Masculinities, the Barbie Movie, and Love

Introduction

I went to watch the Barbie movie completely dressed in pink, as my group (and probably thousands of others) agreed on: we are watching a movie about Barbie, so we are gonna be Barbie. And, even though I had intended to look like Barbie, I ended up resembling Ken quite a lot more. My accidental cosplay as Ken, through my slightly more masculine combo of pink jeans and a flowery Hawaiian shirt, was kind of a joke before the start of the movie, and became progressively more evident as the movie progressed. Maybe this is why I ended up feeling like Ken had a more interesting, more telling character development.

Let’s get the most obvious and most positive thing out of the way: the Barbie movie is for the girls. In Greta Gerwig, the movie found an amazing director who was clearly supported by a team full of people passionate about Barbie and about women’s empowerment. The story is based on toys most women spend their girlhood playing and dreaming with, and validates our experiences by showing a myriad of sexualized microaggressions and emotions related to lack of self-worth that women have to go through as if it’s a rite of passage. Yet, ironically enough, I felt like the movie told us more about men than women.

The movie begins with an introduction to Barbieland. Barbieland is a magical world in which all our pink, unfoldable childhood toys and their doll inhabitants become reality. Just like the Barbie Dreamhouses we had at home, the houses in Barbieland do not have walls, although but for some reason, they do have slides. There is no running water and all the cups and plates are empty and Barbie just pretends to eat and drink from them. Barbie’s clothes are sealed in a plastic wall and she does not need to get dressed, she magically realizes a complete look.

Every woman in Barbieland, no matter her color, body type, or able bodiedness, is Barbie. Barbie is the doctor, the Nobel Prize winner, the President, and everything else. Every Barbie has her own house, but since there are no walls, all the Barbies are very close neighbors and form a supportive community.

The position of Barbies in this society is contrasted by that of the Kens. The Kens do not hold any important roles in Barbie Society. For all we know, they are just accessories to the Barbies’ great and heroic lives; they hang out by the beach, play tennis, and are guests at the Barbies’ parties. The movie even acknowledges the canonical lack of Ken houses (Mattel never produced any), making a joke out of the Barbies’ ignorance about the whereabouts of a Ken neighborhood.

Over the course of the movie, we are introduced to many Barbies and many Kens. The main Barbie is “stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie), our main Ken is “stereotypical Ken” (Ryan Gosling). From here on, talking about Barbie or Ken singularly will refer to these two main characters, unless otherwise stated. The choice of picking the right Barbie and Ken must have been extremely difficult. The movie does not fail to remind us that Barbieland is a color-, ability-, and body physique-blind community. Yet, the common association with the word Barbie is that of a tall, blond, skinny, and able-bodied woman. Any other casting choice would not have done the image of Barbie justice. I commend the movie for finding a loophole in making the obvious casting choices and pointing out that while they are stereotypical, they are not the sole versions of the toy and the dreams behind it.

Plot (Spoiler Alert)

The movie starts off with a day in the Barbie world, everything is bright, pink, and what I can only describe as girls supporting girls. The Kens compete for the Barbies but do not seem to be in romantic relationships with them. Everything is easy and fun until the evening, when Barbie throws a big houseparty and suddenly blurts out that she is scared of death. After the party, Ken makes an unreciprocated move on Barbie.

Things deteriorate over the course of the next day, when Barbie suddenly discovers that she is no longer perfect, she has self doubts and cellulitis, and things just do not run as smoothly as before. She learns she can only solve these problems by going to the real world and mending the relationship with the girl that was playing with her. Ken joins her on this journey, and once in the real world, Barbie and Ken are confronted with the reality of living in the patriarchy; they are mocked because their outfits are bright and pink, and Barbie immediately gets catcalled and sexually harassed.

