Picture of the Barbie movie

By: Maria Lúcia Soares Bueno (Golden Ladies)

The diretor, Greta Gerwing, made a kind of manual with basic topics on how to give voice to women against patriarchal hypocrisy sustained by consumerism.

Definitely is not a movie for children, although it can please them with its look, that takes us back to childhood. Adults, probably aware of its message, may take it for granted: big mistake! The creativity with every contradiction of patriarchy that is presented, makes the film a humorous critique of distorted values which insist on being treated as normal.

One of the first criticisms of the movie is about the beauty pattern, almost unattainable; another one is the intolerance to what is different: when the “different” Barbie lives in isolation, exemplifying how our society treats those who do not fit the waited pattern; the white savior complex, that almost goes unnoticed in the film, when a character says the blondie doll saved all the others, a third doll contradicts, citing precisely this complex of the white savior; the criticism to the patriarchy, that is its main subject, by showing how the real world is, unlike Barbieland, sexist, misogynist and aggressive towards women; the film also condemn ‘mansplaining’, which is when a man tries to explain something to a woman in a simple and shallow way, as if she had no knowledge of it, wanting the man to put himself in a upper position.

The film’s great insight was to awaken the thoughts in adolescent or young adult women, that they and their mothers were once just girls who did not care about everything that being a woman requires.

There is still a long way to go before we reach a world where men and women are treated equally, but this movie, creatively, launched a moment of reflection.

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