Note: First draft thoughts, mostly unedited. It’s long but make sure to at least read the fourth to last paragraph before giving up. I’ll bold it for you.

Many people have messaged me to say they couldn’t wait to hear what I thought about Barbie after seeing it, which makes me happy on many levels. It means many of you saw there was a movie about women’s empowerment, and feminism, and thought of me, which is extremely flattering. (I won’t add any qualifiers or try not to come across as vain there because it’s just the truth.) So here you go.

A couple tangents first. What many don’t know: I loved Barbie as a kid. I made many a “weird Barbie.” I bit the nose off of one of my mom’s old Barbies as a kid. (No clue why.) I drew on their faces and gave them disastrous haircuts. I also somehow always left them in the splits, too. When watching with two of my siblings, both immediately looked at me during the “Barbies loved too hard scene.” 

I loved Barbies because it allowed me to make stories about women. I didn’t think about the impossible figure or beauty standards, I just created imaginary worlds about girls. And like many have mentioned, Barbie was never solely a mother when I played. She rarely was. She was just a person with goals, her own story, and her own aspirations, and she was the star. I think that was very different from many other toys I played with. For example, I also loved legos, but when we played legos, my sister was always the one made the rules and story there, and it always seemed more male-centric. I just got to tag along and participate in the world and story she created. Barbieland was my domain, not hers, and it was all about girls and stories about them that I created and controlled.

(Note: I think I did have a Ken but I never really played with him much. Ken didn’t really exist for me. But others have written on that, so let me get to the movie.)

I think this movie is geared for three primary audiences: one, women who are approximately 40-65, two, women 16-24, and three, like however young you feel is appropriate to watch this film to 16. I’m not saying that this movie is solely for those age groups, but I think it primarily is. (Note: this is also geared toward men and boys (primarily 40-65 who may “get it” after watching the film, but I don’t think it’s a primary group.)

I was pitched on this movie that it was a profound feminist powerhouse of a film, that it made them cry/have visceral reactions, felt deeply seen, was super profound, and that every woman should see it (and every man too). So that’s what I was expecting, and on that front, it didn’t quite deliver. Not for me, at least, but I think it likely did for a lot of other people. Others have touched brilliantly on what this movie got right, so I’ll focus more on why I think it was a missed opportunity. But go enjoy it and watch it with all the women/girls and men/boys in your life!

First and foremost, Barbie is exciting to me because it’s a movie created by, for, and about women. And it’s smashing records, having amazing success, and women are having so much fun with it. I love seeing the photos of predominantly women (and some men) dressed in pink, having the time of their lives, and seeing men and women (boys and girls) meaningfully engaging about gender roles and stereotypes and power and equality and yeah feminism and the patriarchy. So that’s a HUGE win!

I can imagine the conversations women are having with their sons and daughters and husbands and brothers and sisters and any other women and men in their lives about they resonate with the film. I also love that it opens feminism to a whole new generations in such an accessible way. I also love that it shows that matriarchy isn’t the answer either. So yes, I love those aspect of the film. I’m super jazzed about Greta having such success. So go, Barbie!

But I wouldn’t call it a feminist powerhouse movie. Had I watched this five or ten years ago, before I read Hood Feminism, White Feminism by Koa Beck, White Tears/Brown Scars, This Will be My Undoing, At the Dark End of the Street, This Bridge Called My Back, Brittney Cooper, Roxane Gay, audre lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and so many others, I may have thought it was. 

Take a deep breath. I’m going to throw out a phrase that is triggering for many, and then I’m going to unpack it. This movie read as very “white feminist” to me. And I think that is why this movie is such a missed opportunity at the end of the day, even with all the wonderful parts of it, which I don’t want to dismiss (of which others have written brilliantly).

Before I break down what I mean by white feminism, yes, I saw and loved all the diversity in the film of all the Black, Brown, disabled, plus sized, etc. “Barbies,” which was awesome! That’s not what I’m talking about. (Note: making the president of Barbieland a Black woman, 👏👏👏👏.) But having Black and Brown women (even having them in prominent positions of power) doesn’t make a movie intersectionally feminist. Having Black and brown people powerfully and centrally portrayed doesn’t mean their lives or issues they face were centrally or meaningfully portrayed. So yay for representation, but it felt shallow because this adressed almost exclusively white women’s relation to feminism.

White feminism has very little to do with the race and ethnicity of the person (or even gender) espousing the ideas and everything to do with the ideas being espoused. The texts I mentioned above explain it better. But basically, white feminism is a feminism that teaches that the totality of feminism is the belief that women are deserving of power, money, and prestige and that they should do what it takes to get that. And of course, choice. Like you want to be a mother full time, you go girl. You want to be president, you go girl. Basically, that women should have what men have.

