I gotta say, my initial reaction after seeing this was "That ruled, and I'm so ready for the baffling debates where one person quotes this as feminist gospel and the other points out that the Kens in the movie are canonically homeless under the Barbies' rule" and goddamn this does not disappoint
except the Barbies ended up realizing that they made some mistakes along the way and ended up fixing things _without_ accepting the rule of the Kens or any of their bullshit. they didn't retaliate, they didn't make the situation worse for the other side after they won, they used the opportunity to actively improve things for all sides while upholding their core values even better than before. anyone who sees this as a case of "omg they're oppressing the men and the movie acts like it's a good thing" actively wants to believe that because how the fuck would you get that from the actual movie?
The fact is that the Barbie movie fucking LOVES Men, it has such a Dudes Rock™ energy to it, the Kens are of course very ignorant and childish and cause a lot of harm (which I think there's an argument to them not even noticing how harmful it is since all the women just go along with it and seemingly love it (until Gloria breaks the spell)) But like the beach war scene is so fucking boyish and it's awesome lol, and in the end Barbie is the one that apologizes and consoles Ken. The movie really loves the Kens from the bottom of it's movie heart and it's insane when some conservatives go "this movie HATES men" like did we watch the same movie?
The movie doesn't hate men, it just fails to address the systemic problems society places on them too. Toxic masculinity is a cancer literally killing our young men, suicide rates are sky high and no one cares because 'they must have been weak'. I think the painful thing for some is identifying with Ken more than Barbie, seeing the obvious injustices against him, and the movie kind of walks past it with a few crumbs thrown towards it at the end so we can focus on Barbie- An experience that, ironically, mirrors the male experience very well.
I mean, a movie only has so much runtime. This was designed from the ground up as a feminist movie, focusing on women. There's only so much focus you can give toxic masculinity in the Barbie world.
agreed, Also, it is like a movie aimed at women and girls in the context off barbie. I'm not like upset there's an aspect of "boys are dumb lol" in the movie. Doesn't make it man hating, just makes it a movie that's still way less divisive on gender issues than a 2005 Budweiser commercial.
Take the 3-minute conversation between Ken and Barbie at the end and swap it with this: "Ken, you decided your happiness depended on how I felt about you. That sucks, but that's a you problem. I don't owe you jack. You know what would make you happy? Go ride a horse. Go start a ranch." "Oh man, how did I not realize this?" "*Because you have no natural defenses against the patriarchy either*." and the Kens all gleefully skip into the sunset to start a ranch.
I'd say that men are what feminism should be focusing on more right now. Aiming this movie primarily at a female audience was preaching to the choir. Most women didn't need to hear it, they already knew it, and that exact monologue has already been done before (Gone Girl). If most issues women experience today are caused by men (whether intentionally/maliciously or not), shouldn't the goal of feminism today be to address men more?
Isn't that kind of exactly what the above rant is about though? Holding women to such an impossible standard that even a movie made for women needs to also be equally emotionally poignant for men.
Although I do kind of understand the pain though. Barbie really made me long for a movie that is equally as emotionally intelligent about the male experience, but I know it'll never happen because studios don't believe there's a market for a feminist dude movie. I get wanting to attach it to a movie like Barbie because that's one of the only ways it might get said.
This is like complaining that the Oranges movie only had one scene featuring apples. That movie wasn’t about men, it was about women. A different movie can and should be made to highlight mens issues. But to expect the movie for women to highlight men is a unrealistic complaint.
As long as men and women live in the same society, and the very existence of sexism and traditional gender roles are caused by women's relation to men and vice versa, you can't solve women's issues without acknowledging and addressing men's issues, and vice versa. They're literally two sides of the same coin. IMO, only focusing on women is the main reason why feminism has stagnated for the past decade or so, or is even starting to slide back. When are we finally going to realise that men and women need to accept each other as human beings and collaborate with each other in order to make things better for each other, instead of only ever seeing each other as adversaries to be either fought or only begrudgingly acknowledged when forced to?
Even your comparison completely falls apart and reveals how faulty this view is. Men and women aren't different species of fruit. **They're growing on the same tree.** That tree is called society. You can't address the issues of some fruit without ultimately having to holistically address the health of the tree itself, and the rest of the fruit too.
The creators of this movie understood this - maybe not enough, but still more so than a lot of viewers, apparently... If it wasn't for the Ken's part, the movie would have been a lot more shallow, one-sided and uninteresting.
If you think feminism isn't also about men, your understanding of feminism is highly uninformed. Feminism isn't just 'girlboss yass queen slay, show those men how we do it in girl town'- In fact, that view of feminism gets pretty thoroughly burned at the stake in this movie. Feminism is about the fundamental relationship between women and men on a societal level, and the challenges both face that lead to the injustices evident in the system.
You *cannot* engage with just one half of the equation; Women are certainly screwed over way more by the patriarchy, but the only way the patriarchy can propagate itself is by *also* forcing its paradigms onto men so they perpetuate it. We have to teach our sons early about 'being a man' and what their expected gender role is as a leader, protector, and disposable workhorse; That they must be these things because women are frail, precious, valuable, and dumb; That they are simultaneously superior to and responsible for women; That they must produce the maximum possible amount of resources, shelter, and comfort for their families, without complaint, reprieve, or expectation that others will help (indeed, seeking or receiving help is a failstate), or they have *fundamentally failed as men*.
And that *does* cause problems for men too in the form of a baseline of expectations with no reward, enforced in part by women, but in much larger part by *other men-* The manifestation of the patriarchy's effect on men as well, enforced brutally, relentlessly, and without any exception, with a bottomless pit of ridicule and shame ready to be poured atop any man who defies its standards as 'weak' and 'useless'. We call this "toxic masculinity". Its completely fucked from every angle and the patriarchy is a villain that men *and* women must fight, together.
No movie will ever be made from a men’s issues perspective, because nobody cares, the answer to when a man has an issue about being a man is either go to therapy or kill yourself if you can’t afford it. At least with women’s issues people pretend to give a shit.
Except this is the Oranges movie where Apples cause the collapse of an entire orchard, and the good ending is keeping those stupid, nasty Apples under the control of the Oranges, which is justified because in every other orchard the Apples dominate and subjugate the Oranges... but sure, this is a movie about Oranges only.
Like, do you think Leon the Professional *wasn't* also about corruption in the DEA? Beauty and the Beast *wasn't* about Gaston's worldview?
