The Barbie Movie Breakdown

Join the PCA this week as Brooklynn Blue (she/they) and Shanae Adams (they/them) discuss the Barbie movie, highlighting its themes on feminism, consumerism, and existentialism. They praise the movie's diverse representation and its critique of societal beauty standards. They also touch on themes of imperialism and the ways in which Barbie could've taken a more intersectional feminist approach rather than the white feminist lens it presented. Both hosts emphasize the importance of community and female support systems portrayed in the film and address the limitations of Barbie as a corporation.

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Transcript

Brooklynn Blue  00:00

Hello and welcome to the Phoenix cast. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Phoenix cast. Today, I am with Shanae, and we are going to be talking about the Barbie movie. I'm your host, Brooklynn. I am the lead violence prevention education intern at the office. And I personally liked the Barbie movie. I thought it was humorous. It talked about good themes on feminism, different takes on femininity and masculinity, different roles and social structures we kind of see in the world. And how Barbie, who isn't really used to this kind of is introduced to this concept of feminism, and maybe not the ideal world she thought she was in. Shanae, What were your thoughts?

Shanae Adams  01:01

sure, I am Shanae. I am the violence prevention educator in the office. I also really enjoyed the Barbie movie. I quite enjoyed that it was the advertising for it is something that I really enjoyed, and how they had the this Barbie is blah, blah, blah all over like social media, and they really invited people to, like, see themselves as Barbie and see themselves as Ken to really like expand on this idea that Barbie and Ken are so vast and so unique and so varied. And I appreciate that it was really much like a get your friends together. Come see this, come have a conversation, come have a dialogue. And I agree that it had really good themes. It had a really exciting cast, and the soundtrack slaps. So I think that was a really good movie.

Brooklynn Blue  01:44

Alrighty. Do you want to give us a quick rundown of, like, summary of Barbie for those who haven't seen it, just so they can get caught up?

Shanae Adams  01:51

for sure. So the Barbie movie stars Margot Robbie as, like stereotypical Barbie, and she lives in Barbie land, with all the other Barbies in her Barbie Dream House, with her Barbie Mercedes. I believe maybe she's a Benz I don't know. She's got her Barbie car. And the Barbies all have really important jobs. There's judge Barbie and President Barbie and lawyer Barbie. And the Kens kind of exist. They beach. That is the Ken's job. And there's a variety of differentKen's. And I think, like one of the advertisements I really enjoyed was Barbie has a great day every day. Ken only has a good day if Barbie smiles at him. So the Ken's are very much kind of just like there and dependent on the Barbies. But the Barbies have all the fun and exciting jobs. The Barbies are always the ones who are hanging out. And Ken just kind of exist. And during Barbie's regular day to day life, she starts having, like, existential dread thoughts, and like, in the middle of a party, ask the other Barbies if they've ever thought about dying, which kind of kills the vibe. And then she starts to go through this like de- Barbie, where her feet become flat and she gets cellulite, and she starts to smell, and she eventually tracks down weird Barbie, which is like the Barbie that everybody has in, like the back of their toy box. She's broken, and you've cut her hair, and you've drawn on her face. And weird Barbie basically, like you have to go out into the real world and find the person who's playing with you to understand, like, what's going on? What's going wrong? So Barbie goes to the real world, and Ken stows away in her vehicle, and they end up in like Venice Beach. And Barbie's first introduction to the real world is being sexually assaulted. Somebody slaps her butt, and so she punches him, and Barbie and can get arrested, which, okay, Welcome to the real world kind of thing. And Barbie eventually tracks down her owner, which is this teenager who's got, like, a lot of, like, teenage angst. A lot of the patriarchy is bad and femininity sucks and the world is just unpleasant. A lot of, like, stereotypical, quote, unquote, teenage angst. And it turns out that Sasha's mom, I think it's Gloria, played by America Ferrera, and it turns out that she's been the one who's playing with Barbie. That's why Barbie's having all this existential dread, because Gloria is a grown up in the world, and the world kind of sucks. And she's also an executive at Mattel, and so when Barbie tracks her down, the CEO of Mattel finds out that Barbie's in the real world, and so the Mattel is like, No, we need to get Barbie back into a box, so that way we can, like, wipe her, brainwash her, so that way she starts having all these, like, existential thoughts and feelings, because that's not what Barbie does. Barbie doesn't dread the world. Barbie almost goes through with the brainwashing, but then she breaks out of Mattel and Gloria and Sasha take her back to Barbie world. Now, while Barbie has been tracking down Gloria And Sasha, Ken has been learning about patriarchy and horses, and Ken gets back to Barbie land before Barbie does, and he's turned Barbie land into the Kendom where the Kens are superior, and they have all the jobs. They have the Mojo Dojo casa, believe that's what's called. And basically, Ken's like, no, don't need you. I'm the center of the world in the universe, because patriarchy and hahaha. And so Barbie, like, gets depressed. And they actually released depressed Barbie, which was like, I loved all the little like advertisements of the random Barbies that popped up while Barbie's having these experiences. So it's like, depressed Barbie, are you sad? She is too, and weird Barbie basically is like, there to support Barbie and Gloria delivers America for delivers this, like, amazing monolog about how difficult it is to be a woman and exist in society that kind of ends with, never let Nevertheless, she persisted, which, like, reignites Barbie and Barbie's, like, No, we gotta, like, fix Barbie world. So because of the patriarchy, all the other Barbies have been like, brainwashed to being like sub serviant girlfriends and partners to the Kens, and they're able to break the other Barbies out of that trance, and they eventually, kind of like have this coming together where they get all the Barbies back together, and they start putting the kens against themselves. And the kens response to that is that all the kens should fight each other, not fight Barbie because why would we do that? We're gonna fight each other. So again, have, like, a beach off, and that's where we get. I'm just Ken, one of the best songs of our generation. Let the internet tell it and, um, eventually Barbie land. Barbie works with Ken to put Barbie land back in a way that feels like everybody has value. Because one of the one of my favorite moments in Barbie land is where Ken is like, you know, I felt attacked, and I felt like I didn't have my own identity, because it's Barbie and Ken, I don't ever get to be just myself. My worth, my value, is tied to you. And I went out into the world, and all of a sudden I'm my own person. And that felt really good. And so I would like to have more value for and more confidence for myself. Barbie land gets fixed, and then Barbie goes out into the real world, where, I think it's so weird that, like the end of the movie is like, she's going to the gynecologist, when it's like, Barbie doesn't have any parts. But okay, um, but yeah, that is the Barbie movie. Did I miss anything? No Cool beans.

