I read somewhere that Billie Eilish wrote the song “What Was I Made For?” for the Barbie movie in ten minutes. It meshes perfectly into the whimsical journey Barbie takes into the real world discovering what she was made for. Through her adventure, she encounters a room full of men asking her to get into a box, a young girl who calls her fascist, a mother looking to connect with her daughter, and witnesses aging for the first time. She also discovers that the Barbies have not fixed real-world sexism. While the Barbies run Barbie Land, the real world is run by men and is overtaken by patriarchy. Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, feels validated and empowered by patriarchy and decides that he will bring it to Barbie Land and brainwash all the Barbies. It is clear from the get-go that a matriarchy simply forgets men and leaves them in the background, while patriarchy enforces subservience.
You may have already heard about Gloria’s (America Ferrara) soon-to-be iconic monologue when she comforts Barbie (Margot Robbie) after Ken’s (Ryan Gosling) discovery of patriarchy. Barbie is inconsolable and has seemingly given up when Gloria expresses her hopelessness that a doll who is supposed to represent female empowerment is crying on the floor. She says: “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we're always doing it wrong.”
What a comfort it was to hear these words spoken out loud. It is literally impossible to be a woman. It often feels like a life of double standards and of fighting against make-believe constraints and avoiding violence at all costs. As stated in the movie, however, by bringing voice to the cognitive dissonance required of being a woman under the patriarchy, we can rob it of its power.
Towards the end of the film (spoilers ahead!) Barbie meets her maker, Ruth Handler. Ruth invented Barbie to be anything with no ending. Named after her beloved daughter Barbara, Barbie was meant to be anything the little girls of the world wanted her to be. When Barbie explains that she no longer wants to be a stereotype but a human, Ruth encourages her to feel all the things that are associated with becoming a human. Our humanity is fraught and uncomfortable, tainted by violence and institutions of patriarchy, but somewhere in there, the fights and drive to create a just world is in all of us - in our innate capacity to feel and welcome the feelings and experience of others.
I imagine this is how God might view our humanity: fraught but beautiful. I imagine God might remind us of how we are lovingly created as her children. I imagine God might remind us that we are created to follow our hearts and be who we are, who we want to be.
The Barbie movie, to me, was a gift and reminder that my womanhood, although hard to confront, is a beautiful thing. As I process all of this out loud, I’m left with a lingering question: What does all of this mean in the context of a patriarchal church then? Perhaps it’s a reminder to remember who created us and calls us to being, to life, and to the world. But it is also a reminder to rest in the celebration of women who do the work before us so that we might keep fighting.
The Barbie movie is not just dream cars and dream houses. It is a dream for a world that sees women for who they are, not who they ought to be.
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