what really got to me about the barbie movie is how the movie is really about how there is still a little girl inside all of us, and when you walk around the movie theater and see all these grown women dressed in pink and visibly excited, it’s a reminder of that. but moreso, it’s how your mother is a little girl too. and that all comes together in the end when barbie meets her creator. barbie was made so ruth’s daughter could be anything she wanted to be, and she named her after her. in the end when ruth helps barbie become human, she is her mother. and when in the end barbie introduces herself as barbara, she is her daugher again. you can be anything, but being human and mortal and imperfect is the greatest gift of all.
greta gerwig looked at the “what if the roles were reversed” argument and said “the roles ARE reversed, but ok, let’s see it side by side then, our world vs the reversed world, look at it, how does it feel? not so nice is it?”
the end of barbie (2023) works so well imo because forcibly waking up to the patriarchy all grown up in a body you don’t recognize and realizing it’s caused a loss of girlhood innocence is something you need to accept as a fact before you can be a real woman… being an empty plastic doll with no reproductive organs, forever tiptoeing in miniskirts and heels was her comfort zone. She loved being a fake, hyperfeminine toy. But once she realizes it isn’t real womanhood, she can never return.
the 5 second shorthand greta uses to communicate this is an almost entirely semiotic & metonymic framing: her birks/blazer outfit, a first toe outside of hyperfemininity, will bore the sexual harassers. and she now needs a gynaecologist for the organs we never imagine could function differently in our 30s. It isn’t feminism or female empowerment, it’s about womanhood. she’s chosen to be a healthy, comfortable, real woman, with a real name, a real mother, and real painful depression because of it. I think that seeing her immediately turn into a happy tomboy at the end would take something away from her discomfort with being a Pinocchio.