Brooklynn Blue  07:17

Yeah. And so after kind of hearing about this, there are a couple themes that we saw that came up throughout the movie, themes like consumerism, existentialism, different takes on what femininity and masculinity look like, how those kind of are presented and critiqued within our society, what the patriarchy looks like, what the matriarchy looks like. And so we kind of wanted to unpack some of these themes after we go over this and kind of see what we notice and how the public kind of reacted to it, and what we can do with this kind of media now that we've been given to it, how we can interpret it, what we got from it. And so I'm going to kind of start off by talking about the consumerism that we see throughout the movie. Obviously there is a very strong feminist lens throughout this movie, kind of trying to empower women through their femininity. However, there is a moment where Sasha, the young teenager who Barbie first found, was kind of critiquing Barbie and just let her have this whole rant that was very much a third wave feminism, kind of critique of it, calling her a fascist and saying it was a lot of consumerist propaganda that was just trying to get people to buy these dolls. They hurt women's self esteem by being this, creating this ideal body image that was very hard to strive to be. It's very interesting to view it from that way, because she made a lot of good points. She wasn't wrong. Barbie and the movie in general, definitely had a lot of consumers aspects. There were a lot of brands we saw. There's basically a whole Chevy commercial in the middle of the movie. There was a big car chase scene. There were Birkenstocks, different brands we saw, like Chanel and just different kind of clothing things. And obviously, Barbie has a lot of clothes. That's the whole brand. Is you can buy different outfits, dress it up as different dream houses. You can have a bunch of different dolls, cars. And so a big part of that is trying to kind of exploit that idea of feminism empowerment by saying, but you can have all these things if you continue to buy them, which may sound I can understand how it is contradictory and how more performative feminism than it is activism. But also I think back to in one of my feminist thought classes, we're talking about how during kind of second wave feminism the talk of the new woman, or the new American Girl, where she is finally entered into this economy of the public, where she's able to buy things for herself, whether it's like makeup products, beauty products, new clothes and sure, there is a lot of consumerism aspect That is how they profited off of it. But you can also look at it as a way for women to maintain their own autonomy and to kind of have a way to finally express themselves through their clothes they can buy, through the makeup they can wear. They are finally having more control, more entrance in the public sphere. And so Barbie is a way for them to do that, in a way for little girls to see themselves as Barbies. Dress up their Barbies how they would like to dress up. Obviously, there is still a lot of performative activism within that through the exploitation of consumerism that we see through it, brands are definitely still trying to get their name out there and utilize the Barbie movie as a way to say, Oh, we can support and empower women, but also buy our stuff. So it's a double edged sword. I think you can see it from both ways, but definitely still a feminist lens that you can use to view it through. And then Shanae, do you want to talk more about the existentialism themes we kind of see?