While Barbie is looking for the girl that was playing with her, Ken realizes that the real world is run by men. He is very intrigued by the idea of the patriarchy and decides to go and do some research. He eventually returns to Barbieland before Barbie does, and turns the place into a patriarchy he calls Kendom, with himself as the head. The Kens brainwash the Barbies into believing they are unworthy and unable to run the world without male aid. They plan to rewrite the Barbieland constitution and reverse the world order. Upon Barbie’s return, she is shocked by what the Kens have done to her place. Together with Weird Barbie and a mother-daughter duo she brought from the real world, she manages to undo the brainwashing her friends underwent. Collectively, they work on a plan to make use of the Kens’ unrequited love by making them jealous of each other, thus starting a huge masculine rivalry that ultimately results in a battle/dance battle. While the Kens are fighting, the Barbies restore order while agreeing to give the Kens some of the less important positions in Barbieland.

In the end, Barbie understands that she outgrew Barbieland over the course of her journey. When Barbie was in the real world, she saw new things and experienced more profound emotions than she could have while in perfect Barbieland. So, she decides to return to the real world to live as a woman.

Is Barbieland feminist?

The Barbie movie intends to be very openly feminist, and while I appreciate the courage it took to make a movie so political and unapologetic, I also believe that by being so unashamedly pro-women, the movie achieves something that is not strictly feminist and will probably backfire: being anti-men.

Barbieland is also gender binary and heteronormative. This is a big criticism I have, especially because the movie portrays itself as intersectionality feminist. This is not necessarily the movie’s fault. All dolls in Barbieland have once been manufactured by Mattel. If Mattel never made a non-binary character, they cannot live in Barbieland.

Don't get me wrong; this is a comedy and comedy is not always the right genre to convey things subtlety. Going into the movie with the expectation of a thorough and nuanced discussion about gender would be unrealistic. However, while I was watching the movie, a realization dawned on me: the popular conception of feminism is not what I subscribe to.

What is the opposite of the patriarchy?

The Kens experience oppression in Barbieland. They are denied community life, housing, and political representation. The movie contrasts Barbieland to real world patriarchy. This juxtaposition would lead the audience to conclude that Barbieland would be the opposite of the patriarchy, i.e. a matriarchy. This is where we run into problems because in real life, matriarchies are much more than just inverted patriarchies. While a patriarchy is characterized by its use of direct and indirect violence to maintain order, a matriarchy offers a system of co-living defined by greater individual freedoms and better communication. In a matriarchy, women do not keep to themselves and while they may hold more power than men, men are not reduced to second-class citizens, but rather are still able to take on important roles and are valued for their contributions to society.

What the Barbie movie shows us is a projection of a gender segregationist ideal created by feminists of the 1960s and 70s. Everything is women only, men exist maybe for procreation, or in the case of the Barbie movie, because Mattel created an incompetent companion for Barbie. This idea of a segregationist women-run society is grounded in the belief that the danger men pose to women is natural and unchangeable. Based on this belief, some feminists concluded (and may still do) that women can only thrive in separation from men.

Today, we understand that cis-men are more than primitive predators whose brains will never be capable of understanding boundaries. The patriarchy harms everyone, albeit to different degrees, and many of us comprehend that we should work together to create a community of all genders instead of separating them. I can see how the director and producers may have intended to demonstrate that this outdated feminine utopia does not create equality but additional problems. However, if this was their objective, they were not clear enough in their framing of Barbieland. The movie makes Barbieland and the real world seem like two opposite ends of a spectrum and sends the message that matriarchies are as oppressive as patriarchies and that feminist and masculinist ideas are equally harmful. They make it seem like feminists and anti-feminists need to compromise to create an equal society.

The Barbie movie and masculinities (the anti-feminist backlash)

I already mentioned that I found Ken’s character arc more revealing of the current state of gender equality than Barbie’s.

Ken is desperately in love with Barbie and jealous of any other Ken who comes near her. He does not have any qualifications or experiences, his job is simply “beach”, which contrasts him to the extremely qualified Barbies around him. In the real world, Ken sees men all around him in positions of power and realizes that he might be full of wasted potential. He goes around demanding a job in different places but gets refused every time on the grounds of not having qualifications. He then goes off to a library to research patriarchy and returns to Barbieland full of ideas about male superiority (and horses).

