Debra-Lynn B. Hook
I was not a Barbie girl, per se.
My three sisters and I owned Barbies, also Ken, the dream house and the convertible. We had pink vinyl wardrobe cases for her clothes, many of which my mother made one Christmas locked in her room, hunched over her sewing machine like Marmee on a mission.
As for prominence on my toy shelf, Barbie was only part of a stable that included a Secret Sam detective kit with a real camera; a little Miss No-Name orphan doll with sad brown eyes, a fake tear on her cheek and a burlap-sack dress with a patch on it (I gravitated to the downtrodden) and my bike.
Playtime was more often than not spent outside sans plastic, climbing trees, picking berries in the woods behind our house and, after “The Sound of Music” came out, riding my bike to the creek where I pretended to be a lost nun.
It wasn’t that I especially disliked Mattel’s Barbie brand, or how she and her impossibly perfect body might corrupt my 8-year-old mind. It’s that we had other things to do and be.
If I were to be consumed by an institution, it was the Catholic Church, while Barbie often lay closed up and naked in her wardrobe case, her platinum blonde hair wild and untended on her head.
Which may be why a little goes a long way for me and the Barbie movie.
For sure, director/writer Greta Gerwig’s film is summertime cute, stylized and punny. The scene when Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) steps out of her stilettos and her feet remain en pointe was an LOL highlight, eliciting loud cackles of solidarity from me and the other movie-goers.
Surely, a scattering of pokes at Barbie and her ditzy boyfriend are part of the movie’s appeal.
But then, so are serious attacks on the pervasive patriarchy that surrounds Barbie — and the rest of us. America Ferrera’s monologue deep into the film, during which the actress captures the impossibility of being a woman in a man’s world, pulls at the heart and soul of anybody growing up female in America.
“You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin,” Ferrera orates. “You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or sigh as the film built a female-empowerment message around a theme that appeared out of nowhere: Barbie leaving Barbieland for Reality when for no logical reason she suddenly she begins looking for answers about death. In her search for Real truth, Barbie learns how ugly the world can be — read: male-dominated — while finding her voice through a series of disjointed encounters that don’t always follow.
Even Ferrera’s speech feels dropped in like a string of (important) thoughts the film was determined to find a place for.
I have no interest in taking Gerwig down. Bravo to the young woman in the male-dominated room, managing to make a blockbuster for and about women, which is unusual enough, with a toy owned by a behemoth corporation.
Like one of my friends said, “It’s good to see a female director making money.”
Meanwhile, as not only a feminist, but as a humanist and the mother of men, I’d like to have seen not just real, but ideal — Barbie and her crowd not just finding a voice for women, but for all.
Mattel has determined over the years to keep Barbie up with the culture, offering dolls of various body types, race, ethnicities and professions.
The proof is in the strawberry pudding.
Let’s see if the movie can do anything to take the culture and the brand to the next portal, beyond establishing a new doll in the image of Barbie the “Real.”
Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook.com; email her at [email protected], or join her column’s Facebook discussion group at Debra-Lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy.