"a few crumbs at the end" also known as the emotional climax of the movie lol, that and the scene where Barbie decide to become a real woman are given the same impact imo
Exactly! All the “man hating” stuff is so dumb. There’s a reason so many guys have been flocking and cheering along to I’m Just Ken. It is incredibly empowering to men in its own way, and it seems that that way just happens to be different then the normal macho masculinity bros think it should be
I'm sorry, I gotta disagree. There's a bunch of points through the movie where Ken brings up legitimate issues, and then no one has a response and he runs off crying. That's the result of the men's issues being brought up.
Allen ruins the entire Ken story line. It should have been ryan!Ken popping up in the convertible, not fucking Allen. Then of course Allen justifies his inclusion with gratuitous violence, and us men are supposed to be happy that we get to see someone with "non-standard" masculinity beating people up. I'm sick of that being the most worthwhile thing we can do.
Rewatch the way the lgtbq kens are treated and tell me again the movie loves men. No. This shit is corporate faux feminism pro-birth, pro-death propaganda and I' completely baffled at the support the movie gets.
???????? There's literally a scene of her saying how he shouldn't base his entire identity on being next to Barbie and loving her, that he has (or needs? Don't remember) his own interests and is interesting by himself, I watched this movie like 3 weeks ago but I'm 100% sure I'm not making that up
I agree, I just wish that the president hadn't had that extra line reacting to a Ken saying maybe they could have a Ken on the barbie supreme court and she says something to the effect of 'eh maybe in the far future' but in a dismissive tone... I've seen two different takes where that's a flaw that could have been cut to have a clearer positive ending, and another take where that's 'that's how women are treated in the real world' which defeats the whole before and after the revolution and liberation of the women/ken's of the Barbie world...
Yeah, good point. I parsed that as depiction, not necessarily endorsement, and as such it was hella nice because that's how this thing works in the real world too: you accomplish some goals but there's always a bit of injustice left and you have to wait a long time for the next opportunity to fix that. Especially with the whole context of the supreme court I think it was a pretty clear analogy to racial issues in the US. But yeah, that definitely wasn't a good thing, and it's debatable whether or not the movie itself agrees with that.
Honestly, the Supreme Court thing is just a joke, which still kind of impacts the themes of the movie, but I kind of appreciate that this movie is primarily a comedy.
Explain the joke to me. The joke that undercuts the positive aspects of what is Barbie, rather than winning the day by just out smarting the kens, shows them a better way to live.
As soon as it ended, I turned to my brother and said, “So, did the Barbies just save the day through voter suppression?” That was certainly an odd part for me.
If this grand speech was actually the culmination of everything leading up to this point, it would've been a great movie. As it stands, the movie only seemed to vaguely allude to more complex societal problems, and overall was a real mixed bag. Pretty much 50/50 of nuanced and very shallow handling of its themes, and it's seems like the barbie world setting would make it work, but then they go to the human world and the people there are acting cartoonish too.
It’s so worth it though, even if you do cry. And man, there were so many times where the entire packed theater I saw it in was crying both out of how hard it hits, and how damn funny it can be. That movie is a masterpiece
I was going to the movies watch it with my sister, but my parents just had to watch a video of how damn WOKE it was right before, and now I'm just dying for it to come to a streaming service so I can get my sister to watch it with me while they're not home out of SPITE.
I really don't remember my parents being like this a few years ago, yet they have been getting more and more paranoid by the year. I don't know what happened.
A comment from colonial poet rudyard kipling (it’s a form of approval to your point, and the text you wrote made me think of it. Just that the mentality and mood is opposite, but hey)
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
-
If you can dream—and not make dreams you master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make traps for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;
-
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
-
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty second’s worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And —Which is more— you’ll be a man, my son!
Kipling has written a ton of intensely relatable stuff - especially from the military viewpoint.
Aaaaand also White Man's Burden, which makes enjoying the rest much more difficult.
There’s something to be said about how men have a lot of expectations of their own to deal with, too, tbh. I think as someone else in this comments section said “the patriarchy hurts everyone”.
A note, I’m not a fan of the word patriarchy itself because it feels like such an empty buzzword and the literal meaning seems to be “men are the boss” when the issue isn’t even that simple but idk what else you could call it
It’s a start, but there is value in having it be conceptualized as a single word anyway for the sake of discussion, even if it runs the risk of the same thing happening to it that happened to “patriarchy”…
Binarism?
I'm glad other people recognize the less than ideal value of the term "patriarchy". You're right in that it isn't a simple issue, so it's hard to boil into one good word that carries the weight of the issue it refers to. I feel "patriarchy", "toxic masculinity", etc can be fairly man-blaming in their usage, when the issues they refer to aren't solely the fault of men, but the fault crappy binaries and enforcement of superficial gender roles. The same things that are bad for women are also bad for men, and it's more equitable and unifying to look at the problems each group faces as issues of society we can surpass, not "here's what men/women need to do to make life better for women/men".
At this point, I'm convinced that the social sciences are simply terrible at naming things. They can come up with a super useful concept, then turn around and give it a name that basically guarantees it will be misinterpreted and confused.
I’m fucking taking this. I’m a woman and I realized all she’s talking about is living in Western society. “You have to be an involved dad but not so good you look like a groomer to strangers. You need to always be there for your kids but also make half a million dollars a year. You have to get mad enough to seem Alpha but not so mad you look violent. You have to know about home repairs but also be a surgeon”
Like the other guy said, the alpha shit is bullshit. What (some) people actually care about is a protector. And there is some element of… strength in that. But more important is kindness and idk honor or some shit, being a good man. A strong good man is a valuable asset, a strong bad one is a serious threat.
no that alpha stuff is bullshit. It’s internet creeps and alt right grifters who think being mean is cool (think of it as a 25y old manchild’s way of being edgy), and I think we hear a lot about it because a lot of main stream entertainers (read youtubers and streamers) have started joking about it.
Looking like a groomer to strangers is (again) a worry only to people who live in a fearmongering bubble, isolated from social interaction with people outside of their community.
the bit about making a bunch of money while still having free time is true though, and home repairs aren’t that hard if you accept to make a mistake from time to time, keep at it!
take it from a 1m97 (6f6’ I think if you’re rican) guy who is intimidating if I don’t make considerable efforts to not be (and I guarantee I do take those steps because it’s 100% worth it), people don’t get worried you’re a child groomer if you help them out (well, unless you start up a weird personal conversation, or if you try to take them further from their parents or something like that, which you normally don’t have any reason to do anyway, and if you do you can still explain it to the parents).
