“Barbie” was an emotional experience for me. Sitting between my mom and sister, tears in my eyes, I entered Barbie Land fully along for Barbie and Gloria’s journey of reckoning. The humor was just as important as the heavy-heartedness.
For me, the heart of the film was the moment when Barbie considers an old woman sitting next to her on a bench and concludes, “You are beautiful.” The woman responds, “I know.”
I didn’t think anything could have hit me harder. Alongside Barbie, we got to reverently acknowledge the majesty of a woman who has settled into herself.
Which is why I was so surprised at my dad’s response. Just on the other side of my mom, he was watching an entirely different movie.
The first thing he said as we left was, “Shang Chi was awesome!” (To be fair, he had been clear that Simu Liu was the main reason he wanted to see the movie.) He loved the fight scene that turned into a dance.
It felt so at odds with the trip I’d just been on. I could tell that he was aware of our internal experiences, but didn’t really feel like he should be part of the conversation — that was our personal affair. Ultimately, he didn’t relate to Barbie and Gloria, but he understood that we did.
Of all the men I’ve talked to since, he seemed to have the deepest response. The rest live together in a land of caveats and dismissals.
“It was funny! I felt a little personally attacked, but it’s whatever. Still funny though.”
“I didn’t like it as much as ‘Oppenheimer.’ It was good, you know, funny. But I didn’t really connect with it.”
“No, yeah, I liked it! It did feel like some of the points it was trying to make were all over the place though.”
I’d continue but it would risk unnecessary repetition.
Naturally, as a woman, I was not trained to let these comments roll off my back. Because they are men, I had to take them seriously.
But why had their experience with Barbie been so different from mine?
It was only exacerbated by my experience with “Oppenheimer” — clearly a man’s personal reckoning with societal changes that he is a participant of. The entire experience was conflicting. While I felt his fervor for discovery and excitement at wielding his intelligence, I simultaneously felt deep frustration at how easily he and the other men pulled the rest of the world into a new age of horror. All his hubris and asinine assumptions in the face of great consequence was on full IMAX display.
I could empathize with “Oppenheimer” and disagree with him at the same time. My male counterparts could not do the same for “Barbie.”
It is because they (you — for those dear men who have continued to this point) haven’t had the same kind of training to empathize with women’s perspectives yet.
Aside from living under a system that is constructed around male identity and experience, there is something to be said for consistently watching media that reflects that perspective. As film theorist Laura Mulvey has been pointing out for 50 years, films have typically been made and viewed within a male perspective. The man is the actor and the woman is an object (usually of desire) who doesn’t affect the plot much. It is usually the man’s emotional space and inner experience portrayed over and over in films.
As a woman, I have become adept at putting myself into his shoes to make a meaningful viewing experience. In movies and in life I am well trained in “trying to understand” why a man feels a certain way and what is going on in his life that explains his behavior. It is a great skill, as long as it doesn’t mix with my tendency to devalue my own perspective.
The men in my life have not had the same need to understand though. Their heroes and role models look like them. The people they are taught to respect and listen to are the horse-riding men that Ken is drawn to. They operate in a world that fosters their myopia.
“Barbie” has become a test for how well a man can put himself in a woman’s shoes.
The emotional throughline is not only from a woman’s view point, it is about growing into that viewpoint by leaving the world where she, Barbie was “the man.”
Thank the Hollywood-powers-that-be, it was marketed to general audiences, not marginalized as a chick-flick.
I have to believe there are men out there who can watch “Barbie” and cry, who can feel Barbie’s pain and joy as she takes on the quandaries of true womanhood. I have to believe there are men out there who can laugh at Ken (and themselves) and own up to how accurate the portrayal is, no matter how much spectacle adorns it.
Show me that man and I’ll show you someone who knows he is Kenough — and so are all the Barbies and Glorias in his life.
Leesie Clegg
Leesie Clegg, born and raised in Utah, is a filmmaker based in Provo.
