This text comprises spoilers for the movie Barbie.
The Greta Gerwig–directed Barbie is sort of a Barbie superfan’s creativeness run wild. There are elaborately choreographed dance numbers for the dolls. The dialogue pokes easygoing, understanding enjoyable at Mattel’s merchandise. Virtually each scene—particularly these in Barbie Land, the plastic world run by completely different life-size Barbies and their respective adoring Kens—comprises creative set items, cheeky references to campy cinema, and costumes of the pinkest selection.
A traditional grown-up human would most likely appear misplaced in such a sun-soaked, glitter-drenched fantasyland, however Gloria (performed by America Ferrera) is not any mere vacationer: She’s a girl who, as somewhat lady, spent hours and hours taking part in with Barbie (Margot Robbie). Now, as an grownup, Gloria has been attempting and failing to attach together with her teenage daughter. In her unhappiness, she revisits her consolation toy, and unintentionally imbues the doll together with her darkest ideas, inflicting Barbie to “malfunction”—her arched toes go flat, and she or he begins fascinated by demise. When Gloria meets Barbie within the flesh via a sequence of magical occasions, she turns into Barbie’s information to understanding her capability past being a plaything—in addition to the shocking key to understanding the movie, pulling its many concepts into focus via a showstopper of a monologue.
Gloria’s speech arrives at a second when her position and Barbie’s have reversed. In the actual world, Barbie (who’s generally known as “Stereotypical Barbie,” to tell apart her from the opposite variants) has found that girls don’t truly run every little thing in existence. Her angst deepens when she returns to Barbie Land, the place the Kens, after studying how human males behave, have put in their concept of a patriarchy—Kens operating the federal government! Barbies bringing them beers! Horse paraphernalia all over the place!—leaving Barbie with no objective however to be an decoration to her Ken (Ryan Gosling, a hoot) in her personal supposed paradise. Responding to Barbie’s existential disaster, Gloria offers her a pep speak that turns, line by line, into a pointy and sympathetic dissection of the unimaginable expectations that include being a girl.
“One way or the other we’re all the time simply doing it incorrect,” she begins, earlier than launching right into a litany of examples. Girls are anticipated to be skinny however not too skinny; to try for management roles however not be too aggressive; to like being moms however not make motherhood their solely job; to acknowledge that gender inequality exists however not complain about it. “It’s important to by no means get previous, by no means be impolite, by no means showcase, by no means be egocentric, by no means fall down, by no means fail, by no means present concern, by no means get out of line,” Gloria explains. “It’s too onerous; it’s too contradictory … I’m simply so bored with watching myself and each single different girl tie herself into knots so folks will like us. If all of that can also be true for a doll simply representing a girl, then I don’t even know.”
It’s a quintessentially Gerwig-ian monologue, following the frank evaluation of marriage within the writer-director’s adaptation of Little Girls, the nervous reconsideration of a parent-child relationship in Girl Hen, and the heartfelt analysis of greatest friendship in Frances Ha (which she co-wrote together with her accomplice, Noah Baumbach, who additionally co-wrote Barbie). Like these speeches, Gloria’s is somewhat rambling, somewhat self-conscious, somewhat indignant—and fully earnest, carried out by Ferrera with simply the correct quantity of exasperation. A lot of what Gloria says is perhaps apparent to grownup girls watching the movie, however her unvarnished, matter-of-fact supply is refreshing for its rawness. That the monologue ends on a resigned and moderately unsatisfying observe solely makes it extra highly effective. The scene builds with every sentence, and Gloria appears poised to stipulate an answer worthy of a TED Speak—however none exists.
In spite of everything, there isn’t a tidy answer to creating the lives of girls agony-free, in both the actual world or Barbie Land. The monologue lands so nicely as a result of it helps present that not even the candy-coated expanse works as a perfect: The pressures Gloria talks about have an effect on each Dreamhouse occupant, usually in additional superficial methods. The Barbies are horrified, as an illustration, on the sight of Stereotypical Barbie’s flat toes; when one in every of them fails to fulfill society’s subjective magnificence requirements, the remaining are as fast to evaluate as actual people are. And because the movie unfolds, it properly takes time to look at that Barbie Land just isn’t a bastion of equality, not less than not when Kens dwell as powerless residents whose solely position is to be observed by Barbies.
Gloria’s somber monologue is a dangerous beat for a movie as absurd and flamboyant as Barbie, however it’s an important reminder of why the film exists in any respect—and why it could endure past the Barbenheimer memes and its nearly overwhelming advertising and marketing marketing campaign. The movie grasps that Barbie—the toy, the icon—has been the topic of seemingly infinite debates since her 1959 debut as a result of, as Gloria makes clear, being a girl means being the topic of seemingly infinite debates about magnificence requirements and gender roles. In recent times, the doll line has added quite a lot of pores and skin tones and physique varieties to modernize the model, however the picture of Barbie’s arched toes endures for a cause: Barbie should all the time be on her toes, strolling a wonderful, unimaginable line with a view to mannequin womanhood to ladies.
That concept—of merchandise being reflections of our self-image, which is in flip affected by the merchandise we buy, making a endless cycle—is heady, and one that can most likely fly over the kids seeing the movie. At my screening, somewhat lady a number of seats from me requested her mother again and again to clarify what Gloria was speaking about. “Whaaat?” she whispered throughout the monologue, earlier than repeating the query on the finish of the speech, sounding much more baffled than earlier than. Her confusion made me giggle—after which gutted me, only a bit. Sometime, I assumed, she’ll get it. And perhaps if she’s fortunate, she’ll have somebody beside her—a Barbie, a Gloria—who lets her know she’s not alone.
