My mom, Julia and I piled into a gypsy cab, the only car we could get in the pouring rain. My mom negotiated the fee with the driver the whole way down the West Side Highway as we made our way from her place downtown to Chelsea, where the Barbie convention was happening in a big warehouse. The room was filled with dolls presented like superstars, and we oohed and aahed as we walked around the room to see the history of the toy we loved so much.
I had hoped that the new Barbie film would be something of a love letter to the doll that inspired so much fantasy and storytelling for me as a kid, but instead, the film is a tangle of grown-up daddy issues rebranded as empowerment.
From the opening scenes of little girls bashing their baby dolls on rocks in a symbolic rejection of motherhood to the final scene where Barbie is so empowered and self-actualized that she visits a gynecologist for the first time, the film criticizes women’s impulses toward motherhood, love and femininity and leaves the lead character standing alone in the real world with no friends, no husband, no children and only the medical industrial complex by her side.
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