Shanae Adams  10:58

for sure? So existentialism in general is just meaning making, right? So we as humans have been put on this planet to do whatever it is that we would like to do, and existentialism is a way that we start to give our lives value, or we start to give our lives meaning or worth. And so we do this by creating ideals, by putting imagery out there by putting ideas and content out there, and Barbie, in of herself, is an idea, right? This idea of this femme person who has all of these different jobs, she has all of these different partners, she has all these different houses, she goes to all these different places. Barbie is not limited or kind of pigeon holed to be anything, and because she's not anything, she can be everything. And that's one of the things that, you know, we definitely see pushed when they tell folks to buy Barbie, is you can have this kind of Barbie. You're that kind of Barbie, a Barbie who looks like you, a Barbie who doesn't look like you, going definitely along that same like consumerism thing. One of the things that we run into as humans is we get, especially humans who live in a capitalistic society, is that we're told that, you know you can have peace and you can have comfort and you can have relaxation for five payments of $19.95 and Barbie absolutely goes along with that same message. Or like, you can have this Barbie, and then you can go buy her this outfit, and she can be this, or she can be that, and that can help give her value, which then thus can help give you value or meaning, right? If you want to also be a mom, there's your value. If you want to also be president, there's a Barbie for that, where you can start to see yourself and start to build yourself and start to model yourself, give yourself some value for having that thing. And as we're dealing with like existentialism, we start to run into kind of the the main existential dread points that humans have, which are things like their death and mortality, their value, their being, their worth. And we see Barbie have all of these existential crises where she's like, Yo, does anybody ever think about dying, right? Which the Barbies don't have to think about, because they live in an ideal world where there is no pain, there's no difficulty. They wake up every day they do their jobs. The kens wake up every day they go to the beach. And people just kind of like, live in this, like, pleasure based reality, whereas the real world is not that. The real world is fraught with difficulty and discomfort and dissonance and conflicting ideals. And when Barbie is kind of like ushered into that, she has several breakdowns over the whole movie, because she came from this perfect world and the real world is not right. She's been taught that she's there to support young girls and support their dreams. And then she meets Sasha, who's like, I can't have my dreams because the world's on fire. And meets Gloria, who's like, I can't have my dreams because I'm a woman in a society that doesn't like women and doesn't want to support women, right? We're told to look a particular way and move a particular way and exist a particular way, all of these ways that coincide in Barbie land and everyone feels comfortable with but in the real world are like unattainable. It's not possible to be this perfect woman in particular who has it all and can do all of the things, because it's so contradictory. And that's one of the things that we hear a lot in Gloria, America's speech that she gives at the end of you have to be nice, but not too nice. You have to be pretty, but not too pretty. You have to be assertive, but don't be bossy. And by all means, don't be bitchy. Don't have ideals. Don't speak too loud, but don't be quiet. And so you're constantly trying to figure out how to navigate through this world, and that in itself is existentialism, is the navigation of the world and dealing with, you know, Nietzsche said to live is to suffer. James Baldwin said to be conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all the time. So being aware of just how great things are not while still putting energy to trying to make things better and trying to live and trying to get to the next day. setting goals and trying to navigate human difficulty, whilst also achieving your goals and drinking enough water and getting enough sleep and like doing the human things, all of that is never anything that Barbie has ever had to consider. She floats down from her dream house every single day. And when she starts having those existential crisises, I think that that's like one of the best imageries is she goes from floating to just like plopping down, like splatting down on the floor, because her reality is broken. It's shifted, and it's more of the real world, and that's something that everyone deals with every day. Is this ideal that you want to achieve in conflict with the way that the world is and how you go about navigating that, and how you allow yourself to find meaning. And I think that this movie is very helpful to let people know that you can have those ups and those downs, and just because you know you fall flat on your face from your dream house one day doesn't mean that there's not potentiality for you to still be able to float, or for you to still be able to achieve those goals that you have, just maybe not in the way that you imagined. Because I'm sure Barbie never imagined going to the gynecologist, there's there's obstetrician Barbie, but like, there's only like, one pregnant Barbie. And we don't ever have the conversation of, like, how pregnancy happens, which is why Midge, pregnant Barbie gets, like, discontinued. Because people felt like Mattel felt like that was like, not a conversation that mothers wanted to have with their with their girl children who were going to be buying these Barbies. So really establishing your own meaning is something that I really enjoyed in the movie, and hopefully gave other people the opportunity to also establish their own meanings while not being blind to the fact that the world is hard.