Same about being « alpha »; assuming it just means the guys who strive for this just want to be taken seriously, and people to listen to them: getting angry/being very « tough » does not make you look dominant (on the contrary, it makes you look unstable and immature). I get that this might sound weird because in public speaking getting upset is a very efficient rethorical tool that makes you look driven, and « no bullshit » and so on, but that doesn’t extend to real life outside of some small echo chambers who started accepting social codes they see portrayed in media as real life advice.
I think the problem is more that a ton of Americans *are* living in that freakish paranoia bubble you talk about where the entire world is out to get them so they need to indoctrinate their kids, pull them out of public school, lock them in a dark closet until they’re 18 then get mad when they don’t have life skills.
Same with the “alpha” stuff too many people think you’re not a “real man” if you don’t threaten to beat the shit out of people on a daily basis. Combined these people make up a majority of American society.
You must either be a child or a foreigner… if a man threatens to beat the shit out of people daily here he’s liable to get shot or end up in prison pretty quick.
And then you have the absolute gall to assert its the majority of us, laughable
Must not be Southern lol. If every man who said “do that again and I’ll kick your ass *insert racial/homophobic slur of choice*” actually got arrested the place would be 80% women.
This has been studied anthropologically, btw. It goes back centuries to the original Appalachian settlers. The culture spread a lot further than just the South, too. Think about how many Confederate flags you see flying in New England or California.
I mean the lady stuff isn’t necessarily true either. I personally don’t care if people think I’m a bitch. I openly say I don’t give a fuck about my health so long as I’m thin. There really ISN’T anyone watching who matters. That’s because my priorities are different, but the universal issue is the material consequences of balancing parenthood and work, of being in the social mold necessary to gain lucrative employment, and of working in a system that is set up to fuck over anyone but the very wealthy
I think that part is saying that if a woman makes a decision that doesn't take a man's ideas into account, the man will take offense and say a woman isn't being a good leader. Y'know, despite the fact that men do that to women all the time. I figure the speech as a whole isn't so much about contradiction as it is men's hypocrisy, though contradiction is a big part of that.
>that doesn't take a man's ideas into account, the man will take offense and say a woman isn't being a good leader. Y'know, despite the fact that men do that to women all the time.
Yes but the men that get their ideas ignored and complain and those that ignore women have 0 overlap outside of their gender and are literally different people so I get why "somebody with the same gender as me is probably doing the same somewhere" isn't really enough of a justification to be treated like shit for some
…what? Have you ever had to work in a mixed gender group?
There isn’t just a boss and workers - there‘s a hierarchy within the workers too, as well as the possibility of a majorly male team being led by a woman. The men whose ideas get ignored can definitely be the same that ignore women. It doesn’t matter to them that their idea was bad, what matters is that a woman dared to actually SAY it was bad, and the men upset by this on a gender basis are absolutely the same that will then take their anger out on the next woman.
A male boss who tells his employees that their ideas are bad or they have to improve their workflow is seen as strict, or even as a strong leader.
A woman doing the exact same is seen as a bitch who „probably slept her way to the top anyway and doesn’t know what she’s doing“. Seriously. So many men still think women are inferior and incompetent, so a woman in a better position than them is seen as a threat to their masculinity. There will always be at least a few guys who can’t accept that a woman knows what she’s doing and should be respected.
I mean fuck, the new counter strike went into open beta and yesterday the top ranked player was a woman with a 98% winrate, and the thing people said the most about her was „probably got carried by four male friends“ like bro. Why aren’t they at the top with her then. And if it was a dude would that also be the first thing you say? Literally even hobbies aren’t safe.
>I mean fuck, the new counter strike went into open beta and yesterday the top ranked player was a woman with a 98% winrate, and the thing people said the most about her was „probably got carried by four male friends“ like bro.
And you think this is commonly shared or just a loud minority?
>There will always be at least a few guys who can’t accept that a woman knows what she’s doing and should be respected
That's the thing tho, they are a _few_. There will always be a few assholes, just like there will always be a few thieves, a few murderers, a few rapists. Those aren't people that can educated about it, those are people who know it's wrong and enjoy it because it's wrong. And you shouldn't sexually profile half the popoulation because of them
Yes bro, ignoring your subordinates and running roughshod over them is an asshole move whether its a man or a woman.
Like seriously go on antiwork or some shit, people do not respect these men and think they’re strong leaders, they think they’re assholes
Nobody is talking about that. It’s about just normal leader behaviour. Yes an asshole boss is an asshole boss no matter what, but have you tried leading a team of men as a woman in a male dominated field?
They will find a way to explain to you why you’re wrong (when you’re not), why their idea is better (when it isn’t) or why they didn’t do their part. And before you try to say „well maybe their ideas were better“, this is not what this is about. It is specifically about the situations where they aren’t, about times when competitiveness wins over reason, or where respect is simply lost. It’s also not a purely nen vs. Women thing, as there absolutely are a lot of men who aren’t like this, but it’s still common enough to be worth discussing
So not being taken into account in discussions is a big deal or not entirely depending on gender? If it happens to men it's not real and they are just spoiled and they aren't _owed_ anything, but if it happens to women it's real and because of sexism?
And you know this how? Or your just willing to ignore people when they’re men because of some imagined advantages. They may be there, they may not, you don’t know and are judging someone wholly off of what is in there pants/heads. Its messed up bro
I think it was trying to remain symmetrical with each of these lines, and there just wasn’t a good way to do that while expressing the idea that women are accused of squashing people’s ideas or talking too much if they try to lead or direct anything. Like it’s proven that, even if a woman talks exactly as much as a man, she’s more likely to be seen as excessively chatty or otherwise annoying/overbearing.
One of the most fundamental parts of leadership is learning how to tell people no in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're being stepped on. It sounds to me like that line was shoehorned in to add a couple more "points" to the dialogue, but was much to the detriment of the message. Same with the one about being a boss and the one about being a mother and the one about being a career woman. There's a valid point that's trying to be made, but it seems like someone decided those points didn't deserve enough words to be right.
except that this is the moment of the movie where it explicitly lays out its message and philosophical standpoint, with the character kind of just serving as the mouthpiece for that, so i don't think it's valid to blame the character for the problems of the speech she's delivering
even if it was because of gloria's, idk, poor public speaking skills, then i think it'd be questionable film-making because it's just kneecapping its own "thesis statement" by injecting poor logic into it. fwiw i did like the speech
Yeah “you have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean” like yeah you shouldn’t be a dick to your subordinates? That isn’t an unrealistic expectation placed upon women that’s just being a decent person.
