I went to see the Barbie movie with my daughter-in-law the day after it opened, and I loved it. Right down to the very last line. I had a few Barbies as a child, but more often than not they ended up at the bottom of the toy box with their hair all tangled and looking like Weird Barbie. Once we had lost the shoes (and they are tiny little shoes that always get lost), she had no chance of standing upright and so one hand always had to be holding her up. This severely limits the range of play options. So, when I first heard about the Barbie movie, I wasn’t chaffing at the bit to go.
However, the marketing campaign and particularly seeing fellow Aussie Margot Robbie interacting with life size replicas of the accessories I only dreamed of owning slowly drew me in so much that when it was finally released, I couldn’t wait to go. I have been disconcerted, though, by how much of the analysis and reporting reeks of misogyny that is only very slightly veiled. It should come as no surprise that this misogyny comes from both female and male commentators.
In an article in Time magazine, Eliana Dockterman suggests that Ken should be the focus of the movie because
“It’s a B-plot that’s so compelling it often outshines the somewhat dated girl-power mantras of Barbie’s A-plot.”
The B-Plot
The persistent turn of focus to Ryan Gosling’s Ken is one demonstration of this undercurrent of misogyny. Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of Ken is indeed wonderful to watch however if we look away from the blonde charm for a moment and consider his story line, it is quite disturbing. Ken is not the centre of Barbie’s life so he does all he can to position himself near her and to grab her attention. When it doesn’t work, we see him sulking. When Barbie takes off on an adventure to find herself in the real world, he hi-jacks her trip and insists on coming along. Barbie is too nice to insist that this is her work to do, and so he gets to ride along.
Once in the real world, as the Time article suggests, Ken is sucked into a Jordan Peterson-esque framework which he takes back to Barbie world infecting it with patriarchy. The article is very quick to absolve Ken of the damage because he is a ‘nice guy.’ It doesn’t mention that part of the reason we read Ken this way is because he is white and pretty. People are rooting for Ken, I think in part, because he so fully embodies the handsome, white, American, surfer dude whose nemesis just happens to be Asian. And nice white guys are almost never held accountable for the impact of their behaviours.
As far as I can see, Ken’s prettiness has not been interrogated at all, and certainly not in any way close to what Barbie’s has been. It is just taken for granted. His pec’s have been the subject of multiple think pieces about how it sets an unrealistic expectation for ‘real’ men but his clean shaven, bleached blonde aesthetic goes unremarked. This is what ‘normal’ looks like and so we don’t notice how it influences how Ken is read. It also allows him to shine because he is not weighed down with the expectations we place on people who are not-men, not-white, not-pretty.
I think this is true of our images of God as well. When God is a man, he can be anything we want him to be. He can be the genial, white-haired Daddy figure seated at the pearly gates. He can be the gentle and kind Jesus who loves children but is not afraid to crack the whip when need be. He can be the inspiring spirit that ignites the Pentecost flames which carry the missionaries across colonial journeys all across the world. And he can be anything in between. This is not true for women or for people suggesting that God might possibly be female.
The A-Plot
In a world where there is still a gendered pay gap, when women are still not safe from abuse and sexual violence in their own homes, and regularly have to out-perform men to have their talent recognised (and do it with a smile on their faces so they are perceived as warm and non-threatening) I wonder how the message of girl-power can be suggested to be out-dated.
However, I think even that misses the point. The Barbie movie isn’t about girl-power. It’s about the persistent boxes that women are put into, particularly when they start to make waves. This is shown quite literally when Robbie’s stereotypical Barbie is almost trapped into her box with the small white ties inching closer to constraining her arms, and with it her potential to make waves. Sara Ahmed observes that when we name the problem, we become the problem, and in this movie producers Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie are not afraid to name the problem, poke fun at it, critique it, empathise with it. And its seems that this has been very successful.
Sometimes I wonder what it would take for the church to be made aware of its gender problem in the same way that Barbie has done for the wider feminist movement? I wonder what it might take for the out-dated, harmful and discriminatory theologies that are so often taken for granted be seen for what they are? And I wonder what the impact on the women would be who speak out to draw these issues to our attention, particularly if they happen to not be quite as white and stereotypically beautiful as Margot Robbie. Will we ever see the day when women are allowed to be the centre of attention without focus being pulled back to the men who are acting in the background?
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