Brooklynn Blue  16:38

That was great. Yeah, you touched a lot about the cognitive dissonance, dissonance in the world that Barbie really touches on, especially, I think America Ferreira speech talks a lot about the struggles that women face, all of these dual roles that they're expected to fulfill and try to make everybody happy and please everyone at once. But it's so hard, because at one point you want to try to stay true to yourself. But another point, you're like, okay, but do I have to please this person to be taken seriously and like, how do I want to present myself if I'm going to be taken seriously in a male dominated space versus a female dominated space? How do I navigate the world when there are so many structural barriers working against me? And I think it's really important just these themes of feminism that we kind of see throughout the movie. I feel like there was a lot of pressure for Barbie movie to be this groundbreaking kind of film to show us about feminism empower women through it. And while I did think it empowered women in many different ways by establishing that kind of confidence within their femininity, the confidence to be themselves and through community and female support systems, I think those kind of relationships are very important and an incredible theme throughout the movie that it did really well. But I also think it wasn't meant to create any new interpretations of feminism, at least through Barbie. Shanae and I were talking earlier and how it is a story of white feminism, which is something we see over and over again in the media. It's nothing new. Therefore, people who are frustrated with the point that they said it didn't take any certain new takes with that route are absolutely correct, because we do see white feminism portrayed over and over again. And if we want to have a different conversation, we can talk about intersectional feminism and how different representations of Barbie and feminism, in that way, can be more productive in our society. And I think feminism in of itself, can often be misunderstood. And obviously that was shown in the movie, how we had the matriarchy, where women were above men, versus the patriarchy, where men were above women. People often get confused that feminism is that matriarchy, where one sex is above the other, when in reality, it is the equity of the sexes. And so I think taking that on is an important thing to recognize that the movie did well and kind of explaining feminism in a way that was more digestible to audiences who weren't super familiar with it, especially with that speech by America Ferrera when they were transforming all the other Barbies back from being brainwashed with the Kens.

Shanae Adams  19:16

I think that was probably like, if I have like, one point of contention with the movie is the idea that like matriarchy is just as bad as the patriarchy, right? And we have to look at true matriarchal societies, which are primarily like indigenous societies, or actually societies where everyone had value and everyone had worth, and everyone felt safe and everyone felt heard, because those matriarchs did the work to make sure that people were able to be to be present and have like active participate, active participation in their society. When we look at patriarchy, we have to view patriarchy as what it is, which is a child of imperialism, which is a child of oppression and colonization, and a specific kind of colonization that seeks to pit people against each other and raise one one person over the other. And so even the matriarchy that we see in the Barbie movie isn't even an actual matriarchy. I think that it's like a satire of patriarchy, where they just like, let's make it women instead of men. But even still, like, none of the kens fear for their safety. None of the kens have concerns about whether or not they can have rights, or if they can exist and be autonomous. So many of the Kens really put their value in Barbie because they are Barbie and kens. So ken is automatically tied to Barbie, and so they try to make that like an aspect of matriarchy, which is incorrect, because we know that patriarchy puts out this idea that women's value is only tied to the male partners that they have. And we see this throughout society, particularly from like the consumerism part. Women have only been able to have credit cards for about the past 70 years or so, 60 or 70 years, women have only been able to buy houses without having to have a man sign the paperwork in recent history. And so I don't think that it was women who came up and said, Yo, my value is only tied to that of a man. Patriarchy said that society said that capitalism says that colonization says that. And so they try to infer that similarity in Barbie world and say, well, here's how the matriarchy works, when, in actuality, that's not true. A matriarchal Barbie society would still have Dr Ken who feels value in of himself without feeling like he has to be tied to Barbie. And so for folks who are like, Oh, see, this is what feminists want, is this kind of matriarchy. You haven't seen Barbie. Barbie didn't give you a true matriarchy. And would a matriarchal society be better societally, historically speaking? Yeah, it would, because it's not a child of that imperialism, which is where all of these other things find their roots in. So that is my, probably my one point of contention of the movie is that, you know, this isn't a representation of what matriarchy is, and this the and I think people miss like the satire of the matriarchy of Barbie land being married mirrored from the patriarchy of the real world.