It seems like during his time in the real world, Ken is overcome by the feeling of having been emasculated by Barbie. Of course, the Kens are not qualified to run Barbieland, but like an incel with a podcast, Ken might feel like he deserves to run things based on his gender. However, at the end of the day, he simply would not be able to, and that does cause frustration to rise in him.

In addition to all the Kens, there is one other man in Barbieland: Allan, Ken’s friend who was discarded by Mattel, which is why there is only one of him. Allan is sort of more shy and nerdy.

The patriarchy built by the Kens relies heavily on hegemonic masculinity, i.e. alpha male tropes around the submission of women. The Kens talk about their newfound “natural” superiority over the Barbies without any ground to back up their claims. Allan, on the contrary, is what the internet would call a beta-male. He is lanky, shy, not doll-attractive, and therefore not really recognized by the Kens either. Allan understands that the Kens are incapable of running the Kendom. That is why he teams up with the Barbies to win back Barbieland. He is a realist and an ally.

The patriarchy relies heavily on violence in order to persist, because it is so inherently fragile that it begins to crumble under the slightest bit of disobedience. The Kens, who earlier in the movie were feminine and somewhat sensitive, suddenly put on an irrationally tough exterior just to maintain the cage they have built for themselves. And just like that, Ken, who we later learn is unable to handle the pressure of being the leader, also has to force himself to display a strong and threatening exterior to maintain the patriarchy he created.

Here, the movie shines light on a very real problem we observe in our society, especially in young men who spend a lot of time on the internet: the anti-feminist backlash. As bell hooks writes:

“Ask feminists to diagnose men's problems and you will often get a very clear explanation: men are in crisis because women are properly challenging male dominance. Women are asking men to share the public reins and men can't bear it. Ask antifeminists and you will get a diagnosis that is, in one respect, similar. Men are troubled, many conservative pundits say, because women have gone far beyond their demands for equal treatment and are now trying to take power and control away from men....

The underlying message: men cannot be men, only eunuchs, if they are not in control. Both the feminist and antifeminist views are rooted in a peculiarly modern American perception that to be a man means to be at the controls and at all times to feel yourself in control.”

Here, the Barbie movie is meta. It is obviously not the Barbies themselves who created Barbieland as a gender segregationist society, it was real life people (our real life, not the movie’s real life) who created Barbie to be an inspiration to all girls: a sign that they can be anything they put their mind to. However, while we were focusing on lifting up girls, we neglected boys, and those boys are now expressing the emotional damage of having their imaginations, dreams, and ambitions stifled through violence. Boys were an afterthought to generations of feminists.

Now, it is evident that the reason we lifted up girls was because women are oppressed. When I say boys and girls both need uplifting, I mean that everyone suffers under the patriarchy, and that means we need to address what people lose under the patriarchy, even if those are different things. Obviously, men are the main profitors of the patriarchy, and, obviously, most forms of violence are committed by men, especially gendered violence. This truth coexists with the fact that men also suffer from patriarchy, that the patriarchy takes something from them, too. And that something is love.

Men and Love

Ken’s journey tells us a lot about men’s lack of love and opportunities to express their emotions. I already mentioned that Ken is desperately in love with Barbie. Barbie sees him more as a friend, without really telling him to his face until the end of the movie. Wanting to be only friends is absolutely within Barbie’s right and it is Ken’s right to be sad, though not violent, about being rejected. Ken does not process his rejection until the very end of the movie, when both him and Barbie finally express their feelings towards each other.

Barbie’s love is so important to Ken because there is a general lack of love among all the Kens in Barbieland. Many psychology textbooks identify five basic types of love:

• Emotional care

• Sexual affection

• Companionship

• Solidarity

• Practical support

Barbies and Kens do not have genitalia so we can rule out lack of sex, but the other kinds of love are very real to these dolls. The main issue is that they only exist among the Barbies. While the Barbies support and care for each other without ever leaving each other’s sides, the Kens do not seem to get along so well; they are in direct competition with each other and they do not appear to be as open with each other as the Barbies are.