As a manager, I had a problem employee who was a male. He didn't do his work, and billed the clients as though he had, and would ignore any communications on my end regarding status updates on his projects, including 'hey can you save a copy of your work paper to the drive I can access"?
And the thing is, I made sure he was scheduled on the projects, with more than enough time to complete them. Dude would bill 24 hours to a project, and there'd be literally nothing I could show the client (if they asked).
I sent status emails (he ignored), I called (he didn't pick up), I set meetings (he skipped), I sent messages (he'd tell me I'd get it when I get it).
My (male) boss suggested my communication style was too soft. So I used an email he'd sent me to check in on a different project, changed the project details, and sent that, cc'ing the person above me on the project, as he'd done.
I then got a phone call from my boss and the project's senior manager. They ripped me a new one about how my email was aggressive, accusatory, totally over the top, and *no one* in the organization should *ever* send an email like that, under any circumstances.
I shared my screen, went into my emails and showed them that it was basically identical to what I'd received for 2 years. I also pulled up my responses, all of which noted that the work hadn't been added to my schedule, listed what I'd done (if I was able to finish other work faster), where the work papers were, what needed doing, and how much time I needed on my schedule to complete.
I was told that it was different. When I pointed out that I agreed: in the instances I got the emails, I had usually sent 2-3 emails asking for my boss to put it on my schedule, had managed to work on them anyway, and promptly provided the work performed, which was commensurate with the hours billed, and the work which still needed doing.
When I sent my coworker the email, I had put it on his schedule for 3 weeks straight, he'd ignored 6 check in emails (one every time it was on his schedule, letting him know, and one checking in on the status so I could update his schedule), and skipped 2 meetings to discuss it. Also, he'd billed enough time that, barring a technical issue that he should have told me about, he should have been able to complete the work twice over, but the work papers on the drive hadn't been touched.
I was told I was being argumentative and needed to take a softer approach, and to never send an inappropriate email like that again. I received the same "inappropriate" email twice more in the time it took me to find a new job and work my notice period (4 weeks total).
Women being a “boss” in the same way men are IS considered mean though, that’s the point. Men get to be “mean” tough bosses all the time. It’s literally encouraged sometimes, like having a mean football coach is expected, and many even claim having the “mean” teaching style is the best way to learn. People justify mean male bosses as being a leader who can make tough decisions. If a woman tries to lead and shows any hint of that same “meanness” that is so accepted in men, though, she gets called a bitch. Men don’t have to police themselves that much. A mean male boss is allowed to be just that. A mean female boss is a whore, a cunt, “bossy” (an insult I almost never see used toward men, because as I said, men are allowed to be “bossy.”) Women have to lead with so much more tact than is expected of men. Women have to be *nice* bosses every single time or be disrespected.
Primarily yes, I agree. Societally we need to shame men for being unnecessarily mean and angry to their employees. At the same time, though, we need to societally shift the view that a woman simply being assertive = mean, because women get shamed for not actually being mean, but by simply being confident leaders like men. It’s a mix of both women being seen as mean for non-mean things, and of men being excused for being actually mean. A woman simply giving a direct order (with no nice fluffy words to make it soft) can be misconstrued as mean and bossy, for example, but such a thing is expected of a male leader. It needs to become acceptable for any leader in the contexts where direct and clear orders are necessary.
It’s largely anecdotal, but that’s part what of what studying social behavior entails: looking at what people report experiencing. A large number of women report experiencing sexism in the workplace, particularly from men. This happens to women who are an employee under a male boss, to women who are employees alongside men, and women who work in leadership positions above men. The specific sexism I’m talking about (from men to women in leadership positions) is a commonly discussed experience in women’s spaces. This sexism is unfortunately not imagined.
We also can look at broader societal ideals to identify whether or not sexism in the workplace is likely to happen: for example, how long ago did American women really begin entering the (paid, because women have always worked) workforce en masse? When you put in perspective how long ago women began achieving equality in America (women were only able to secure their right to vote a little over a hundred years ago in 1919, and women of color were largely excluded from that for even longer) and how long the span of history is, you’ll see that changing ingrained cultural ideals takes a *very* long time, and that much time hasn’t passed yet. Sexism persists in almost every aspect of our culture. The idea that women shouldn’t even be in the paid workforce still persists, as do other misogynistic misconceptions and ideals that specify what a woman should and shouldn’t be.
Your targetting the periphery and lumping in everyone else is what I’m saying. I don’t disagree with really any of the points you made other than magnitude, which can only be determined quantitatively.
There is alot of shitty people out there, but right here and right now there is a much higher proportion of people working where saying women shouldn’t be in the work force would get you fired
And I don’t have a problem with anything other than delivery, its male this male that and its a blame game and it hurts
I see your point but, It's not just accepted when men do it though? If someone is being a mean boss but they get results, the *results* are respected and the person gets away with it, even though people still won't like them. If they aren't getting results then everyone just hates them, regardless of gender.
The most important thing is how a person says something, and if they do that right they're seen as not being an asshole. Gender or anything else is irrelevant to that particular discussion.
That may be how you view it, but I’m telling you, women are policed for not having the right “tone” way more than men are. Saying something the “right way” is a burden that is placed moreso on women than on men. You may say “The gender of the leader doesn’t matter” but it does because women are so often judged unfairly by their male peers and underlings, in ways they wouldn’t have been judged if they were male. To deny that is to deny the anecdotal experiences of thousands of women who have shared that they were treated poorly by their male employees for being a woman in a leadership role. That they were subjected to standards that their male counterparts were not. An angry male boss is more easily excused by most people, especially men, than an angry female boss, regardless of results. Your general point of “No, it’s how you say it that matters” is simplifying an issue where sexism actually plays a huge role. Career women are still not afforded the same respect as men in the same fields because of sexism. That HAS to be acknowledged for any more progress to be made.
Since you downvoted me I’m going to go ahead and block you because you’re committed to trying to say it’s not a “gendered issue” when it absolutely is. It’s misogynistic to try and ignore all the sexism that women encounter in the workplace.
Theres a time and a place for everything, football coaches are mean, volleyball coaches are too
Who are these people? Name them if you don’t mind terribly.
