The 'Barbie' Movie: "More Swipes at 'The Patriarchy' Than a Year's Worth of Ms. Magazine"

The ‘Barbie’ Movie: “More Swipes at ‘The Patriarchy’ Than a Year’s Worth of Ms. Magazine”
7/27/2023 by Kathy Spillar and Jennifer Weiss-Wolf




Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Barbie. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

With opening weekend now in the rearview mirror (of her pink convertible), Barbie has raked in more than $200 million at the box office—smashing prior records for women-directed and summer blockbusters, and doubling the receipts for Oppenheimer, its counterpart release. Clearly, we are living in a Barbie world. There has been no brand collaboration with Mattel too cute or quirky to fail, from housewares to hamburgers. Barbie has dominated political debate, too, given writer/director/executive producer Greta Gerwig’s overt girl-power approach: “Hell yeah, this is a feminist movie,” she proclaimed at the premiere.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) fully embraced the fuchsia, creating a Barbie doll version of herself—Lil’ Gretch—who has posed across social media with captions like, “Come on Barbie, let’s go govern.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu61ZpQujD1/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=b0666bda-a7d5-4888-9850-4c10510bbe15

Meanwhile, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted a lengthy video complaining he counted the use of the word ‘patriarchy’ more than 10 times in the movie (one of many transgressions detailed in “pages and pages of notes” he says he took). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it Chinese propaganda. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called for a Barbie boycott. Reviews have run the gamut, too, from wildly euphoric to mildly conflicted to sheer outrage about what it means when broad principles of feminism waft into the mainstream (to the tune of the Indigo Girls and Lizzo). But it is the Wall Street Journal’s take, in particular, that caught our eye—and reviewer Kyle Smith’s quip that Barbie “contains more swipes at ‘the patriarchy’ than a year’s worth of Ms. magazine.” To this, we at Ms. say: Hear, hear! We know firsthand the force behind this magazine and its vast community of readers. Ms. first launched in 1972—a brazen act of independence by Gloria Steinem and other writers and activists who created it to fill a gap between a determined and vibrant movement and the continued curtailment of women’s rights in nearly every aspect of life.
. . . . .

Among the issues tackled by writers at Ms. decade by decade, and covered in our forthcoming book, 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION:

domestic violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, and women in sports (1970s);
anti-abortion terrorism, no-fault divorce, and date rape (1980s);
global women’s rights, misogyny and feminism in rap, and toxic masculinity (1990s);
intersectional feminism, foreign policy, and the militarization of American culture after 9/11 (2000s);
the legal fight for same-sex marriage and the Black Lives Matter movement (2010s);
more recently, the crises in care spurred by the pandemic, the judicial dismantling of Roe v. Wade along with threats to other fundamental privacy rights, and rising authoritarianism in the U.S. worldwide.

And, yes, at the root of all of it, patriarchy.
barbie-ms-magazine-patriarchy50 Years of Ms. will be released on Sept. 19, 2023; you can pre-order your copy now.

We write today not to offer our critique or redemption of Barbie—the doll or the movie—but rather to commend those engaging in the conversation. And of course, to beat the drum for more feminist storytelling to address the real implications of all that’s being debated when we talk about Barbie. She has always fueled spirited controversy about how women should look, live, dress, work and play—that’s nothing new. But the timing couldn’t be more urgent for serious engagement about the future of feminism. Our basic bodily autonomy and rights are under attack, and gender is the cudgel inevitably used when regressive forces seek to exert political and social control. As the movie tagline goes: If you love Barbie—and if you hate Barbie—this Barbie discussion is for you. As is Ms. magazine.

https://msmagazine.com/2023/07/27/barbie-ms-magazine-patriarchy/