Barbie has surpassed the US$1 billion mark for ticket sales internationally. So has it transformed the Mattel original into an empowering representation of womanhood? Suzie Gibson, Donna Bridges and Elizabeth Wulff are gender studies academics and have collaborated together to share the below.
The long-awaited Barbie film (2023) directed by Greta Gerwig, co-written by Gerwig (and partner Noah Baumbach), and produced by Margot Robbie (who also plays the titular character) promised to provide a feminist makeover of the famed Mattel doll that for generations ignited controversy over its unrealistic body image.
Those of us who have grown up with Barbie no doubt felt marginalised by the doll’s body type that carries the message that beauty is about being blond, tall and thin. In light of this, the endless interviews with director Gerwig and star Robbie promoted this film as a feminist intervention into the doll’s original message that a woman’s worth was based purely upon her sexual appeal.
For millions of cinema goers across the world, including the grandmothers, mothers and daughters who flocked to Bathurst’s Metro complex (and who good-humouredly decked themselves in pink frocks, tiaras, and impressive glitter), the question of whether Barbie could be reclaimed as a feminist icon was on everyone’s minds.
Did Barbie transform the Mattel original into an empowering representation of womanhood? Are their advances made for feminism? The quick answer is: ‘no’.
The film’s dramatisation of all kinds of Barbies —Nobel Prize-winning Barbie, President Barbie, pregnant Barbie, and even ‘Weird’ Barbie — ostensibly pushes the idea that women can do anything, but in fact what this array of dolls proves is the marketing power of a massive corporation that has made billions out of duplicate Barbies and thanks to this film, it is still making profits.
Barbie does not make the important correlation between multiple versions of Barbie and rampant capitalism that has for centuries subjugated women.
This same capitalism gave birth to the 1959 doll when Ruth Handler acquired the rights to a West German toy called ‘Bild Lilli’. The film does not deal with Barbie’s German origins, but it is concerned with origins as the character of Handler appears in the film as Barbie’s mother creator, and she imparts some dubious wisdom: ‘Mothers stand still so their daughters can see how far they’ve come’.
So, mothers need to stagnate themselves in order to support their daughters? How is this message empowering or liberating for women? Handler’s words articulate a logic of sacrifice that structures the narrative of Barbie as well as its gender representations.
For instance, Barbie’s identity is based upon her difference to Ken, and Ken is defined through his difference to Barbie. This logic of loss, sacrifice and plenitude inform the political landscape of ‘Barbie-land’ that begins as a matriarchy, only to be turned into a patriarchy (once Ken is exposed to the ‘Real World’), and then is returned to its matriarchal origins.
Of course, the matriarchies and patriarchies in this film are not democracies as each operates on the basis that there is one ruling group and one oppressed group. This is not sexual liberation but sexual autocracy.
The film also confuses gender equity with a battle of the sexes dynamic that pits each gender against the other and it also assumes that there are only two sexes thus negating fluid gender and sexual identities.
The many Ken dolls in the film are also portrayed as vacuous and beautiful and in need of being propped up by their Barbies — this echoes a sexist dynamic in classical Hollywood films in which the importance of a female character is tethered to a male lead: she is significant only if he gives her significance.
Again, this reversal of power relationships does not create a new paradigm, it just reinforces familiar and debilitating gender constructions.
There are some progressive feminist moments in the film, but they are likely lost on most audiences as the material comes across as throwaway lines: ‘I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?’ and ‘everyone hates women, men hate women, women hate women.’ These piercing observations are diffused by other jokes that dim their insight and wisdom. Jokes that make the film appear shallow and its dealings with equity, diversity and the acceptance of all body types tokenistic.
The two dolls that did not conform to a rigid feminine or masculine binary — ‘Weird Barbie’ and ‘Allan’ — could have shaken up the strict female versus male dynamic as well as the matriarchy versus patriarchy opposition, but these ‘alternative’ dolls were secondary and relegated to serving comic value.
Ideally these alternative dolls could have inaugurated important conversations concerning the complex nature of sexuality and gender, but they do not. Gerwig and Robbie’s film sustains a heterosexist and patriarchal model of constructing sexuality and gender that locks Barbie and Ken, and by extension women and men within a limited dynamic that ultimately undercuts identity and agency.
Contrary to Jennifer Stokes’ ‘Life if Plastic, it’s fantastic’ Barbie is no more in control than those pink Birkenstocks will transform the future into a feminist one. And Ken’s only a few brain cells short of starting his own radical INCEL group (insightfully discussed in Lucy Nicolas’s piece ‘Ken’s Rights’).
So, what have we learned from this film? That Ken is ‘Ken-enough and a 10’, and that Barbie aspires to be ‘ordinary’ and ‘gets a vag’ — yes at the end of the movie, Barbie goes to a gynaecologist to correct her absence of sexual organs. Once more, female identity is reduced to being a biological phenomenon. How this is liberating or empowering for real women, young and old, is a mystery.
Regardless of the claims for hyper-femininity and a feminist bimbo classic, Barbie reminds us, at best, that the real danger is patriarchy. Yet, the real disappointment is there’s not a feminist solution in sight.
Suzie Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University. Donna Bridges is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology a Charles Sturt University and Elizabeth Wulff is a Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University.