the film is tiresome. It can be good that there is feminist discourse in a blockbuster, good to have a female director make a film this size, good to have a big film with so many different types of Barbie, and it also be bad at dialogue and have disappointingly shallow thinking. Disagreeing with something a woman does creatively isn’t necessarily anti-feminist - it’s how any art develops and improves.

As for this being a welcome change from the 80s & 90s films where women were just arm candy, please don’t tell the makers of Beaches, Heavenly Creatures, Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, Thelma & Louise, Working Girl, Clueless, Baby Boom, Alien, The Colour Purple, and
Nine to Five, all of which contained much more intelligent writing and subtlety, and none of which had any clunky speeches about how terrible life is if we constantly compare ourselves and dictate our happiness levels by people we see on the internet.

Also agree with @Wanderingowl that the film makes us overall worse with that view - that everyone hates women, and that succeeding at work fixes everything. It’s such a narrow, very very of the moment type of thinking, and there’s so many other fascinating aspects of female existence that I think are far more day to day than “lol my body type isn’t what society likes I’m having a crisis”. Like, go for a fucking walk or something, help at a charity, read a book, write a letter. This Barbie feminism isn’t empowering, it’s closely and Fri stately tied with capitalism so we leave the cinema and buy the Barbie t-shirt, the Ken hoodie, the pink coffee cup, the sparkly sunglasses, because that’s the society we live in and that’s the model this film is actually pushing.

It’s like the old thing about how you can’t make an anti-war film that doesn’t end up glamorising war - you can’t make a big studio big-budget feminism film, because we’d be tearing the seats up and setting fire to the complex if it actually did anything meaningful to our awareness and opinions.

That said, Ken was a cracking foil and I think said way more about the silliness, destructiveness and arbitrariness of patriarchy than Barbie managed. And with a dance number!

Fri stately = deliberately

There’s this awful trend in culture at the moment that all art has to be somehow “correct” and “moral”. Good art for any age and at any level is challenging, entertaining, moving, even disturbing.

The Kens were funny, interesting, odd, challenging, sometimes dickheads, often loving, foolish, mistaken, and were so much more interesting to me to watch than the Barbies (except President Barbie, who was excellent). Ken went on a journey of boring no one to self-hating incel to loving friend who’d learned he needed to discover himself. I’d say that’s a much richer arc and much more successful art than Barbie’s I’m perfect > I’m miserable > I’m fixed because teamwork and have a vagina!

Why do people keep mentioning Barbies genitals?
What’s that about?

Lucky you. I'm honestly jealous. I've spent my whole childhood being told I'm girling wrong. Too fat, too sporty, too loud, too quiet, too friendly, too introverted ,too active, too tomboyish, too dirty etc.

To the point I spent a few years wishing I was a boy, trying to look like a boy, and saying "I have a boy's brain in a girl's body".

Sexual assaults were my fault, bullying was my fault. Everything was my fault because I was the wrong kind of girl.

Yes I spent years trying to get people to like me and accept me and trying on different masks and copying others. You tend to be like that when your own mother doesn't like you and sees you as a disappointment and society and most adults around you play the same tune.

I'm over it now and have been for many years, because I stopped trying and decided that if my place is always in the wrong, I might just as well enjoy/please myself. Let's not pretend though that it's that easy to escape /ignore things that have been drummed into us since childhood.

Because she has none. The men who objectify her are literally sexualising something/one who has no sexual organs thus showing that the patriarchy would attempt to fuck the crack of dawn if they could.

It's the big reveal/joke/bombshell at the end of the movie that she's got them.

Those comments are just awful that the only purpose in life is to have a beautiful family otherwise your lonely and got noone. Wtf!

Don't you think that's kind of clever?

If I wanted to watch a mainstream truly feminist positive message film that doesn't pander to the cliches then what should I watch? Genuinely looking for recommendations as I'm not very knowledgeable.

As someone who learnt about feminism from her bra burning, Greenham common protesting mother, I'm shocked that younger women don't know about feminism.

But what pisses me right off is when as a woman I'm reduced to what my reproductive organs have or have not done.

It felt old hat to me but I think the point is for your girls and teenagers it's a message they need to hear.

Yes, it’s incredibly clever.