Barbie allows you to dream and create a world where girls can become more than just mothers when they grow up.
The movie starts off with little girls playing with baby dolls and suddenly a giant Barbie enters the scene destroying the narrative that all a girl can be is a mother.
As we get an inside look at dreamland, where only the pinkest pink is found, everything and everyday is perfect, and the girls are ruling the world, we start to understand the vision of Barbie and what she truly represents.
Greta Gerwig, director of Barbie, portrays both Barbie-land and the Real World in such a compassionate, understanding and brutally honest way.
In Barbie-land, Barbies are everything. From being journalists, lawyers, construction workers, and the President of Barbie-land. The Barbies have, and do, it all.
Everyday Original Barbie, played by Margo Robbie, has a perfect day filled with dance parties, beach, and girls night.
Barbie has her sorta- boyfriend Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, and well Ken, is just Ken, beaching along for the ride only to have importance if Barbie deems fit.
While on a perfect day, everything goes dark when Barbie is hosting her dance party. She starts to get these thoughts of death, and it’s not because she’s “dying to dance.”
It’s then followed by symptoms of cold showers, burnt toast, flat feet, and oh, cellulite…
Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, explains that Barbie has opened up a portal with a girl in the real world. Barbie must go to the real world to fix what’s wrong with the girl who is playing with her.
Barbie, with Gosling, adventure to the real world by boat, space, to where they eventually roll into LA in search for who Barbie needs to find to close the portal of Barbie-land and the Real World.
Barbie is met with the shocking awakening of feeling self conscious, getting cat-called, and treated with no respect. Barbie also realized that all the jobs that the Barbies did in Barbie-land, the men do in the Real World.
Barbie is also simultaneously discovering the beauty and the sadness of the world. She gets a vision of the girl who used to play with her and discovers a mother-daughter experience of what it was like playing with the dolls and growing up in the Real World.
Meanwhile, Gosling gets praised, respected, and valued all from just skating down the street. In perfect timing, Gosling realizes that he is respected just by being a man, coming to the “kenclusion” that men rule the world.
Barbie and Ken continue their adventure exploring the real world by going to Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt school to fix whatever is wrong with her in order to close the portal.
Sasha gives Barbie an honest, and harsh, speech of how Barbie is represented in the world. While Barbie thinks that she is the reason why little girls can dream, Sasha informs Barbie that she “set the feminist movement back by 50 years,” and some other hard truths.
Mattel, the creator of Barbie, shows up at the school in order to capture Barbie and put her back in a box so that weird and unimaginable things don’t start to happen.
All the while, Gosling adventures back to Barbie-land and creates a Kendom with his new knowledge of patriarchy, horses, and ,of course, boys’ night.
As the adventure goes on, Barbie, Sasha, and Gloria arrive in Barbie-land, except it’s more cowboy and rodeo than its blissful pink and glamor.
All the Barbies go into a trance and strive to please, respect, and be the Kens low maintenance girlfriends. As Barbie is showing Sasha and Gloria around she realizes that her world is drastically different.
Barbie finds out that the Kens have turned once Barbie-land into “Kendom,” and that they soon will vote to keep it that way forever.
As Barbie has gone depressed, Gloria, Sasha’s mom played America Ferrera, explains to Barbie just how harsh, difficult, and confusing womanhood can be.
Ferrera explains that to be a woman is to never cross too far onto either side of a spectrum. “It’s literally impossible to be a woman… You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean… You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time…” expresses Ferrera.
Because of this raw speech the Barbie’s are able to snap out of the trance, take back Barbie land from the kens and restore it back to its new normal.
New normal means that the Kens will have a bit of power, really they have absolutely no power, Barbie and Ken are just Barbie and just Ken, and Original Barbie, Barbie, decides it is time for her to go into the real world.
There are also roles for all the Barbies who exist, from weird Barbie, to the new normal Barbie, they are all given a space to live within Barbie land and create a world together.
Overall, Greta Gerwig, director of the movie, captivated so many experiences within this movie that goes well beyond what the eye meets.
Covered in hot pink, fashion, and humor, Gerwig not only spotlighted the painful experiences of women, but danced into the land of race, men, human experiences, mother daughter relationships, and LGBTQ+ representation all within a movie that’s “for the girls.”