I'm a Barbie Girl

Barbie has been a lightning rod all summer for conversations about gender roles in society. These are challenging conversations worth having, right? 

​Anything directed by Greta Gerwig is a big deal. She chooses her projects with passion and intention, featuring fascinating, often quirky, always complex, female lead characters. I find her work to be extraordinary. 

Margot Robbie is simply perfect in the role of Barbie and such a far cry from her performance in "I, Tonya" that you cannot help but admire her range as an actress. Like Greta Gerwig, she is another smart cookie who chooses her projects with intention. 

Barbie is a blockbuster bombshell and I loved it! 

The movie is so much fun!

The scene where Barbie steps out of her high heel shoes and her foot maintains that Barbie Doll shape is so clever and well executed. Barbie watching Colin Firth as Darcy in Pride and Prejudice as a a legitimate way to ease anxiety made me snort, as I too watch that particular version of P&P to self comfort. It's a classic. That fabulous monologue by America Ferrera as Gloria explaining the impossible expectations of society that women not only have to bear,  but smile with gratitude while bearing them, gave me goosebumps. Hearing Barbie and Ken singing along to Closer to Fine was so funny. And we can all relate to Weird Barbie, right? Except for being able to do the splits. Ha!

The role reversal had me cheering to see women in the traditional male roles from Mount Rushmore to the Supreme Court to The White House (or The Pink House in this case!) but then I was terribly sad to see Ken reduced to a decorative object, seen as foolish, useless, unimportant, irrelevant and without his emotional needs being considered or met, and then I thought, hey, Ken represents us women in society! This movie makes you think about gender, roles and society as we have set it up, with men largely taking the power and control and women being deliberately subverted. This is not an opinion about the movie, this is a fact about society. 

There are so many clever scenes that are riotously funny in the moment, but by the end of the movie those moments add up to a stinging satire of society. Barbie has a kick, a bite and will scratch at your eyes.  

Greta Gerwig said about the movie, "It’s a spicy margarita. There’s like a lot packed into it...I always wanted it to surprise people. I wanted it to make people laugh, but then I also wanted it to kind of almost unexpectedly make people think and cry."

It's a movie that makes you think and have those challenging conversations about gender politics.

​After watching the movie, I don't crave a Malibu Dream House, a pink Corvette convertible, an iconic pretty-in-pink wardrobe with to-die-for accessories, or a Mojo Dojo Casa House, or even a Ken, I simply crave equality. 

I may have to watch it a few more times.

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