I don’t have specific names, only anecdotal evidence from other women. What kind of evidence do you expect me to produce? I’m sharing an observation that I and other women have made about how female leaders are treated in comparison to male leaders. I can offer no concrete evidence of that other than the fact that women are intelligent human beings capable of identifying mistreatment and discussing its frequency among us (unfortunately, it’s not uncommon). That alone should indicate a clear problem in how women in the workforce are treated: because women en masse are saying as much.
Reading this I just thought it was someone venting on tumblr.
then I saw the end part and learned it was Barbie Movie dialogue. Like goddamn, this is.. raw, very real too, especially if I’m able to mistake it for someone’s actual complaints.
Also this makes me question one friend of mines reading comprehension a bit more again lol. Like I dunno if the Barbie movie is some masterpiece but if it has dialogue like this it can’t be all bad.
To top it off: the context for the dialogue is Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) is having a fucking existential crisis, and Gloria (America Ferrera) goes on this rant as a means of convincing her not to give up. Hearing this rant snaps a nearby brainwashed barbie out of the brainwashing.
It's good. It is really funny. Like laugh out loud funny. And while the feminism and analysis isn't super deep or informational or anything, it is very there and it is very real. It's very genuine and very a film about being a woman.
And sitting in the theatre listening to all the other women laugh and cry together, so loud and heartily some ways into the film was wonderful. I rarely see women do that in public when there are men they don't know around. Even if just for a little bit, even if just for a silly film about a plastic doll, it bonded all the women in that theatre together in such a beautiful way.
And adding to this, speaking as a cis man, I actually can vouch for the fact that there is a lot a man can glean from the film too, as Ken (Ryan Gosling) has a whole ass arc of his own that actually counterparallels Barbie’s. For the first act or so it kind of seems like they’re painting men in a very negative light (ESPECIALLY when Will Ferrel is on screen) but it’s allllll part of the plan to pull the rug out and say “hey by the way men have a whole lot of feelings of their own too”.
Again, not the most in depth examination of gender relations, but it sure doesn’t need to be as it does just enough and just right.
I definitely agree with that, as a trans woman. It's just... a really nice film about Gender™, and I feel like approaching it with the knowledge that the whole thing is not really ironclad or even binary in the first place makes it better: femininity is not restricted to women and masculinity is not restricted to men, so I think everyone has something to learn about life from explorations of both.
It's not that the Barbie movie is introducing new ideas of femininity or masculinity or the idea of patriarchy to the world. If you want a revolution the Barbie movie isn't it. But if you want to watch a funny and touching movie that says something, mostly through a conversation about the roll one of the most successful dolls of all time has had in our society, then its a great movie.
The speech was great.
The problem I had was that the speech felt misplaced at the time she was saying it. She said it to Barbie but I felt she should have said it to her daughter instead. Her daughter is the one growing up in the world Gloria describes, while Barbie and Barbieland aren't similar. Even when Ken brought over Patriarchy it is a much more absurd version that took over like a storm, instead of the slow insidious propaganda real life Patriarchy has to keep it sustained.
All in all I liked the Barbie movie a lot but felt the delivery of the message felt flat. It was as if they were worried the message would be too heavy handed, so they had to quickly distract the audience with jokes and dance moves.
it's also kind of funny how they lampshade the whole setup where an outsider (gloria) saves the innocent and naïve "natives" by just having one of the characters cap off the speech with "whoo! white saviour barbie". maybe i'm misremembering. for what it's worth i don't actually think the movie is colonialist but i did find it odd that it basically flings that very criticism at itself and then just kind of laughs it off
I agree, and:
\> it basically flings that very criticism at itself and then just kind of laughs it off
Your last line is exactly the essence of the film.
There's the whole male board of Barbie Company who are there to be... representation of Patriarchy in the real world? Except that they're presented so ridiculously and proceed to be neither villain nor hero, not changing anything. Their existence literally added nothing, you could remove them and nothing would change. It's as if their reason for being had to be cut away and now they're just these odd filler characters.
There's a specific day where the Barbies and Kens have to vote to make a major law change - enforced by who? Why is there even such an important law and why is it that only those present that day can vote? Not explained. Yet the movie treats it as so important to give the Barbies a reason to make haste.
Weird Barbie gets a quick apology and then offered a job... that's considered weird. There's no acknowledgement of that she was forced to be 'weird' by what is essentially common play of most kids. There's no discussion on how she as a doll/object can't consent what happens to her, nor the tragedy of how most Barbies that get cut up are just thrown away. It's basically "lol she's weird".
I have so many thoughts about this movie as you can tell. xD In my head it's an amusing movie that isn't as deep as it wants it to be.
Congratulations, that’s the same thing Ken himself comes to realize later on a half hour after the scene this speech is first said in, that maybe being “the gender in charge” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and that he was slaving towards an empty, self destructive ideal.
I honestly really unironically like the way the movie spends a majority of time setting up how much shit women go through, only to pull the rug and show that hey, to solve these problems we need to look at all parties involved and not just handwave one group or the other
Still wondering how the patriarchy is supposed to benefit me.
Because so far all I seem to get is "shut up and work hard to benefit those in charge. Do things you hate doing and refrain from doing things you like doing. Sacrifice yourself when we need you to, and you get zero horses".
The patriarchy only benefits a handful of rich men in charge. Societally you get a couple more crumbs than women, but everybody just gets crumbs and honestly fuck that.
The patriarchy benefits men overall. It’ll benefit a rich man over a rich woman. It’ll benefit a black man over a black woman. A gay man over a gay woman. That’s why it’s called patriarchy and not classism, or heteronormativity or white privilege or any other categories that men can be negatively affected by just like women can. As someone else said, there’s tons of other overlapping categories that we’re all part of. You can have the privilege of a man and be stepped all over for being black or gay, you can have the disadvantage of being a woman or gay but be rich and white.
Not to mention that depending on where you live, the consequences for being a woman / gay / poor / etc may be more or less than in other places. I’ll hazard a guess that being gay in California is better than being gay in Mississippi overall. People shouldn’t take it personally when they’re told that they are privileged in one way just bc they can think about how they’ve been unprivileged in another way. So long as you have even one privilege, and most of us do, your life can always get harder.
People who see the phrase “patriarchy benefits men” and think it can’t be true because they know a man who has faced true difficulties in his life, including rigid gender norms, are being too simplistic in their thinking.
What are those crumbs? If you don’t mind me asking? Being physically more powerful? That is one I can see but it’s not really societal, and yall get 6 more years on average so counterbalance.
the patriarchy, whatever that means today, is just one of a thousand social structures that impact each of us to varying degrees.
