From the droves of young people flocking to the theaters decked head to toe in pink, to the gushy movie critics, to the conservatives who thought it was based, to the conservatives who thought it was garbage, everyone who watched it has been reacting powerfully to the film Barbie. Such an uproar is a sign that the movie touches something deep in the zeitgeist—but what exactly is that?

If you ask many movie critics, they will tell you that the movie sets out to subvert traditional norms. Rolling Stone describes it as “a pretty-in-pink ‘f-ck you’ to the patriarchy.” If you watch the film in this light, however, it makes zero sense, which conservative commentators, like Ben Shapiro, were quick to point out. This is because Barbie is playing a game of double subversion, satirizing harmful ideas in our modern society. On one level, the film critiques misogynistic aspects of society. However, as Greta Gerwig herself says, the film operates on two levels. On a deeper level, Barbie subverts radical feminism itself, while critiquing other aspects of modern society along the way. At its heart, the movie replaces these destructive aspects of society with the values of family and community.

The movie opens with little girls playing with baby dolls. But when the little girls discover Barbie, they see a new version of what women can be: perpetually sexy and young, unrestrained by motherhood. Barbie looms over them, a parallel to the alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, prompting them to “evolve” in the way they play. When playing with baby dolls, the girls act out their imagined future of being mothers; but when they play with Barbies, they act out an imagined future of being career women, superstars, etc…anything other than mothers. 

Barbie encourages them to aspire to a glamorous ideal of being eternally attractive, young, and free to do whatever they want. But when the little girls in this scene leave behind motherhood and chase the Barbie ideal, the change isn’t peaceful. They begin to smash their baby dolls with a humorous yet uncomfortable brutality. This brutality suggests that in order to become exactly like Barbie, they have to destroy the part of them that desires motherhood. 

After all, Barbie is always young and unrestrained, and having a child is something that ages you—something that requires sacrifice.

So the girls destroy the baby dolls. “And that’s how all problems of feminism were solved,” says the narrator. “At least, that’s what the Barbies think.” This begs the question: if the Barbies are prompting such sweeping societal changes, are they really just innocuous dolls? Or do they represent something deeper? Barbie Land, at the beginning of the film, is a satirical representation of a radical feminist’s utopia. In Barbie Land, they believe that if only women have access to all possible careers and are in all the positions of power, everything will be solved. But is this really the case?

After leaving us with that question to ponder, the film introduces us to Barbie Land, a world so fake and superficial that you wonder how anyone could possibly be happy there. Women all wave to each other, smiling in a cartoonish way. In the president’s cabinet, we see nothing happening except the Barbies praising each other in over-the-top fashion. This is obviously boring: the film shows there are no real, meaningful connections between women, but  cheap parodies of friendship. The world they’re living in is plastic, void of deep emotions. We see this clearly when Lawyer Barbie, while arguing a case, states, “This makes me emotional, and that’s not a problem. I can hold both reason and emotion in my mind, and that doesn’t diminish my powers. It expands them.” This concept may be true, but she delivers the line in an unemotive way: she is divorced from values, and thus is reduced to the realm of the superficial. Already, the film sets up a satire of the life women are told they should want by radical feminism. If the highest goods that women seek are power, pleasure, and status, even if they do achieve a feminist utopia, it will ring hollow. The film does not criticize the concept of women having more career possibilities open to them; rather, it asks the question: if we achieve this kind of world without any other value system, aren’t we missing something?

Meanwhile, the Kens have nothing to do other than sit on the beach all day and wait for the Barbies to notice them. Because everything in Barbie society is run by women, there is nothing else for them to do. Men and women are made to be complimentary, but second/third wave feminism shunts men to the side and makes them “superfluous” (as Barbie herself later admits). Under a regime of radical feminism, women are not supposed to desire the qualities of strength or power in a man; instead, they are supposed to exceed men.

 The movie paints a picture of what these radical ideas about male-female relations would look like practically, and it isn’t something any sane person would desire. We begin to see that while Barbie Land claims to be a place of freedom and infinite possibilities, in reality, men and women are trapped and limited by what radical feminism tells them they should be. The movie’s main Barbie-Ken dual foils illustrate this best for the viewers.

Barbie and Ken are apparently “boyfriend and girlfriend,” but their relationship is as superficial as the rest of Barbie Land. For one thing, Barbie isn’t (and cannot be) attracted to Ken and often doesn’t want to spend time with him. As lovable to the audience as he may be, there is nothing to admire about Ken. He has no strength, talent, or virtue to speak of. He also never asserts his own needs, and does not develop who he is beyond Barbie until the end of the movie. This reflects a very real frustration that many women experience in modern society. Many have been brought up to believe that women “need a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, as Irina Dunn wrote. They’ve been told that men are always inferior, so there is nothing truly significant that a man could add to their lives. And they’ve been told that they certainly should not be looking for a man they’d like to start a family with, because the family structure is a shackle that holds them back from participating in society. What, then, is the purpose of a romantic relationship? The movie nudges this question into the audience’s mind as it portrays Barbie’s disinterest in her supposed love interest.

Meanwhile, Ken is not happy to worship Barbie from a distance. He doesn’t want to be an ornament to her life; he wants to have a real purpose in the world, and he channels this desire into his pursuit of Barbie. Unlike other Kens, who seem content with whatever level of attention they get from the Barbies, Ken refuses to stay on the sidelines. This, too, reflects a real crisis in modern relationships. Some men might be satisfied with hookup culture, that unfortunate byproduct of third wave feminism and the sexual revolution, but what about the ones that are looking for someone to have a future with? Ken wants to ultimately have a home with Barbie (“I always thought this would be our house,” he says of the Barbie Dream House), but his society hasn’t given him the language to express that. Instead, he does crazy things to get Barbie’s attention, easily gets jealous of other Kens, and even asks to stay overnight at her house. 

