Barbie and Gender

Thoughts on Barbie and gender

Spoiler alert

My face was red, blushing with anger and embarrassment. Huge tears formed as I fought back feelings of frustration, and then immediate  remorse for my lack of gratitude.

It was my birthday party, probably around the age of five or six and someone had given me a Barbie. I already didn’t love pink and this sent me over the edge into an aversion to the color that would last several more decades.

I couldn’t articulate at that time why I didn’t like Barbie but as other girls my age happily played for hours in Barbies dream house, I secretly just wanted her car.

A few years later I did get her car, a bright yellow 1979 Corvette. Best part: it was remote control, granted it had about 3 feet of tethered cord, but still, it was totally rad. Sadly, the one Barbie doll I owned never had a chance at becoming Weird Barbie even in her banana colored Corvette because she mostly stayed in the closet untouched. Princess Leah stole the car, though technically 3 inches too small to drive.

Hindsight tells me my real aversion to Barbie was because I believed deep down that I would never be her. I liked Cabbage Patch dolls, but I also liked Transformers and GI Joes. Something about Barbie’s perfectionism terrified me, and I knew I would never have that body, or be that beautiful. She held standards that I would never reach, so I refused to play the game both literally and figuratively.

Besides, I was much more content to be  barefoot outside and in the treehouse dreaming of adventure, and maybe Barbie’s Jeep. Actually that’s still true today.

So for the last few weeks I’ve seen the Barbie movie blow up on my social media. About half of you that follow me absolutely hated it and the other half of you loved it seeing it multiple times.

A few nights ago I took my girls, and we went with a friend to go check it out for ourselves. I’m a huge Greta Gerwig fan. I loved her rendition of Little Women and I absolutely can’t wait to see what she does with The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. I was interested to see how she would portray this part of my childhood that represented so many mixed emotions that still linger today.

So just like my 16 year old self, I rolled in two weeks late feeling like the last girl to the party. Only slightly less awkward than my teenage self, and definitely not as gangly, I donned some hot pink satin pants I found that morning on clearance at Marshall’s. Probably my first ever and last ever pair of pink pants. They were not only hot pink, but satin and if you have even the slightest hint of cellulite on your thighs, satin is not your friend. Ask me how I know.

I had read a lot about the Barbie movie prior to showing up in my cellulite ridden body, now literally glowing hot pink. Gender wars seem to be everywhere even infiltrating the SBC, which in turn affects many churches in my small hometown.

Many of the critical reviews I have read seem to miss the satire Gerwig portrays. Watching at face value the film appears to have an an over the top feminist agenda, but I think if we stop and think, there’s much more to Gerwig’s pink perfect story. If you come expecting a film that’s cute, sweet and like a hallmark movie you probably don’t know Greta Gerwig, and you probably left sorely disappointed. So let’s put our back to school Barbie outfit on and think about the greater story being told by the one who created it.

Barbie Land is a world where women rule everything and the “Ken’s” are literally an accessory. Throughout the film, Ken struggles to feel more than a second class citizen, that is until he visits the real world and discovers Patriarchy. Empowered, he discovers a world where the tables are flipped and men rule everything. Drunk on the idea of power, he brings it back to Barbie Land, drastically changing Barbie’s Land into one giant man cave.

At face value, all the women hate the men and the men hate the women. I can see why that’s not appealing to many but Gerwig is telling a greater story.

If you’re already in power, then anything that challenges that position is a threat. But I think his resistance to change caused him to miss the point. When both genders desire to rule independently, disaster strikes echoing through creation like the sound of an apple bite. Eve was created from Adam’s side to rule with him. Did you know the word for rib in the Hebrew is often translated “side” as in the sides of the temple? In this description of the holy sacred space if one wall was weaker it would crumble.

Gerwig tells this story of things gone wrong with over the top humor and what feels like an absurd amount of feminist views but she does it in such a way that makes you walk away thinking “Is there a better way?” “Is patriarchy really the answer?” She uses humor to disarm, inundating the script with witty quips and lines of humor that make you cringe because you laughed so hard at the truth of the joke. Even the most conservative woman might find herself laughing so hard she fears the consequences of consuming a giant coke and the possibility of postpartum leakage on her new satin pink pants. One more reason I’ll never wear them again.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, Barbie grows in the idea of acceptance of ALL that womanhood has to offer, but it only happens when she meets her maker. She accepts her imperfections and her new found agency does not come from girl power, and it does not come from Ken or any man in her life. It comes from her maker. It is only then that she fully accepts all that real womanhood is, from cellulite, to flat feet to eventually her own sexuality. In a stroke of artistic genius, Gerwig overlays this powerful scene with a candid video montage of women from the lives of the cast and crew. Every day women fill the screen in rapid succession, full of regular imperfect female bodies living life. Beautiful.

At this point I found myself sitting in my hot pink pants with tears streaming down my face. Unlike the tears of my youth, this time I looked at Barbie and smiled because she finally got it. She saw the beauty of womanhood doesn’t derive from perfectionism, rather it comes from the echoes of her maker. We all have imperfections to be sure, both internally and externally, but our true beauty shines when we look like our maker. Acceptance of our uniqueness only highlights the creativity of our maker and our imperfections point to our beauty as we wait for his final redemption.

Women who are reading this, YOU are made in God’s image too. That means all the feminine qualities that make you different from men, are actually representations of God too.

Men who are reading this, I urge you to ask, what is it about the women in your life that echoes their creator in their femininity?

In the end patriarchy isn’t the answer, but neither is a world where women rule everything. As we see in Barbie Land, Matriarchy is the opposite of Patriarchy, and neither is ideal. We need each other. God told both the man AND the woman in the garden to rule together. It’s time to stand sided by side, bring his redemption back to our gendered relationships for by doing so we will be “closer to fine” and one step closer to the new creation.

So go see it for yourself. Critique it, learn from it, and laugh with it (but if you’ve birthed a 10 pound baby, might I recommend you forgo the giant coke and satin pants.)