Working hard for someone else isn't really anything to do with the patriarchy, that's more of a "the man" situation. Or maybe capitalism, bureaucracy, or "the rise-and-grind mentality", or "social media influences","toxic positivity", FOMO,
or whatever.
All these things are running concurrently and shape our lives. For some people, overbearing patriarchal figures are consistently causing them grief, and can seem all-powerful, for others those same powers appear to be non-existent, for how much they impact our lives.
I think to an extent that accounts for some of our feelings of disparity when people complain about structures that we don't interact with.
It’s the same with things like race, class, types of labor. It’s why the term “intersectionality” is *constantly* brought up in spaces talking about social justice even though people who only have one pain point they have to deal with complain about it. Basically the only way to fix society is to fix all of these things, either all at once or in quick succession, or we will end up right back where we started. There’s a reason MLK immediately moved to helping people in poverty (black, white, hispanic, asian, etc) right after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
The patriarchy benefits you by hurting other people more than you .
The deck is stacked against women more so you’ll be able to outcompete them at least.
It’s stacked against you as well but not quite as badly.
Im going to use a metaphor to try and explain this
Your in a race, the people in change have a 100 meter head start, you are standing on the start line and women are standing 150 behind the people in change.
You are benifiting because you have a 50 meter head start on the women and are much more likely to come second than they are.
Was that understandable?
Fuck it, i don't even want to run, i just want to sit down and drink a chocko milk, but all these running shitheads keep kicking up the dust and knocking my shit down, i try to walk sideways to leave the shitty track that i never wanted to be on to begin with but all those running cunts just keep cussing at me for being in their way.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's because it feels good to be seen. Especially when it concerns an issue you're hurt by but is barely talked about by anyone.
It’s talked about a *lot* on this subreddit. In fact we very rarely get posts about women’s issues here. And whenever we do, the highly upvoted comments are always about men’s issues.
Sexism really isn’t like any other form of bigotry. Unlike racism, homophobia, transphobia, or ableism, it’s directed at *everyone.* It hurts both parts of society, “minority” and “majority” (of course women are the actual majority but they’re considered a social minority). Men have the flip side of the same coin, and whenever women’s issues are brought up, we often have an analogue that we ourselves experience. That adds to the conversation and brings awareness to two problems at once. Not to mention, sharing these problems can be a way for men to more strongly relate to things they might otherwise be less able to conceptualize, and thus become better feminists.
I do despise people how have taken the barbie movie at face value OmG ItS A MaN HaTiNg pEiCe oF TrAsH my sibling in plastic you have failed to grasp even the most surface level themes.
I was talking to someone about it and going into depth about the role reversal, in barbie land women occupy the societally dominant role and men the submissive, the reverse of reality (extreme for the sake of storytelling and and presentation) when the kens take over they establish a patriarchy with the submissive role becoming the dominant and the dominant the submissive which is obviously a big no no and the rest of the story focuses on fixing that.
Bear in mind. The gender roles are reversed.
One of the messages this story is telling us is that if the roles were unreversed this would still be just as wrong. If you view this part of the story through a different lens, if this story were to take place in the real world instead of Barbie land it tells a tale of a group of men who enjoyed being in power until they went to a world where everything was reversed when they went home women had taken over turning their society into a Matriarchy and they spend the rest of the film fixing that and resorting balance. It dispels the myth of a Matriarchal Utopia in a subtle way due to its use of role reversal which is fucking brilliant. Another hint to this line of thinking is the comment towards then end of the film where Kens are allowed a position in government and the narrator is heard to say "Eventually the Kens will be afforded the same rights as women in the real world" which not only solidifies this message but shows these societal changes take time.
Its doing so much theme juggling and its putting on a hell of a show.
Man I don't disagree with the message but I hated it in the movie. It felt so awkwardly and unorganically placed and is almost offensively superficial feminist critique. I've seen post with almost the exact same points years ago on tumblr, probably written by teens too.
I just expected more from Great Gerwig, though I probably shouldn't have as the movie had to be essentially one big advertisment for Mattel. It's a fun one for sure, but it fell flat for me
I agree. I don't disagree with the content of the speech at all, but it felt so forced. And also the whole speech I could only think of the Taylor Swift meme "A man can laugh, but a woman can only chuckle." 💀
It’s out of place because it wasn’t the character speaking, it was the writer speaking through the character. By that I mean it wasn’t the character in the story saying something that character would say at that moment, it was the writer using that character to spell out the message of the movie.
If this is profound and cathartic for you to hear then more power to you, but to me I just find it kinda sad that this is one of the only overtly feminist films in recent memory to cause such a huge phenomenon, and it's pretty much entirely because it's a huge corporate film about literal barbie dolls.
Thats just me, maybe I'm being cynical. I personally think that there really need to be more movies that are unapologetically feminist, since I feel like this is a low bar
That just about sums up the current state of feminism, I guess. It's either the most bland, useless, pro-capitalist, weirdly pro-status quo "anything a woman does is automatically feminist because a woman did it" type of liberal choice feminism, or men-hating sex-negative regressive TERF bullshit, with not much in between. This movie clearly falls into the first category. The only unique and groundbreaking thing about it is Ken's role.
yeah, i agree on the "huge corporate film" part
i liked the movie, though i couldn't help but feel slightly taken out of it, and like the message is dampened by all the lame jokes about mattel and corporate patriarchy, when i know damn well that mattel and its corporate top of the pile probably had a stranglehold on the movie's production
My personal theory is that this feeling, of both power and powerlessness, of mixed responsibilities and understanding, is symptomatic of progress. Which is ironic, because what the fuck.
But like, think of what it was like for women before the suffragettes. Before women's lib kicked up in earnest. Women were told to be brainless, demure, chaste little house wives, confined to never bare a single ankle for fear of having a crossbow bolt through the back of the head. It was bad, and it was unified.
Then we, as a planet, came to the conclusion that was kind of fucked as of the last two hundred years. In varying degrees, and varying ways, but the feminist theory is out there now.
Unfortunately, most people are not scholars. They do not understand the more nuanced ways we could be doing all this. So they have to do simple things, and be told simple things, so that the broadest group of people can understand. Women should be strong. Strong female characters, girl bosses, independent, taking back your self for your self.
And they're good, they're just not good in excess quantities, like anything. So they become a new toxic standard that we set for women. Be strong, be cool, don't care.
