The Barbie conversation

Unless you live in ascetic withdrawal from popular culture, you have probably heard of Barbie, the record-breaking summer blockbuster directed by Greta Gerwig. Your social media feed, like mine, might have been filled with far-flung family and friends dressed in shades of pink, posing next to movie posters and the life-size Barbie toy boxes that were sent as advertising props to many theaters.

Barbie is not a perfect movie, but it is a conversation, and a conversation worth having. For me, Barbie brought the unexpected pleasure of finding shared experiences in our fractured, factious age. I have changed my mind several times in conversations with friends and colleagues and read through fascinating reactions, analysis, and heated debate. These tendrils of conversation have connected me farther and wider in my shared experience than anything I can remember in a long time. What started as a summer feel-good movie has opened discussions about embodiment, death, feminist utopias, and whether change can come through consumer goods. We needed the fantasy of Barbie more than we might have guessed.

The movie opens in Barbieland, a quasi-magical parallel reality where all Barbies live in the blissful belief that they have solved all problems of sexism in the real world simply through their existence. President Barbie presides over a just democracy while Journalist Barbie wins the Pulitzer Prize each year. They love their bodies and their perfectly molded arched feet. Every night is girls’ night, and the dance party is the dominant form of cultural bonding.