B is for Barbie 🎀👠👗💃🌸

My review of Barbie (2023)

Not as bad as I thought it would be but also bit of a mess. It shows issues on both sides, toxic men and toxic women. The monologue about women was not as bad as I imagined it would be. I feel both sides had some fair points but both sides also went about things in a really unproductive way. Like equality was not the goal of either side. The film mentioned patriarchy and matriarchy a lot as if they are the only two options instead of men and women working together in harmony. It was like each side was swinging the pendulum to an extreme in different parts of the movie.

I’m just really tired of the men vs women divide pushed mostly by modern Feminists but I'm also seeing a bit of a trend of conservatives defending toxic men on twitter just to be opposite of the extreme anti-men feminists. A lot of people have formed opinions on this movie by jumping to one side or the other politically, picking one sex over the other helps no one. Everyone on Earth was created by a male and female. To hate one is to hate yourself, such is the insanity of this society.

Basically the film begins with women in control of everything in Barbieland. The men own nothing, they do not even have a house or car to live in. I don’t know about other kids but when I was a child the dollhouse was just a house and all the dolls lived in it because they were a family. I didn’t know about concepts such as capitalism at that stage.

So things are a bit f**ked up with the men being treated like second class citizens and the barbies seem to be fine with it. Ken wants to spend time with his girlfriend Barbie but she is always busy with the girls.
When Barbie and Ken visit the Real World Ken discovers people who respect him and the idea of Patriarchy. He decides to return to Barbieland and take it over, becoming a stereotype of a toxic male and somehow brainwashes the barbies into wanting to give the kens drinks and foot massages. Barbie returns and with the help of her human owner and her daughter, manages to unbrainwash the barbies and return control to the barbies again. Barbie breaks up with Ken who decides to figure out who he is without her while Barbie chooses to return to the human world to live as a real woman and to help other women.

Things I did not like:

-In the opening scene after the introduction of Barbie the young girls start destroying their other dolls/baby dolls. This is not even accurate. Girls played with both for many generations afterwards. It’s also a terrible visual, smashing babies, very anti-feminine message. Even women who do not have children are nurturing in other ways, they do not destroy life unless they have been traumatized or brainwashed.

-The tween girl calling Barbie “fascist”. FFS get a dictionary, it's insulting to the victims of real fascism. Epitome of early 2020s social media is now immortalized in film. Yay. 🙄

-The ending. So Barbie becomes a real person like in Pinocchio and to show us she is an ordinary woman they have her go to the gynecologist. I don’t know, the ending was just unsatisfying to me. Interesting that the super woke director is basically saying you need a vagina to be a real woman though. I’m surprised the TRAs haven’t attacked this movie yet. At the same time being a woman is more than just walking around with those reproductive parts. We are all more than physical objects. (Not supporting the trans delusions here, only people that were born women)

Things I did like:

-That Barbie did actually apologise to Ken for not respecting or appreciating him in their relationship. I was even ok with them breaking up, it made sense for his character arc.

-It was interesting to see their interpretation of the barbie dolls and Barbieland.

The story is not really something I think young girls would enjoy either which is sad because they are a key part of the audience as the doll was intended for them. Thankfully there are always the animated Barbie movies of the 2000s.

And who can forget this 90s classic 🙂