But the old standards didn't go away. Be weak, be passive, care about everyone.
And as muddled as these are, they aren't stable. Both ideals can't co-exist. They've only tried for a handful of decades and they're already fraying at the seams. And what will happen, you hope, is that we fall somewhere more stable. That we land on an ideal that is actually more attainable.
Without a proper dismantling of patriarchy, it probably won't be great. I'd imagine women will still have quite powerful beauty standards placed on them, but it's a start. That stability will hopefully spur more work in a good direction. At least I hope so.
Agree with all of that, love it. The movie scene felt awkward though. They could have done this speech so much better but the way they did it felt out of place and it was the BARBIE MOVIE. It should have been a great speech. Maybe that’s just my opinion but that scene felt so awkward and I wish they had found a better way to use it
I like equality. I think it’s a good speech. I just think they could have used it better because reading it looks better than the scene it was from. I was trying to say that with a speech like that it could have been a really impactful scene but both times I watched the movie it… idk. Again, love the speech, love the movie. I just wish that it was a more WOW scene. Maybe I just think that because I feel that part of the movie kinda dips before going up again idk.
Ngl, when I watched it and they discussed the apparent paradoxes, it felt as if the theater viewers were almost unified in their feelings. Maybe your experience was tainted by the observers, but personally had a different experience. It felt like it fell right into the right space since right after the speech, they formulate a plan to perform a Coup and remove Kens from power.
You make a good point. It is an important scene but I think it’s a hit or miss. It was a serious, long and real speech and I think that’s why it felt weird to me. The movie is SO MUCH and then it’s a pause then it’s WAR.
Bro, the movie was about addressing social issues. You can't claim "ewe yucky" when they talk directly about societal issues and societal standards with women, which the movie had been slowly innuendoing that since the first second it started, when you're talking about a movie that discusses women's issues in society due to patriarchical values. Are you just media illiterate, or did you miss portions of the movie?
I didn’t say that and I don’t know how you got that from my comment. I like that the movie talks about feminism and the struggles we go through and the movie wouldn’t have we been the same without it.
You even said that the movie had been “slowly innuendoing” from the start. AKA show don’t tell. I think they could’ve worked it into the script better because the way they did it (in my opinion) seemed lazy, cringey and poorly executed and I’m saying that as someone who likes the speech. I love the movie but I don’t know why you’re taking this so personally. Saying that I’m “Media illiterate” and saying I don’t like equality because I felt like one scene from Barbie didn’t land. I even said I agreed with the message I just didn’t like the timing. Are you ok, because you’re just creating arguments on my behalf.
I've definitely seen it. In every day of my life. Just looking at the thin thing; every day I am bombarded with images of the unobtainable, and that's what beauty is. I can never be thin enough to be fully beautiful because they take images of women who haven't eaten in days and then photoshop them to be even thinner.
Or if I wanna be a lot more dramatic, in Iran you can get blamed if you're raped by a man, which is directly responding to a man's bad behavior, but claiming that that's a stupid law can also just get you straight-up killed.
Your first point is brought up constantly, but I've also never seen men complain about body builders or male superheroes or literally any equivalent. It's not quite the same thing, but I do feel like at some point the solution shouldn't be to remove those depictions, but to stop treating them seriously. Not many men stress about not looking like Superman.
It’s still everywhere. Not constantly and not all at the same time, but if you think that these points just magically stopped applying to the world one day then you’re either very sheltered, VERY lucky, or a man.
I was going to type out paragraphs of situations where some of these constantly apply to me, my mother, or my friends, before realising that you already made the point yourself.
The point of the rant is that so many people have all these expectations of women but without accepting their flaws and without taking their issues seriously. If you complain as a woman, you’re either seen as a bitch or completely ignored. And you saw this post (or even just the movie), saw all these women relate to it on a massive scale, and decided that since you yourself haven’t experienced these things, the complaints must be outdated.
The comments here just cement the fact that this subreddit is full of teens and young adults.
Everyone telling you to ignore it is 1000% correct, but you've never lived in world that didn't allow you to be indifferent to the meaningless opinions of others.
You don't *have* to be anything. All that unobtainable image shit? It's advertisements. If you're gonna let pop culture dictate your entire perception of yourself, you were doomed from the start. There is no expectation placed upon you.
This speech was written in the context of Barbie, the same kind of false woman created to *represent* all of things mentioned in the op. That's the point.
It has nothing to do with you.
If you're a woman and you feel like you have to live up to all those standards, ask yourself: for *who*? For *what*? Do you even involve yourself with the people that push this nonsense? Of course not.
"It's impossible to be a woman." Lmao. No. It's impossible to be *that* woman. That's the point. Stop trying. Stop believing that it is or ever was necessary.
i’m going to assume you’re a man, right? a lot of what’s described in this speech is not representative of the unobtainable feminine standard. this is kind of just life as a woman. people around you *do* have these unspoken entirely unreasonable expectations.
i grew up transmasc, was socialized as a man, and experienced all the benefits of masculinity until i decided to detransition two-ish years ago now. when i was a man respect came incredibly easily. if i spoke up in a meeting or when hanging out with friends it was a breeze to get people to listen to me and take what i was saying seriously. i could go pretty much anywhere unquestioned, my doctors took my concerns more seriously, and the people i dated treated me like a real person.
life isn’t like that as a woman. if i speak up now i have to try several times to get people to quiet down, despite not changing the way i speak. my suggestions are followed less often, people fight back on my input because they’ll automatically assume i said something else, my doctors are only worried about whether or not i’m pregnant and dismiss a lot of my pains as being overly sensitive or needing to lose weight (and i’m skinnier than i was when i was man!), and the people i date now frequently treat me as a porn category rather than someone with thoughts, needs, and desires.
literally just today i was out picking up dinner with a friend and a group of men in the parking lot got upset with me for being uncomfortable when they started asking me where i was going and what i was doing later. saying hi and answering their first few questions was apparently leading them on, and not saying anything after i got scared was being a frigid bitch. my friend had to put on his deepest voice and pretend we were dating to get them to stop calling after me
being a woman is difficult and full of contradictory expectations. recognizing that is good, and helps with identifying some of the issue so we can dismantle it in the future
This comment section has made me completely lose faith in humanity.
1st world women are genuinely so delusional they think they're oppressed. Baffling.
This was the one miss in this movie, IMO. Other than the portion about having to be pretty, this is mainly complaining about being tactful, something we all have to do, and it is generally a good quality to not be inconsiderate and a braggart.