Barbie’s lack of interest in a committed relationship is not Ken’s only problem. As mentioned before, Barbie Land limits the possibility of what men can be, reducing them to the sidelines. Ken craves respect, purpose, and his own independent interests. As soon as he sets foot in the real world, he perceives people respecting him, which overwhelms him, and he goes on to discover subjects and hobbies that interest him independent of Barbie. He misconstrues this world as a successful “patriarchy”, which he attempts to import into Barbie Land. Although these attempts are misguided, the movie still casts Ken in a sympathetic light, as we can see that, like Barbie, he struggles with desiring more than his world allows him to have.

After this crucial glimpse at the issues in Barbie Land, we see Barbie begin to have existential thoughts of death, and we see her body beginning to change into that of a real woman. The first reason we’re given as to why this happens is that someone is playing with her doll counterpart in the real world, someone whose emotions are affecting her deeply. While Barbie first assumes that this person is Sasha, a troubled teenage girl she sees in a vision, the movie presents a striking twist: it is actually Gloria, Sasha’s mother, who has caused the changes in Barbie. Barbie’s visions revealed the real world through a mother’s eyes—a hint at one of the final themes of Barbie, which is motherhood.

It is hinted that Gloria is not the only reason for Barbie’s transformation when Barbie demands, “Why did you wish me into your stupid, messed up world?” Sasha, Gloria’s daughter, replies: “Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you wished us.” This small insight from Sasha has huge consequences for how we interpret the film. It suggests that Barbie was missing something from the very beginning of the movie, rather than being corrupted by the real world. Barbie Land had programmed her to believe that she was happy living by its hedonistic values, so all of her dissatisfaction with her world was emotionally repressed up to the breaking point. Barbie was never truly content in her original world; whether she admitted it to herself or not, she wanted something real. It is implied, as the film progresses, that this “something real” is  family and a sense of fellowship beyond the plastic friendships of Barbie Land. 

Not only does Barbie’s close relationship with Gloria and Sasha play a major role in her character development, but the final vision Barbie is given before choosing the real world over Barbie Land is filled with maternal imagery. This repressed desire for motherhood is not only the key to understanding Barbie’s character growth, but the key to understanding the predicament that many modern women find themselves in. We have been given Barbie Land as an ideal in our own time. Having a shiny career, running society, partying with superficial friends all day…this is the life women are supposed to want, yet no one feels fulfilled with this. Barbie, like the rest of us, desires real meaning in her life. However, that meaning comes with a price. It leads her to the reality of death and getting old.

When Barbie brings up death in front of the other Barbies, they are paralyzed, looking at her with a mixture of shock and disapproval. In Barbie Land’s hedonistic paradise, there is no room for these uncomfortable thoughts. Barbies must always be young and attractive. This reflects how our society worships youth, even more so in the modern era than in previous times. 

This might not be an obvious critique of radical feminism, but feminism certainly hasn’t helped solve the problem of aging. As younger generations renounce family values and become more secular, growing insulated from each other as they commit themselves entirely to their careers or giving themselves over to unrestrained and meaningless hedonistic pleasure, the question arises: who are you if you aren’t young and beautiful?

When Barbie goes to the real world, she begins to find the answers to these questions. The plotline is handled in a very subtle way: as Barbie starts to care more about other people, her existential crisis takes up less and less space in her mind. She has a moment, sitting at a bus station overlooking a park, where she quietly observes the lives of others, empathizing with them from a distance. She sees an elderly woman, and tells her “You’re so beautiful,” recognizing for the first time how there is beauty in a full, complete, and meaningful life—perhaps a beauty deeper and truer than the kind Barbie once aspired to. A few scenes later, after Barbie finds Gloria and Sasha, she becomes completely involved in their lives, bringing them to Barbie Land in an effort to help them rather than herself. She finds her true purpose in connection and community, something that has been lost in our radically individualistic culture. 

The implication is that the meaning of life comes from caring about others and being part of a family. This theme is expanded on in the resolution of the movie, when Barbie chooses to go to the real world. Ruth, Barbie’s creator, tells Barbie that she has to show her what it means to be human, and then conveys a vision to her with several poignant scenes of motherhood and relationships. Barbie’s response to seeing this? A resounding “yes” to the real world. Barbie chooses without hesitation to return to the real world, despite all its complications and problems, because it gives her the option to have real love and meaning in her life (the implication being that Barbie will eventually pursue motherhood). Barbie Land, with all its plastic pleasures, could never offer her a joy so deep. However, by the time Barbie leaves, Barbie Land has also begun to change. The Barbies and Kens attempt to compromise so that everyone can participate in society. The very landscape has begun to incorporate the interests of the Kens. Both Barbie and the world she came from are moving closer to finding real community.

In this way, Greta Gerwig exposes the audience to the meaninglessness that results from our world’s ideologies. She takes cultural presuppositions to their extremes and so subverts them, showing us how they fall short. The goal of the film was to get us thinking about the legacy of feminism, how we might move forward as a society, and what the meaning of life might be.

If the tidal wave of discourse surrounding this film is any indication, I think Gerwig succeeded in that.

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Erika Kyba, ’26, is a prospective English major.