Receiving the title of the highest-grossing film by a female director, raking in around $800 million in sales, Barbie is the movie of the year… as it should be.
Going into the theaters, there was a sense of togetherness shared among everyone seeing the movie. I didn’t choose to wear pink when watching the movie, but I soon regretted it as everyone in the theaters was dressed in pink Barbie and Ken outfits similar to the movie.
With bright pops of color, dazzling sets and stylish wardrobe pieces, this is just the start of a never-ending list of unforgettable moments created by director Greta Gerwig. Gerwig wanted this movie to inspire children and adults to be whomever they want and do whatever they want without feeling the stress of being perfect.
According to wbur.com Gerwid said, “I want the movie to make people feel somewhat relieved of the tightrope. We ask ourselves — not just as women, men too — that we walk this impossible tightrope of being perfect,”
Ruth Handler created Barbie to show young girls that Barbie can be any occupation and to make Barbie seem that any woman can have an equal opportunity to have demanding jobs. Making younger girls believe and have the confidence to be a ballerina, astronaut, doctor and many other occupations.
Growing up watching Barbie movies and having everything Barbie-related, I never thought I could be like her, so as a kid, I just pretended. Her house was different shades of pink; she had a never-ending closet of the best wardrobe; she was everything I wanted to be but felt like I wasn’t. It’s only now, in my senior year of high school, that I realize what Barbie was supposed to represent, and I wish I had seen it like that sooner.
I went into the movie thinking it would be a light-hearted movie; I wasn’t expecting to feel sad for my child self, I wasn’t expecting to cry. In the movie, Gloria’s (America Ferrara) monologue had everyone to tears because of the deep meaning behind womanhood and the difficult path women in society have to walk down.
“It is literally impossible to be a woman… you have to be thin but not too thin. And you have to say you want to be healthy, but you also have to be thin…. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.”
Gloria represents the tightrope women carefully balance throughout their lives to survive society and sisterhood. This monologue applies not only to women but to men; also, the movie targets the young, teen, and adult audience.
“When America was giving her beautiful speech, I was just sobbing, and then I looked around, and I realized everybody’s crying on the set. The men are crying too; because they have their speech, they feel they can’t ever give, you know? And they have their twin tightrope, which is also painful,” Gerwig said after filming the monologue scene, according to town&country.com,
My friends and I always assumed that the Barbie doll was made to show us young girls what we should be like, and what was the “ideal” perfect woman. What we learned is that womanhood is not as easy as our naive 7-year-old girls’ thought it would be; there are standards women need to meet in order to seem “conventional.”
We wear a mask in society to show others we fit in with everyone else but in reality under that mask every woman has their struggles. The movie has brought attention to these societal standards and set an example of the unrealistic rules everyone must follow to seem “normal”.