Brooklynn Blue  22:13

Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of criticism for the film comes from that misconception of the role reversal we see in Barbie land. A lot of people thought it was an anti male film, or they hate men just because the Kens were ignored and weren't given as much power. And like you said, it was a very mild version of the patriarchy, like the roles weren't even truly reversed in that way. Like you said, they don't experience a lot of violence, they're kind of just not given as much attention, not given as much representation, when in the real world or in the real patriarchy, women are experiencing so many more different levels of oppression that we see. Yeah, so to kind of see that mirrored was definitely an interesting perspective, which was, I think, yeah, easy to misconstrue if you don't see it satirically. And I feel like people miss the point of that a lot, especially, there's one quote from the movie that says Ken advocating once Barbie land has been restored, back to the Barbies being in charge again. Ken is like, Oh, can I, like, participate? Can I be a Supreme Court justice? And they're like, no, but we'll start you out and like, the lower judge rings, and then the narrator of the movie says, yes, you can start there, and then eventually you will move up to a place where you Kens have as much power in Barbie world as women have in the real world. And it's just kind of a little joke, because women still don't have that kind of power in the real world, and we are still facing these injustices. There is a lot of gender  inequity that we see throughout society. Like feminism is not done. We still have so much to go, and I feel like people are eager to kind of cast that aside and be like, Oh, you guys can vote. You guys have, like, your own independence in certain regard. And it's hard to recognize there are still a lot of invisible and structural barriers that women face today. Wage Gap is still a thing. People aren't keen to believe that still. Yeah, so there's just a lot of issues that the Barbie movie brought up that I thought were still relevant today. Do you want to kind of talk about different like feminine and masculine portrayals that we saw, and different ways that they changed, how we can interpret it and what it means to be feminine or masculine? 

