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.”

The speech tells women/girls they 'have to' be thin, and not too pretty because other women are mean and envious.

Clearly whoever wrote this non-sense has no idea what unattractive women go through.
What a load of pretty privilege having, pretending to be a victim garbage.

Did you read the whole speech in the OP? It's all about impossible and contradicting standards for women, and that no matter what their place is in the wrong.

@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus I read the whole speech. For reasons given in my previous post I find it shockingly disempowering to women.

@MrsStrangeViews I agree. It's concerning that women may take these messages on and think these are real concerns they should have.

IamAlso4eels · 28/07/2023 13:44
But it's all true, a woman's place is in the wrong.

Yes - I agree!

But I'm afraid this is never more true than on MN, where OPs and PPs are constantly told their feelings/attitudes are invalid. I see it all the time here.

I notice a lot of 'stop being nice - women are always expected to be nice and accommodating'. I've never found niceness a particularly female attribute. I suppose I'm nice - not easy to admit, as it's a despised trait - but if I am, it's because I think of myself as a person, not a woman in most contexts. I hate horrible men and horrible women!

You do realise there are a lot of women out there that DO have (some of )these concerns to some degree or other?

Hell, they're all covered in threads on here.

The part of the film directly before the speech is Stereotypical Barbie saying that she's not good enough, that she's not a rocket scientist or president or a Nobel prize winner, she's just Stereotypical Barbie and that she feels like that isn't enough.

The underlying message of the speech, aside from the contradictory nature of societal expectations for women, was that it's okay to just be enough. You can go off and be exceptional if you want to or you can not if you prefer but both choices are equally valid. This is underlined a little later in the film when Gloria pitches Ordinary Barbie to the Mattel executives - she suggests a Barbie who might be a mother or might not or might be a lawyer or a doctor or also might not, and that whatever she chooses is okay because it's alright to be ordinary and to just want to get through the day feeling kind of good about herself.

Feeling like you're good enough, that you deserve to occupy your very ordinary place in the world, is just as valid as being extraordinary.

Which is a great message for women who feel like that.

But not all women feel like that. It’s being portrayed as ‘this is what it’s like to be a woman’. No, it’s what it’s like to be a woman for some women.

Not all women have had that experience and don’t appreciate it being applied to them.

@TypicalCoach I was asked a question so I answered. You think I'm weird, fair enough. I don't mind being weird, we're all different.

I won't be going elsewhere though. Finding this thread quite interesting. Have a good day!

We can't add "some women" and "not everyone" to every part of the script. It ruins the rhetoric, the flow, the dramatics.

Can you accept that they're talking at a class level in the expectation that it's a common experience that will resonate with enough people to make it worth saying? And we realise not every single woman alive will feel that way but we're trying to capture something that's very relatable if not absolutely 100% universal?

It might be I don't read those threads. What I notice about being a woman are direct physical consequences to do with Biology. What worries me for women are the facts of being physically weaker so more vulnerable to rape and violence. Like those two women who were gang raped and paraded naked through the town in Manipur recently. I also notice threads on here and in the real world where women can't afford the food bill or feed their children - am I thin enough is not a worry for them. Then I worry about reproductive health care - abortion availability, 8 years to get diagnosed for endometriosis in the UK - really? Then I worry about the difficulty of coping with periods and menopause at school and in the office with little understanding being given. To me the real issues facing women are to do with biology, not a section of the population worried about how it 'feels' to be a woman.

@honeylulu Don't go! It's not a dictatorship, and certainly not a place to silence women.

So, essentially this is feminism for some affluent women in wealthy countries. It excludes less privileged women in those countries and the billions of women who live in less wealthy countries. It also excludes those women who are confident enough to ignore stereotypes and live their life authentically. To me it isn't feminism if it excludes so many women.

@user9630721458 so never in your life have you been told off/judged/missed out/dismissed/belittled for being too whatever? For girling/womaning wrong?

Do you even realise how dismissive you sound? It's not an either/or situation. You can care or worry about more than one thing.

I've lived through a lot of the things on your radar. Peer on peer abuse, other kinds of abuse, used cotton wool as sanitary protection, didn't get diagnosed with PCOS until I moved to the uk(docs always just took my money, told me nothing wrong with me/nothing they can do gave me thrush meds regardless of if I needed or not and sent me on my way) , I wished I was a boy for many years because then my behaviour would be ok, or thought I'd be safer (so I'm very GC and anti transing children) ,lack of contraception and sexual education, and many other things. Of course they're on my radar. But I can also relate to the other stuff (especially impossible expectations and ridiculous double standards )and understand why it's also important to rail against them,if not necessarily for me personally, but for women in general.

I agree with this.
I've been the girl/ woman who can't afford sanitary towels. I've been the mum who's worried about putting food on the table. I've been sexually, physically and emotionally abused.

I've also had a lot of the messages in the Barbie movie from society.

