Right-wing media and commentators have gone through quite the emotional journey when it comes to “Barbie.” There was the heady optimism that they were going to give the movie “the Bud Light treatment,” and then the rage as it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, accompanied by rage that it dared take aim at toxic masculinity. Then there was the pivot to, “Hey, maybe if you look at it just right, this is a conservative movie.”
As it became clear that “Barbie” was not just a hit but a hit with great word-of-mouth and staying power—maintaining popularity from its first to second and third weekends and racking up $1 billion globally in just over three weeks—Fox News moved from attacking its wokeness to highlighting progressive critiques of the movie, or what could pass for progressive critiques if you squinted at them just right. Then it went further, digging up a set of right-wing arguments that the “Barbie” movie is taking a bold stand against feminism.
The movie “challenges the understanding of women promulgated by the sexual revolution and modern feminism,” according to the Daily Signal’s Katrina Trinko. “Barbie” the movie, she argues, undermines the overly feminist message of Barbie the doll.
”Ultimately, the message of ‘Barbie’ is: Barbie’s life isn’t enough. Sure, the world of Barbie is sheeny and sparkles and there’s no aging or cellulite or crying babies or stress. But it’s also vapid, meaningless and loveless,” Trinko wrote. I’m not sure that’s exactly where writer/director Greta Gerwig was going with that, but we can at least have a debate on it. But get this:
”In some ways, this 1960s doll is in line with the bad thinking of both the sexual revolution and modern feminism – the idea that women could have casual sex, and not be emotionally destroyed, just because they could prevent pregnancy, and the idea that to be a fully realized woman must include having a successful career outside the home.”
As the movie notes, Barbie the doll does not have the requisite body parts for sex, casual or otherwise. And her persona, as the movie emphasizes, is resolutely nonsexual. She may not even know what sex is, as an exchange between Ken and Barbie widely aired in the movie trailer reveals:
Ken: “I thought I might stay over tonight.”
Barbie: “Why?”
Ken: “Because we’re girlfriend-boyfriend.”
Barbie: “To do what?”
[Crickets]
Ken: “I’m actually not sure.”
That scene is probably part of Trinko’s evidence that the movie Barbie’s life is “vapid, meaningless, and loveless”—Barbie then heads off to girl’s night—but it sure doesn’t work with her claims about Barbie and casual sex. But, see, according to Trinko, the movie shows that Barbie needs more—in the form of monogamous heterosexual love and domesticity, she strongly implies. Yet I don’t think it’s a spoiler to divulge that Barbie does not end up walking down the aisle to a beaming Ken.
Trinko has company in claiming “Barbie” for anti-feminism. “If the first wave [of feminism] sought political representation; the second, women’s reality and history; the third – well, whatever that was; the fourth posits a return to sexual difference, and to a heterosocial world in which men and women largely get along,” according to Compact’s Nina Power. Compare that to Jack Posobiec’s take that “Barbie” was a “man-hating Woke propaganda fest” and “possibly the most anti-male film ever made.”
What’s significant here is less that a few right-wing anti-feminists are arguing that “Barbie” fits their vision of gender roles. It’s that Fox News is embracing this as part of the network’s pivot around the success of “Barbie,” bringing it from something to try to take down to something to try to claim as their own. This new effort seems likely to be as successful as the first one, but it highlights the degree to which “Barbie” is a cultural phenomenon that cannot be ignored.
Sign the petition: Equal Rights Amendment ratification now!
