Barbie: Man Hater or Fabulous Feminism

‘Basically, everything that men do in your world, women do in ours’

This quote from Barbie 2023 perfectly sums up the premise and deeper meaning Barbie portrayed to the audience. Barbie starts with her perfect life where she is the centre of everyone’s attention and everything is perfect, however when she starts noticing imperfections within herself, she must travel to the real world and understand how women are really treated. The incredible director Greta Gerwig casted Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie & Ken. Barbie was a smash hit with the women audience and showed the complexities and struggles women still have in the 21st century in a funny but very emotive way. However, many men saw it as a ‘I hate men movie’ so what do you think? Let’s look at both sides.

The incredibly hand-crafted pink set introduced us to the world of Barbie brining nostalgia and plasticines to the screen instantly. We see the Barbies in parliament, having sleepovers and parties and we only see the Kens when the Barbies are on screen. ‘Every night is girls’ night’ highlights the idea that the Barbies can function and thrive without the Kens, however the Kens cannot do the same. This is meant to show a complete opposite of the real world where women are supposed to be hanging on waiting around for men to make the decisions. However, the movie does an incredible job at the start with keeping all meaningful parts in a jokey style and keep it light-hearted until we enter the real world where we start to really understand the meaning behind the film.

Barbie could have been another nostalgic reboot with the pink bows and sparkly clothes with no deeper meaning and probably would have also been a success. However, the powerful feminist meaning behind it, is what created the connection for women of all ages watching. Her feeling like a fish out of water when entering the real world is an incredible parallel of how women feel trying to navigate men orientated spaces. Greta shows the complexities and discrimination women still face in today’s world with Americas infamous speech including quotes like “You have to be thin, but not too thin. You can never say you want to be pretty, but you’re supposed to be pretty.’ She also shows that Barbie hasn’t always been seen as a positive figure for women but wanted to show it’s the idea of Barbie that’s important and not what she actually looks like.

However, the male audience weren’t too impressed with how men were portrayed within the

film. The Kens were portrayed as blonde, dumb and with no ambition which us stereotypically how women have been used in the film industry for decades. This is done on purpose of course to highlight the issue and show men the real meaning of the film. The kens don’t get an important monologue or meaningful story lines beside the mojo, but that is what Greta was trying to show its just the male audience didn’t take the joke too well. Critiques have been made like ‘man-hating, sexist and anti-men’ however in my opinion those are just made by those who didn’t understand the real message behind the film. Greta didn’t create a man hating film, she created a film that put emphasis on the struggles that women face but turned it around to try and make men understand. Although I do think the message got lost by most of the male audience, many men did understand and also love to see wo men getting the representation they deserve.

So, is Barbie really guiltily of being sexist itself? Barbie isn’t saying all men are bad, it is trying to show the inequality within the world, for women and for men. Yes, the Kens are the butt of the joke for the majority of the movie, however if you think about it on a deeper meaning Greta was trying to show that men are just as much stuck trying to uphold masculine stereotypes put upon them by society.  The film is trying to demolish stereotypes for both males and females but just shows them in different ways.

Does Barbie have a equal balance for the inequality of men and women? No. But that’s the whole point, its focus is highlighting how hard women and young girls must fight to even be in the same room as men purely due to their sex. In my opinion, I think Barbie was an incredibly emotionally and eye-opening movie, for both men and women, and shouldn’t be seen as an insult to men but as a compliment on how strong a d resilient women have to be in this day and age.

So, do you think Barbie is sexist? Let me know in the comments below.