Last night I watched the Barbie movie - a two-hour throwback of a doll every girl aspired to be, meshed with an unattainable standard women struggle to maintain. I wonder...Is Barbieland aspirational or is the real goal to discover your purpose and be who you want to be?
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| Malfunctioning Marisa |
In the movie, our perfect Barbie begins to malfunction when she experiences dark thoughts. Though women/men will relate to much of the storyline, the most significant is witnessing Barbie have a breakdown. Mattel's portrayal of Barbie's glamourous lifestyle suggests that a woman's worth is based on her looks and material possessions, so to see her question her purpose, humanizes this pretend life.
Barbie revolutionized my childhood by making me, and billions of girls, believe that we can be anything we want to be. That was my experience with Barbieland, however along the plasticized sandy beach, criticism persists, claiming Barbie is a symbol of regressive gender stereotypes, and a bimbo with unrealistic beauty standards.
After watching the movie, it's safe to say that 'Stereotypical Barbie' has evolved and transformed.
In the movie, we see how girls abandon the positive beliefs about themselves as we age. When 'Stereotypical Barbie' visits the Real World, she discovers that being human is full of discomfort, where we swap fantasizing in a Barbie house, to fantasizing on social media. In between there's the patriarchy pushing their agenda on what a woman is supposed to be in the real world. Witnessing the complexities of being human, and the unrealistic measures we stress to live up to, brings Barbie on a mission for change.
The movie ends with an empowering message of choosing between being the woman she is defined as, vs being the woman she wants to be. Barbie goes from bimbo to brilliant in this truth telling movie about the (r)evolution of a woman.