There is a lot of data supporting the claim that loneliness concerns real-life men more than real-life women, too. We are talking about what has been coined the “male loneliness epidemic”. Men are more likely to have no friends than women. In a US survey, it was found that 15% of men do not have any close friends at all, while for women, it is 10%. Gen-Z boys are also only about half as likely as Gen-Z girls to have recently been emotionally supported by a friend.

As feminists, we need to understand the impact men’s lack of love has on our society, and we need to find a way to teach men how to love themselves and each other. Male suicide rates are higher than female ones in most parts of the world. Men are also more likely to commit violent crimes and significantly more likely to commit acts of domestic and relationship violence. It is feasible to say that men turn towards violence and against themselves and others because it is easier than admitting that they feel lonely and unloved. Is there even a way out of lovelessness for men who do not have some sort of community to love and support them?

Source: Suicide in the World, Global Health Estimates, World Health Organization, 2019

A big part of people’s introduction to men and their lack of loving expression are through their fathers. Many people have a difficult relationship with their fathers and it is not uncommon even to hate one’s father, particularly when we may mostly remember them as tyrants enforcing rules through violent means. Violence/coldness is what many associate with their fathers. If father=brutal, how can boys not grow up and think manhood means being a tyrant who cannot show softness or any strong, positive emotion? Being perceived as a good father is famously easy, you basically just have to show up and not commit domestic violence. In many households, love through physical touch does not even enter the equation.

Until they turn old and become softer, maybe more willing to let down their guard, many people are scared of their fathers. That is because many fathers do not know how to lovingly communicate with their children and they do not show physical affection the way mothers do. As a society, we are still developing the language through which fatherhood expresses love.

There is a little show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that we at Balance of Power absolutely adore. The show features a very sensitive character called Darryl who is also a bisexual icon. Darryl is a very passionate family man, and when we are first introduced to him, we learn that he is divorced and wants full custody of his daughter. He literally sings a song called “I Love My Daughter (But Not in a Creepy Way)” because it is just so unheard of in society for men to wholly love their children that we just collectively assume they are pedophiles if they do.

I always found it sad that so many men resign to not being their children’s number one, that they know they will not be able to play a vital role in their children’s upbringing except for providing financial support. Additionally, we are only affectionate towards boys until they reach puberty. While it is more common for pubescent girls to continue expressing closeness through physical touch with their parents or their peers, boys are not affectionately touched after a certain age. Due to this lack of platonic affection, men often do not know how to touch others in a non-sexual way. There are countless jokes online or in popular media about two men being affectionate and mistaken for gay, or men being extra distant towards their friends because they want to avoid any confusion about their sexuality (“Two guys, sitting in a hot-tub, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay.”).

In 2020, a picture of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden kissing his adult son Hunter on the cheek received huge backlash. People deemed a father kissing his adult son inappropriate, purely due to both of them being men. Men are imprisoned by their tough exteriors, and the reactionary backlash that feminists, feminist media, or just more sensitive men receive clearly shows how scared many men are of admitting that they need love.

What can we do to fix this?

To me, the Barbie movie, a movie for the girls, clearly mirrored the state of men and showed where we as feminists need to work to save men from the consequences of the patriarchy. Unfortunately, this is a collective effort, as we feminists alone cannot do much to alleviate systemic lovelessness. We need to put in extra effort to create non-toxic support networks around men. We also need to start developing a language for men to express their affection for each other, or work on an image of masculinity that allows for physical touch and vulnerability.

What we can do as non-men is reassure the men in our lives that they are loved and that they can and should come forward with their problems. It is also crucial to form communities that provide solidarity and companionship to men without tearing down women (I am looking at you, Andrew Tate!). Be affectionate to your sons, tell the fathers in your life to be loving, and make sure that they know they are loved.