I liked the speech, it resonated with me and made my quite emotional. At first I didn’t like the film, I felt like it was too obvious, like feminism for dummies, then I realised it was quite clever, the way the Barbies treated the Ken’s was the way men treated women (and still do in a lot of the world). It was like the real world in reverse (pitting women against each other so men can retain dominance, giving women the odd position of “power” but still remaining in charge).

How should the Barbie movie have explored these issues? And how does its existence prevent those issues from being addressed? Why is a film that satirises a Western doll obliged to address all global issues of feminism?

Is Magic Mike equally at fault for not addressing all issues affecting all men, everywhere?

And if I'm entirely honest, I think being able to reject societal norms and getting little or insignificant (to their lives) backlash for it is pretty privileged in itself.

1. Most of the things you mentioned happen because of societal norms and expectations for women. Because of patriarchy. Because a woman's place is always in the wrong. Follow the rules and you'll be ok, and if you're not? Well it's still your fault somehow. Especially when it comes to VAWAG. There's always some excuse,some justification, some reason why she "made him do it".

1. A lot of women deal with all the things you mentioned and the ones in the speech because of point 1. They have to act in x way , talk in y way, behave in z way, be the perfect wife,mother,daughter, etc. and if they don't they get controlled ,abused ,disowned, abandoned,beaten and murdered. Sometimes even if they do.

1. It has nothing to do with confidence. That once again puts the onus on the women. Don't you see? If only if you were confident enough. You have no idea what it takes to go against everything you see, you hear, was drummed into you as a child, particularly when you face significant backlash and disapproval for it. How long the road is and how even after years some things,no matter how freeing and beneficial, still feel wrong deep down. That you still have to make a conscious choice to do or not x, because it's still not completely natural.

so never in your life have you been told off/judged/missed out/dismissed/belittled for being too whatever? For girling/womaning wrong?

Yes, I have met people who believed in gender stereotypes and was criticised for not meeting them. This is not an issue that concerns only women. Having male friends and children who have met judgement for being too girly, too short, not masculine enough, I'd say it's a problem that men and women perpetuate, egged on by the media industry.

I don't want to be dismissive and am open to discussion. I do feel that it is a mistake to believe the film or the merchandise it will spawn is feminist. I'm sure it has been said, but the film is a long advert to drive up sales of a toy and other related products. The toy has been made by less privileged women in less wealthy countries, who are working in unsafe and exploitative conditions. Do you not see any irony in that?

I am sorry for the awful issues you have faced. I would say some of them sound as if they result from the material fact of being female. I think the facts of how our biology can lead to oppression is more relevant to feminism than how a relatively small part of the world feels about being a woman. For all of us, it doesn't matter how you feel about being a woman, the threat of violence, sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, inadequate health care concern us all.

Where do you think the 'impossible expectations and ridiculous double standards come from?' I notice the speech doesn't clarify who makes these rules that women 'have to' follow.

I haven't seen Magic Mike!
I don't think Barbie was ever going to be able to explore feminist issues, as it is an advert for a corporation to increase profit. The values of corporate capitalism and consumerism are rarely aligned with feminist goals, as far as I can tell, as it is built on patriarchal structures. It doesn't prevent those issues being addressed elsewhere, of course.

It's basically the point the speech was making: as a woman, you'll always be held to impossibly high standards and told off for not being perfect. A film satirising a Western toy doll - and making the point about expectations of perfection - is now being torn apart for not being a perfect commentary on all feminist issues everywhere. Did Magic Mike get this? James Bond? Why is it only stuff for women that has to be morally perfect and completely encompassing of everything?

And to then say that it's not feminist unless it is indeed absolutely perfect and beyond all criticism - even, madly, for not "including" women who are so liberated that they are not affected by the issues at hand yet must somehow be involved anyway - may be why so many younger women are no longer identifying as feminists.

I presumed the point of the film was that you take what you want and need from it depending on your life experiences so far

I think we actually believe/care about a lot of the same thing just coming at it from different directions. Tbh.. it ALL matters, and no, a Barbie movie isn't going to be a solution or even part of the solution and ofc their motives aren't strictly pure and more capitalism driven.

It's not a bad speech/message though. It probably would've been even better if they ended with " so if your place is always in the wrong ,you might as well fuck it and do what you want/please yourself rather than everybody else." But hopefully the absurdity of the contradictions do lend themselves into that connection being made. And that's a step, a pretty big one even if it doesn't seem so to you.

Yes, we have heard it all before but it's still true, isn't it?

I haven't seen the movie but can relate to the speech you posted OP.

@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus Yes, I think we do care about the same things. I accept that the speech is meaningful and needed, as so many seem to think so. I am still rather dismayed that this is a lightbulb moment for women. I mean we had women like the Suffragettes, the Greenham Common women, Riot Girrl, Spare Rib. Women like Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft ...any number of non conforming, rebellious women who bucked the trend and went against everything society had brought them up to believe in. Not saying I agree with all those women did, but they certainly didn't believe they 'had to' be any way but the way they chose to live. I don't understand how all their struggles have been forgotten, and women feel so pressured by conforming to expectations now. I still don't know where these expectations are coming from, either. Never mind, I suppose women's liberation still has a long way to go!