That’s where this gets hard. Much of that is good. Women having representation, power, prestige, respect, and power is important. I’m for it because we do need women with more power and prestige and representation, and the movie brilliantly hit that aspect of feminism on the head. The scenes about women and the double binds they face are awesome! I’m not knocking that. 

But that is not the aim of feminism. And feminism’s obsession with power/prestige/money has held it back for generations, helped foster inequality, and often resulted in women succeeding by shoving other women down and being very white and abelist focused. White feminism has lagely ignored issues other women face for generations, and so did this film.

And so without more, this film is not a feminist powerhouse movie in my book. While there were diverse characters who explained the problem and issues women face, the issues presented were largely white-women centric. The issues most Black and brown women face and grapple with and care about weren’t really addressed meaningfully in the film. It’s a “if women felt empowered and had choice and ultimately had equal power and pay, we’d have an equal utopia” film. It’s a what would the world look like without the idea that women’s only worth is how they look, relation to motherhood, and staying young. All of that representation is super important and I’m so jazzed to see that represented, but without more, it feels incomplete.

I saw a tweet saying this was “Black Panther but for white women.” Having watched it, I agree. At the end of the day, the notion that feminism means power, prestige, money, and feeling good about yourself is no longer my idea of what feminism is or should be.

I’m not trying to knock all the wonderful explorations of how power corrupts, absolute power absolutely corrupts, patriarchy, gender roles/stereotypes, ageism, women being only good as accessory or mother, the board room scenes, men getting attribution for women’s ideas, feelings of being second place and never enough, the absolute hard time it is to be a woman (and also a man), like it did so much so well. I also know some Black and brown women who loved seeing themselves represented because it got a lot right.

I’ve seen this opening doors and hearts and great conversations coming out of it. I think seeing feminism brought like this to the film of the summer and maybe year is incredible. I hope more films like this are made. (I also hope more non-white feminist issues are portrayed in the next one.)

I also know that I’m not the target audience. I’m deeply versed in feminist studies and I’m 30. I grew up in a time where women were starting to be told mother or whore, mother or nothing wasn’t my only reality—at least not completely. (I’ll write more on that later because my religious experience has some serious counters.) I’m not a woman who is a mother and has grappled with that particular double bind for decades (though again I worked in one of the most sexist industries in the world), I’m not Sasha/ America Fererra or Gloria/Ariana Greenblatt. I also didn’t grow up in a time where women had paved so many paths forward and so utterly deconstructed Barbie as “setting feminism back 50 years.” 

I’m somewhere in the middle. But more importantly, this movie wasn’t my introduction to feminism. Had it been, I think I would have loved it more. Had I been a decade older, I might be one of the woman who cried during it and had more of a visceral reactions. I did feel seen during it, but I also felt it was incomplete the entire time.

Without knocking all that it got right, I think the film missed opportunities to meaningfully address ideas of feminism that go beyond feminism means being able to chose career outside home or not, being able to age, and having money and power. (Read: intersectional feminism was not here.)

So I’m thrilled it’s having such a success, sparking conversations, and getting men to empathize and realize how women often feel (Note: I guess seeing Ryan Gosling being nothing but arm candy and ignored and then trying to assert power really resonated with them). I’m glad it’s introducing a host of people to these topics and a film that is so overtly about women, by women, for women and about feminism  and women’s relation to power is having such success. But at the end of the day, it feels a bit like a missed opportunity. I didn’t expect intense, deep feminist theory. I did expect more.

I also firmly acknowledge it’s easier to be a critic than the woman in the arena. A movie can’t be all things to all people in all the ways. I’m not sure how Greta and crew could have made this movie more intersectional and address more intersectional feminist issues. But it needed at least a scene that showed intersectionalism somehow, maybe a scene that addressed the plight of poor women, disabled women, Black women, brown women, women without support. Literally a scene with anything but women dealing with double blinds, or seeking power and freedom to choose in career. Having Black and brown characters at the front of the story doesn’t mean it tackled issues they faced.

Black women have spoken powerfully about what they see as aims of feminism. I’d invite you to read about it. Hint: it’s not mother or work or the double binds portrayed. So yay for all the awesome representation, I just wished the issues tackled matched that.

When I told Jon my thoughts on the film, he said people would think I hated it. I didn’t. I’m glad so many love it. Go watch it with everybody you know. Have all the fun doing so. Talk to people about the movie and feminism. And also, talk to them about intersectional feminism.

I give it a B or a 3.5/5.