Fact-checking Barbie
I’m not a Barbie fan. She made me and my friends feel bad about ourselves for being built like real girls back in the day. I only reluctantly watched the movie, once it was free on a streaming service, so I could participate in the national debate.
Then I got seduced, a little bit, by the movie’s sly, subversive charm.
By the time Rhea Perlman showed up as the ghost of Barbie’s creator Ruth Handler, I was on board as much as someone who never wears pink could be.
She was exactly the guiding light a doll needed to cross the Barbie Land/Los Angeles barrier, from the land of perfection to the land of cellulite and mortality. Or she was until she said, “We mothers stand still, so our daughters can look back to see how far they’ve come.”
Hang on a minute. We do what, and why? Let’s fact-check that one.
Handler was born in 1916; her generation had little choice but to stand still in many ways because they were supposed to be full-time homemakers. World War II opened a temporary Rosie the Riveter window of job opportunity for some of her contemporaries, but once soldiers returned from the front it was a woman’s patriotic duty to surrender her job to its rightful owner. Moms stood still more by default than by choice.
I wondered if I’d misunderstood. I hoped I had—enough so that I watched “Barbie” again, this time the version that included director Greta Gerwig’s play-by-play commentary. (Yes, I watched a movie I didn’t want to watch, twice. Sisterhood is powerful, and all that.)
I am relieved to say that my interpretation of the “stand still” line was not what Gerwig intended. She was thinking of two personal experiences: The first, when she watched her young kids run around like crazy, safe in the knowledge that Mom, their North Star, had not moved; and the second, her grandmother’s death.
That’s not what came through. We all stand still at one time or another, but Gerwig’s first example was a temporary choice by a busy working-mom, and the second involved no choice at all. Neither one is the equivalent of being our daughters’ GPS.
I’ll concede that my indignation is in part a function of being old enough to be Gerwig’s mother. My generation can be hypersensitive to push back about women’s roles, as the list of problems to be solved—access to choice, an enduring gender pay gap—seems to grow rather than shrink.
I’m glad feminism got a push in “Barbie.” I’m glad Gerwig was not suggesting we put on the brakes. It’s too soon for any women—moms, not moms, girls, grandmas—to stand still.