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Its honestly mind-boggling to see all the hatred from people toward this movie dismissing it as "woke feminist propaganda" when it has such a shallow, inoffensive concept of feminism.

How refreshing to see valid, legitimate criticism of the Barbie movie that isn't coming from an anti-woke dude bro.
I loved every second of this.

“Women truly can have it all….as long as they’re incredibly beautiful, of course.”

That always seems to be the punchline in movies.

"You can't girlboss without a bit of labor exploitation" is A+

Since i study sociology I sometimes have to remind myself, that most people don't think about social hierarchical structures like sexism as much as I do. During the scene in which Sasha's mom complains about all the expectation placed on women I seriously cringed, because of how obvious and well known those problems are. My mom and my sister cried during that same scene and afterwards talked about how cathartic it was that someone had put into words what they always felt like. And I'd rate at least my sister as relatively socially aware. That this kind of shallow feminism is to so many people groundbreaking is almost incomprehensible.

Living in a conservative country where even this "basic level feminism" is seen as extreme, I genuinely appreciate the movie for at least creating a talking point here, but also love your critiques, a point of view that I did not think about. Thanks!

The fact that Barbie, an extremely popculture safe version of feminism is something considered so abrasive just because it acknowledge a system over individual makes me really upset how behind we really are.

9:26 - I work in the toy industry, and this point here is one of the WEIRDEST things we see everyday. When you poll parents, the feelings towards diversification tend to go from neutral at worst, to really positive at best, negative perceptions are very rare. That said, diverse dolls do not sell. I mean, they do, but the gap is astronomical.
Blondes are usually always #1, Brunettes are a close second. And then you have this major gap between those two and every other ethnicity that is white-looking, and then you have black dolls.
So far, nothing out of the expected, except there is a very weird phenomena.
If a store owner sees that Blondes sell more and they want to save shelf space, they might buy just the blonde ones. Result? Blondes don't sell, or at least at a much lower rate than the market medium. Weird right? But if the same store take away a few blonde dolls from the shelf and adds diverse dolls, the diverse dolls will still not sell, but the blonde ones start selling at a much faster rate. And even weirder, often people of other races will still pick the blue eyed blonde over their own ethnicity, even if both are available.
Basically the current understanding is that either due to marketing, personal preferences, indoctrination, or anything else, people still prefer traditionally looking dolls, but because of the general awareness of the effects dolls have in girl's self-image, parents feel guilty about buying the product. But, when parents see that the brand is* socially aware (*we are talking about a very surface perception here), they feel more comfortable buying the product even though the doll is the same exact one they considered harmful.
This even happens with other issues, for example, baby toys sell more blue and pink if there is a neutral color like green, yellow or white. A socially aware parent doesn't want to buy blue for boys and pink for girls, but if they see they have the gender neutral option, they will happily buy blue for boys and pink for girls.

Basically, people want options to exist, but they still want the standard product.

(This doesn't fully apply to products that have known characters, so something like disney princesses or marvel heroes will work differently to some extent).

I feel like this movie did a better job as a critique of toxic masculinity and toxic male in groups (I.e. manosphere and similar) rather than the feminist extravaganza it was perceived and presented as.

On your note about them ignoring the factories and workers -- in the movie, directly after Ken begins living in the Mojo Dojo Casa House, there's a brief scene where the CEO excitedly says, "These are flying off the shelves!" and we see a warehouse full of already-packaged Ken houses being loaded onto trucks. There are no design meetings. There is no production. The CEO seems almost surprised by its existence. It's implied that the decisions in Barbie World just... magically make toys in our world come into being. When we consider how they're trying to turn the lens away from Barbie as a product made in factories, and make us not think about the labor issues and constant plastic pollution... that little scene gets really unsettling.

I’m glad you touched on the mean spirited portrayal of sasha. She’s the movie’s “feminist”/anti barbie mouth piece but she’s also a hyper feminine mean girl bully. Despite feeling harmed by barbie her only role is to realize that Barbie is important to her mom and that she needs get over herself and shut up. Terminal case of activist character.

I remember sitting in the movie and thinking it was odd how they trivialized the higher ups of Barbie as “silly little guys” when in fact they’ve profited off of the commodification of little girls’ insecurities for decades, all while perpetuating harmful stereotypes about femininity and covering it up with appropriated “girl power”.

the bumbling board room of men at mattel felt almost like weaponized incompetence, like “haha mattel can’t possibly have had ulterior motives, they couldn’t even get through an automatic gate 😜”

To me the movie isn't a feminist epic film, it's a satire that doesn't take things too seriously.

The other funny thing about a Frida Kahlo Barbie is that a lot of Kahlo's paintings weren't child-friendly in the slightest. I'm also reminded of how the movie Coco treated her as a punchline

I really dislike the way that the Barbie Movie framed decades of legitimate critiques made by grown, intelligent women as something that an unreasonable child would say before calling you a fascist. it's insulting and infantilizing.

it also really bugged me to see Sasha go from a somewhat androgynous young girl that has legitimate issues with Barbie, to a chill girl that becomes nice as she learns to be feminine again! I was a lot like Sasha when I was her age, and I experienced a LOT of pressure to be more fem and less vocal about sexism. but unlike the tween strawman feminist turned palatable feminist in a pink shirt, my discomfort with femininity wasn't immaturity or internalized misogyny or a way to hurt my mom, and I didn't grow out of it. I was a young butch girl (who became a butch adult) that actually had a lot of valid issues with the world that I was experiencing. it's not that every edgy girl in a black hoodie on TV has to have my exact experience, but we so often see the trope "outspoken tomboy stopped being such a killjoy now that she likes being a girlie girl!" when that wasn't the case for myself, or anyone else I've known.

I'm glad that the girliepops enjoy this movie and it is a fun movie; I saw it with my mom (who is often embarassed about loving stuff like makeup) and she kept commenting on the clothes, it was super cute how happy she was. but imo the Barbie Movie is kind of callous to masc and androgynous women. I don't think I need to fully explain the negative implications of the only mildly androgynous female characters being Sasha, whose rejection of femininity is treated as immaturity, and Weird Barbie, who was literally maimed into not being conventionally feminine. of course, butch Barbies or even butch human women are nowhere to be found, even as an extra in the background. it's great to have a movie that celebrates finding joy in femininity, but that movie cannot be feminist if it disrespects and erases women who are not fem.

I loved the Barbie movie, but I really appreciate your critiques. It features a surface-level feminism without digging deeper.

One of the things that struck me as weird in the movie is that Ryan Gosling's Ken recognizes that he and the other Kens have been marginalized in Barbieland, which leads him to invert the social order and create a cartoon-stereotype of patriarchy. Then, Margot Robbie's Barbie and America Ferrera's Gloria restore the matriarchal status quo and put the Kens back into their place as second-class citizens (but also grant them token representation in minor political roles, dangling the carrots of self-actualization and eventual systemic change to placate them). It's weird to me because the movie acknowledges that a hierarchical gender-caste system is a major problem in this universe, but it doesn't actually aspire to systemic change. It just puts the Barbies back on top of the hierarchy and stresses the importance of individual fulfillment.

I want to give the movie credit and believe that this was the satirical point they were trying to make (self-actualization as distraction from systemic problems), but I genuinely cannot tell if that's what the film creators intended.

I liked the movie, although it isn‘t a feminist masterpiece. I also knew that it won’t be anti-consumerism or anti-capitalism (Mattel as a brand was involved). I just enjoyed watching a well made hollywood movie. A pleasure I allow myself once in a while.