Shanae Adams  24:33

Sure I think that, particularly when we talk about Barbie and Barbie's image, Barbie is the ideal woman, right? This is how femininity should be portrayed. And mind you, Barbie's first inception was in the 60s, right? So in the height of like this, very like stepfords wives esque women should be seen and not heard. Women only care about pretty dresses and makeup to go along with like that capitalism aspect. And then men exist in. This particular way where, you know, the kens have a lot of muscles and they have a lot of strength, and it's a very European beauty standard of what folks should be like, trying to attain to. And America even touches on that in her monolog at the end, where it's like, we're expected to look this particular way. We're expected to look like these advertisements, when the women in those advertisements don't even look like that, right? Because everything gets photoshopped. And we know that body image and beauty standards and beauty culture are something that impacts everybody. But for men, the negative impacts do not outweigh the positive benefits that come, whereas for women and for femme people, the negative impacts. There's no positive impact for having to, like, adhere to these particular beauty standards. And so we see a lot of that get kind of reproduced in the Barbie movie. There's even, there's a scene where I think Barbie sits there and she says something Margot Robbie's Barbie says something of like, Oh, I'm so ugly. And the narrator comes in and is like, this is a terrible point to make with, like, this particular actress, like, I just want to put that out there that, like, it's not landing the way that y'all think that it should land. And that's very true, that Margot Robbie fits that European blonde hair, blue eyed beauty standard that gets perpetuated out there because that's who the original Barbie was. The original Barbie was made for blonde hair, blue eyed little girls. I don't think the first black Barbie comes until, like, 10 or 15 years after Barbie's original inception. And even still, that assimilation of like, your hair has to be straight, your skin has to be fair, you have to be tall and you have to be thin, all of those things still get perpetuated, even in the black Barbie, I think the only Barbie I have is, like, Christmas Barbie, and she's got on this really pretty Christmasy Ball Ground, but, like, her hair is still straight, her skin is still very fair, so she's not necessarily representation, but she's pretty, right? And so that's what Barbie is. Barbie is something pretty to look at, and pretty is subjective. And so it goes based on the beauty standard that gets set here in the West, which is also a child of imperialism and colonization. And so all of those things get intertwined together, even on the kind of aspect where folks were like, you know, there was no radical critique on feminism. It's because white feminism is not radical, right? If we want to have these radical critiques, we have to look more at like womanism. We have to talk to Alice Walker and bell hooks and Angela Davis and Audre Lorde, these Femme and women writers who are actually writing about how to have a more equitable world, as opposed to there's still aspects of feminism that pit the sexes against each other, that have to have one person still be superior to another, as opposed to like true equity, which means that folks have to give up their power. But if you're a person who's used to power, giving up your power feels like oppression, and white feminism, unfortunately plays into that narrative, whereas like womanism and black feminism and intersectional feminism doesn't play into this. One person has to have more or has to have less. We have to have an equitable division of all resources, which we're set up to do. Right back to that existential point, humans could have done anything, and they created imperialism, right? We could have done anything, and we created credit scores and debt, and we are so limited by our vast potential that we just kind of like let it more or less blow up in our faces, in a sense. And so if we want to do that, there's so much rewiring and rebuilding that has to take place. And the only people who I feel like, and I feel like society would also support can instruct us on how to do that, are the folks who are at the bottom of the totem pole, and those would be women of color, particularly black trans women, but black women and women of color who are producing this information, right? It makes me think of like the Combahee River collective statement on how we get free was written in the 80s. The statement is still relevant. Those steps still make sense. We don't have to invent the wheel, but because of the way that the patriarchy and society is set up, those folks are still at the bottom of the totem pole, so their ideals don't have value. That world that they're creating isn't the world where consumerism and corporations have power and control. So it's not a world that wants to be adopted because people would have to give up their power, and that feels oppressive for some so so much back and forth and so many additional conversations that can come out of just the Barbie movie existing. And that would have been like, my biggest hope for folks, is that they would have taken that and, like, started to have, like, bigger and better dialogs. But unfortunately, the majority of the population can't read and can't think, and so they they took the Barbie movie for like, its face value, and didn't have a lot of those deeper conversations that they potentially could have.

Brooklynn Blue  29:50

I hope all you guys are appreciating how smart Shane is. I could listen to them talk forever. I wanted to kind of touch on the different kind of representation that we saw in Barbie. Obviously, our main Barbie is able bodied, she's white, She's thin, conventionally attractive, but we saw a lot of other important roles that represented very important like visibility for populations that we don't often see, and their identities not only gave them visibility, but their characters were not at all revolved around those identities that they hold. They were just allowed to like be and have these experiences. We had a Barbie in a wheelchair, and she was present throughout the whole movie. We had different sized Barbies. Some were bigger, some were shorter, some were taller, and though they all kind of had different ideas of femininity and how they were presented, they were all on this equal level playing field. They had we had black president Barbie we had all of the Supreme Court justices, all of the Nobel Prize winner Barbies. This kind of representation shows just the potential everyone has. And I thought it was interesting. Did you have any comments on that?

