Surprisingly, ‘Barbie’ Offers Empowering Message for Women
Kristen Eichamer /
Many of us walked into Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” expecting another major brand to go woke. Much to our surprise, Gerwig’s interpretation leans back into Barbie’s origins—empowering women.
She ignores some, though not all, of the political trends. Hari Nef, a biological male, is playing a transgender doctor version of Barbie in the movie, but the film’s director chose to ditch some of the far-left ideology that many conservatives feared. Gerwig instead focuses on a new era of Barbie that acknowledges the difficulties of being a modern woman.
Gerwig does this through a monologue delivered by America Ferrera’s character Gloria, a real-world mother struggling with thoughts of suicide, a distant teenage daughter, and making it at the male-dominated Mattel, the owner of the Barbie brand.
Ferrera’s character goes as far as to say, “I’m tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.” It’s raw, talking more about a woman’s own mental health and her relationship with others, something blatantly ignored by a government pushing policies that would force women to forfeit their privacy, safety, and aspirations to biological men.
Many of the core tenants of today’s “women’s empowerment movement,” such as pro-abortion rhetoric, the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX, were missing from the film. Gerwig uses Barbie, an icon that can accomplish literally anything, to show that our differences are what make women—and men—beautiful, and to remind us all that our fulfillment does not come from our career or even from having a “perfect” life.
On today’s edition of the “Problematic Women” podcast, we dive deep into the “Barbie” movie and even unpack a biblical allegory found at the end of the film.
Also on today’s show, we bring on Evie Solheim, the creator and writer of “The Girl’s Guide” and a writer for Evie Magazine, to talk about entering the career field as a young woman, and what a new trend known as the “lady girl job” says about our culture.
Listen to the podcast below:
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