The Barbie Movie Destroyed Me
I didn’t see that coming
This essay includes light spoilers for Barbie
This summer saw the release of two movies with iconic American characters. One movie is deeply thought-provoking, with a main character forced to reflect on their unforeseen impact on culture and the wider world, and the other movie is Oppenheimer.
I jest, but only slightly. Barbie: The Movie and Oppenheimer, about American physicist and creator of the atom bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, opened on the same weekend, inspiring the creation of the portmanteau Barbieheimer. Lots of people escaped record heatwaves by attending back-to-back screenings of both films, sometimes with brunch in the middle.
To date, I have only seen the Barbie movie. I am not sure I am up for Oppenheimer, even though the cast looks absolutely incredible and it’s gotten amazing reviews. My emotional state during Barbie, especially in what I have taken to calling “my sad period,” indicates that I am not quite up for watching something about the destroyer of worlds.
Barbie dropped enough of a bomb on me, thank you so much.
Growing up and grief
In the movie, Barbie, as played by Margo Robbie, has an existential crisis, and heads from Barbieland to the real world to find out how to stop it.
Barbieland is populated by several iterations of Barbie and Ken dolls, with the Barbies being the professionals, politicians, and empowered population. The Barbies believe that the Real World is just like Barbieland, with women large and in charge, and men relegated to pretty, decorative objects.
The irony, it burns.
I was expecting a pretty fun movie. I was expecting cutting observations on feminism, patriarchy, and consumerism. And I got all of that. Gloria’s rant about being a woman — how impossible it is in current society — hits close to home.
What I was not expecting was to feel was an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. I was sobbing by the end of the movie.
Like Stereotypical Barbie, like Gloria (America Ferrara), I am having an existential crisis. As a woman, and a mom, and a wife, and, even, as a writer. My life is full of change, and I am not adapting to it. Because I don’t like it!
Stuff we don’t talk about
In the movie, Barbie thinks she is looking for a girl who is struggling with thoughts of death and cellulite. As it turns out, though, the person having these thoughts is a woman, Gloria, who is struggling with the same changes and challenges that many women experience: children getting older and moving away, feeling stuck career-wise, bodies changing.
The Barbie movie resonated with a lot of women, and I think not just for the obvious reasons that have been explored in the media and by writers like myself. (The Barbie movie also seemed to piss off a lot of guys, and honestly I think the root of that is that they were not centered, which, guys, seriously, get over yourselves.)
As a “woman of a certain age,” I don’t think I am alone in my grief over the ways my life is changing. Menopause, slowly becoming an empty nester (it doesn’t happen overnight), the struggle to retain relevance in society, from the office to the home. The Barbie Movie delivers some big feelings, and can spark a lot of conversations.
I’m here for it.