Shanae Adams  29:59

I think that Barbie is a corporation, and so you can't put too much stock or too much excitement into them, but I think that Barbie does try. I think that they make Barbies of all different colors, all different sizes, all different body types, all different hair textures. There are Barbies in wheelchair and Barbies who are differently abled. There are fat Barbies. There are, you know, Mattel does its best to speak to the market, and I think that like, like, that's the important part, is they're not like, oh, let's put like, all these different, diverse Barbies out there, because Barbies should reflect the real world. No people wanted to give us money for a Barbie in a wheelchair, so we made a Barbie in a wheelchair so we can have our money happy. You feel represented, but $19.95 for your Barbie please. Right? So it's such a interesting space to exist in, to feel really excited to see like your identity represented, and then to also see capitalism benefit from your identity. And so while Barbie is like doing its best, it's still a corporation. It's still, you know, part of capitalism, and capitalism only supports corporations. So while you can have your like, your fat, black kinky haired Barbie. You still had, there's still, like, a white corporation that's benefiting from fat, black kinky haired Barbie. So it can be hard to like exist with your social justice hat on. My mom is like, Why do you have to do that? Like, why can't you just like, like things that appreciate things? And I'm like, I like fat black Barbie. I don't like that I have to pay $20 for her. I don't like that. My $20 is going into this white man's pocket. Man's pocket, but, like, fat black Barbie is dope. I'll purchase her, but it's still to purchase her. So it definitely is a double edged sword. But I think that, you know, Barbie does its best. And I think that from this movie, I don't think Barbie does its best. I take that back. I think Barbie does as well as a corporation will allow itself to do. And I think that Barbie attempts to listen to its to the public. I know that Barbie puts, like, a lot of money into STEM and a lot of money into, like, supporting, supporting girls, being able to, like, have all the different jobs and different opportunities and resources that Barbie has. And so there's still, there's still better that can be done, but for the society that we live in, I guess they're doing their best. I

Brooklynn Blue  33:25

agree. I appreciate you bringing that back to that consumerism aspect that we talked about earlier, there's definitely, yep, always going to be that small nagging voice that says, okay, but where is this money really going? Where's Who is this really benefiting, either financially or professionally, at the end of the day, but sometimes it hurts to dwell on that a lot. So I know it's Halloween season. We've got about a week out until Halloween comes around, and so we kind of want to talk about maybe, if we're going to see any Barbies and Ken's this year, whether people are going to put their own twist on it. I know last year, me and my best friend participated. I was Top Gun Barbie, and she was FBI agent Barbie. And it's just so nice, I think, to have that kind of freedom and adaptability of Barbie. I think that's one of her many strengths, is that women can see themselves in all these different roles, no matter how it looks. You can combine different career aspects while also maintaining that identity and resonating in that femininity and being proud of it and kind of feeling empowered through it. I especially appreciate that community. I saw a lot of other girls dressed as Barbies out last year, and it was fun to yell hi Barbie at each other. So it really solidified that kind of connection that just through femininity and community, female friendships, I think, were something very well portrayed throughout the film, of just women supporting each other and feeling grounded in the fact that they deserve their accomplishments that they didn't have. To always thank people for the compliments they received that they were sure of themselves. They're just like, Oh, here's this award. And they're like, Yes, I worked hard for this. I deserve it. So I think the movie really did a good job of empowering people just through their accomplishments and saying that you did this, you earned it. You don't have to thank or tie your value to something else. So yeah, what about your thoughts?

Shanae Adams  35:19

Yeah, I think that goes back to, like the genius marketing of the Barbie movie is for the whole time that it was in theaters, any femme person who had on pink Hi Barbie, they would respond with Hi Barbie or Hi Ken. And it's such a it's very like community building aspect of the movie, because you play with dolls in groups, you go over with your friends and all of your dolls, act out the real world oftentimes, right? So I feel like that was really fun. I look forward to seeing, I anticipate seeing some Barbies out in the world for Halloween. I'm trying to find, if I can find a fur coat I would like to be Mojo dojo Casa Ken. That would be a good time. And I also appreciate how, like, you can put on your regular clothes and you can just be Barbie. Like, if people are like, what's your costume? I'm Barbie. And nobody can argue with that. Because, okay, Barbie, use everything. Barbie wears jeans and a T shirt and wants to sit at this party eat all my chips. Like, I feel like, that's a great that's a great costume. That's a great Barbie to be so very excited, excited to see that, but I won't be Barbie. I'm excited you were Barbie last year. If I can find that that fur coat, I might be a kid, but I'm most excited for my Beatrix kiddo costume. Yeah, it'll be a good time.

Brooklynn Blue  36:34

Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for joining us. We will see you next time on The Phoenix cast. If you or a loved one is experiencing interpersonal violence, have questions about interpersonal violence, or would just like some more resources, feel free to drop by our office at Tivoli 227. We are open Monday through Friday. Eight to 5pm we also have a website with some resources listed the pca.org that is the PCA, dot, O, R, G, if you need immediate help, you can also utilize our free and confidential help line. The number is 303-556-2255, again, 303-556-2255, you.