I have always loved Barbies, so I figured why not weigh in on my takeaways from the Barbie movie, everyone else is doing it. I’m one of those Barbie people that no one thinks would be a Barbie person … It reminds me of the time my first blind roommate in college didn’t tell me until about halfway through the year that she loved Hello Kitty and watching America’s Next Top Model because she thought I would hate it and judge her. As it turns out, I did indeed already love both of those things (although, let’s be real – ANTM turned out to be toxic as hell, like most reality TV). Maybe it’s because I usually look like the photo on the left when I’m not just in an oversized T-shirt, leggings and glasses, rather than the picture on the right. I owned the book I am posing with long before the Barbie movie, by the way, as well as 2 other coffee table books about Barbie. Part of me has always been a little bit embarrassed about my love for silly girly things meant for children even now as an adult, but as we will come to learn, there is not just one way to be a strong woman.

I even themed my 20th birthday party around Barbie, complete with a very low-budget DIY photo booth with flowers growing out of dreams as a prop, hence the cotton poof clouds. Very conceptual. I am dressed more like the 3rd unknown member of The Dresden Dolls than Barbie, but hey, I just wear what I like. My personal style has never been definitive.

Some minor spoilers ahead, but nothing major, nothing you wouldn’t already catch on to from the previews. I didn’t expect this movie to have any depth whatsoever, so imagine my surprise when both myself and my friend I attended with cried twice. Let’s get one thing straight right away, the visuals were eerily accurate. The sets were like being in Honey I Shrunk The Kids (haha, another 90s nostalgia reference) and walking through your Barbie playsets (Side note, I never had a Barbie house house… my Barbie had a mobile home, which was unfortunately not featured in the movie.). Even the clothes were all replicas of actual outfits throughout Barbie history. The writing was not perfect, and I felt the main “real world” human characters, a mother and daughter, were pretty flat which was a bummer as I really like America Ferrera. Still, there were some great moments with her character here and there. She’s a Mattel employee, and some of her secret “weird and depressing normal people problems” themed Barbie designs that she would never show anyone were pretty amusing. She’s a busy mom who doesn’t have a real sense of who she is, her daughter is just a girl that wears black all the time and defines herself by how angry she is and how she doesn’t like anything including her own mother, so like I said, not ground breaking character development but it’s really about the dolls anyway.

I don’t want to give a lot away, so now I’m just going to list my specific takeaways from the movie. Before I do, I have to address the outcry from grown adults who likely never played with Barbies in their life, that are just obsessed with how much they hate this movie because it’s anti-men… In this movie there is both the Barbie World and the Real World – it’s like Toy Story but with 2 parallel dimensions. In Barbie Land, women hold all positions of power; the heads on Mt. Rushmore are faces of the original Barbie (the founders haha), the Kens just kind of hang out on the beach looking attractive. They don’t even play volleyball on said beach, they cheer for the women when they play. They are quite literally just accessories, which is a riff on how kids play with Barbies. We all know we only pulled our Ken doll out when it was time for Barbie to go on a date and that’s about it. It’s also Mattel kind of making fun of itself because hasn’t Barbie held every job ever invented simultaneously for years? There are multiple comments from the dolls that are some variation of, “Barbie is responsible for fixing all of the real world’s problems because we empowered young girls to be super confident and have everything they want!”. I am not sure whether the problem is that people are taking what is made to be tongue in cheek literally, but between the little slightly sarcastic jokes there was actually a lot of depth and positive messages. It was also great to see a variety of different Barbies (and Kens) populating the land with different races, styles, sizes, abilities (though the wheelchair Barbie was never shown in any of the neighborhood scenes, probably because none of the dream houses are accessible. But moving along…). This was always one of my favorite things about Barbie… all the choices! Though different body types was not an option in the 90s yet, I was never the kid that had an arsenal of all blondes (that model, played by Margot Robbie, is lovingly referred to in the movie as “stereotypical Barbie”). Barbie was really the only doll I saw growing up with that much variation in appearance. With other dolls you only got the choice of a white doll with blonde hair and blue eyes or a black doll (usually with poker straight hair for some reason) and that was about it.

So without further ado, my takeaways from this movie were:

We need everyone. Each person has value. A society where men are in charge of everything isn’t healthy, but nor is a society where women are in charge of everything a better option. Everyone should have a voice.

Change is nessecary, even if you are living your dream life and feel like everything is perfect. Without change you don’t grow. Easy and carefree isn’t always best.

Women’s obsession with embodying and portraying perfection is killing us. The more we play along, the more society will continue to expect it. It is not our job to be everything to everyone at all times, and it’s ok to just be average.

Being a strong woman doesn’t mean you have to be unkind and purposefully intimidate others, can’t present more feminine, or can’t show transparent emotions… there are all different types of strength.

Choice feminism is crap (Choice feminism = the idea that any choice a woman makes is empowering to women simply because she is a woman and she made said choice. This is a super popular ideology right now that I just HaaAAAaate.). Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but at one point as Barbie Land gets tainted by some ideas brought back from the Real World, some Barbies that were formerly doctors and presidents may or may not start serving the Kens beers in little maid costumes and profess how this job is so much easier and so much less pressure, and it still makes them feel confident so is it really bad? I already know not everyone is going to agree with me on this one, but everything a woman does is not inherently empowering simply because she happens to be a woman. There are some choices that are just never empowering or good for women. I’m looking at you Only Fans and amateur instagram “models” posting your bare ass on the internet, but anyway… moving on.

Don’t discount your mothers. Women have a whole world inside that you know nothing about, oftentimes because you haven’t been interested in learning about it or haven’t been paying attention.

Your worth cannot be determined by your relationship to other people. Whether you have a good or bad day, a good or bad life cannot be dependent on how other people react to you and interact with you.

Overall, I was shocked to find this movie that I thought would just be a simple 90s nostalgia trip to be very deep and positive, with a decent amount of content to unpack. Actually, the only moment that made me go “yikes!” a bit isn’t being talked about at all, which is odd. When the Real World starts seeping into Barbie Land, it begins changing the toys themselves and we see a snippet of a new commercial for “depression Barbie”. The ad quips that she comes with unwashed clothes since she hasn’t gotten out of bed for a week, and the panic attacks and OCD accessories are sold separately. That was in pretty bad taste and could have been handled differently in my opinion. My friend and I both looked at each other at that point and just said what the @#$% are you serious… Not sure how that made it past the edits.

On one hand, I kind of enjoy that people are taking more time to read into the messages pop culture is sending in even the most seemingly trivial facets, because movies, music, toys … these things do to some extent shape our culture. However, we should try to do this without the outrage. If you watched the movie and want to let me know what you thought, shoot me a comment.

Who was your favorite Barbie growing up? Glitter Beach Teresa was definitely my girl.