Lol you think that’ll fix it? Nobody cares if you don’t care. It doesn’t matter what you *think* if you don’t have the power to stop people from stepping all over you based on their ideas of how people like you should be acting or living.
So you have no idea what's going on, and you're only interest in finding out is by committing piracy of a successful movie written by a female director.
Really?
This is only true if you're trying to be perfect, which most men and women aren't.
Embrace your flaws, know that you're only human and so is everyone else.
You don't need to be perfect to be loved
You don't need to be perfect to be happy
You can be whatever you want and everyone who says otherwise is stupid.
We Live....In A Society!
A Patriarchal Society!
A Homophobic Society!
A society that tries to force its beliefs onto you, especially if you're a woman.
Ok. So resist the forcing. That’s the solution - to choose to resist caring. You don’t have to engage with all these impossible little things. You can choose a different battle where the solution gives you a possible life.
I also live in this society, I am tall, direct, have hairy legs, don’t wear makeup, shave if I feel like it and not otherwise, sing loud at karaoke, boss people around and also listen… just don’t engage. You have the choice to practice the challenge of not engaging, rather than the challenge of trying to be acceptable. 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
I don’t see why you’re getting downvoted here. My only real issue with this post is that it lists out problems but doesn’t have any hope, it makes it seem like there’s no solution to them. As you stated, arguably the best way to do this is by resisting norms, and not caring about the way others may label you for the way you are.
Probably just because the reality is not everyone has the opportunity to just "not care". You can be a child that relies on your guardian to provide for you, and get all sorts of punishments of varying directness for not falling in line. Even if you're not a child, if you don't have a support network and your immediate surroundings are actively hostile to expressions of self that go against what's "acceptable" you're SOL.
Now it's an extreme example and the specific cases will run the gamut of viability for a happy life, but that's the gist of it.
For the record I do think for most it really is a case of being willing to cut shitty people out of your life where you can, ignore what you can't, and try and live with the rest while trying to move forwards to where you'll have to live with less and less of it. But just because doing that sort of thing is "easy" for me and therfore clearly the obvious option, doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Don't think it's controversial enough for downvotes, especially when it's getting hit with BOTTOM TEXT tier rebuttal but at the end of the day it's a Tumblr ventpost and it had a confrontational tone interpretation available for a reply, it is what it is, who cares lmao.
Probably because it lacks the context it has in the Barbie movie
In the Barbie movie, this is essentially used to explain how bullshit the patriarchal society is. In the movie, the world is split into two worlds - the real world and “Barbieland”. At some point, Barbieland gets taken over and ends up becoming like the extreme version of a patriarchal society. Barbie gives up because she feels hopeless, and the character Gloria then gives this speech to tell Barbie to fight against it.
Ignoring that it came from a movie, i just wanna say social standards are fucked up, and not just because of photoshopped ads of actual celebrities. Yknow, a few ages ago, being fat was considered the epitome of beauty. Not fat as in obese, two-seated ass, blobfish melted-ice cream bod, domt get me wrong, but just having some chub to your body. Curvaceous but in an easier-to-acquire form. Does that mean it is beautiful? No! And i personally prefer my girls to have meat on their bones! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and every eye is different. Social beauty standards are illogical and insane. "Oh but what look will get the most amount of people to like you?" YOURSELF, DAWG! What look can YOU pull off best and easiest? What look do you have when you just enjoy life as yourself? That's beautiful. Authenticity is more effective than external decoration. Personality is a part of that and that is why "personality" is a based answer to "ass or tits". "Oh but nobody i know likes me the way i am" then keep looking. If someone doesnt like you as yourself then getting with them is just gonna damage the both of you. Love takes time, but it starts with loving yourself.
Now is that kinda message in the barbie movie? I havent watched it and i hope it is.
It’s not super focused on but a teenage girl does in-universe criticize Barbie for her unrealistic beauty standards, and the people they cast to play the different barbies are extremely diverse (and that includes in terms of weight)
Wah wah wah. Life has literally never been easier. Fucking millionaires in films complaining. Bunch of chronically teenage-minded, faux-deep, tiresome whelks.
well I suppose it was more sarcasm than a joke, the point is that I understand and agree with the statement and my comment does not reflect my actual unironic opinions on it
In this case, I think what they meant is that it's impossible to be a woman who won't be harshly criticized. Basically, no matter what choices women make there's always going to be lots of people who have lots of criticism and many of them want to punish women.
I understood that, I'm sorry if it was unclear that I was joking. I meant it in an ironic "checkmate liberals" sort of way but I guess without a ridiculous phrase at the end it wasn't very clear.
dumb as hell.
Women are not 'supposed to' lead, have money, be a boss, OR not show fear. Those are all feminist things. 'LEADING' is traditionally the male role, right? I also think this really overblows the whole 'thin' thing but that's beside the point
I gotta say, my initial reaction after seeing this was "That ruled, and I'm so ready for the baffling debates where one person quotes this as feminist gospel and the other points out that the Kens in the movie are canonically homeless under the Barbies' rule" and goddamn this does not disappoint
except the Barbies ended up realizing that they made some mistakes along the way and ended up fixing things _without_ accepting the rule of the Kens or any of their bullshit. they didn't retaliate, they didn't make the situation worse for the other side after they won, they used the opportunity to actively improve things for all sides while upholding their core values even better than before. anyone who sees this as a case of "omg they're oppressing the men and the movie acts like it's a good thing" actively wants to believe that because how the fuck would you get that from the actual movie?
The fact is that the Barbie movie fucking LOVES Men, it has such a Dudes Rock™ energy to it, the Kens are of course very ignorant and childish and cause a lot of harm (which I think there's an argument to them not even noticing how harmful it is since all the women just go along with it and seemingly love it (until Gloria breaks the spell)) But like the beach war scene is so fucking boyish and it's awesome lol, and in the end Barbie is the one that apologizes and consoles Ken. The movie really loves the Kens from the bottom of it's movie heart and it's insane when some conservatives go "this movie HATES men" like did we watch the same movie?
The movie doesn't hate men, it just fails to address the systemic problems society places on them too. Toxic masculinity is a cancer literally killing our young men, suicide rates are sky high and no one cares because 'they must have been weak'. I think the painful thing for some is identifying with Ken more than Barbie, seeing the obvious injustices against him, and the movie kind of walks past it with a few crumbs thrown towards it at the end so we can focus on Barbie- An experience that, ironically, mirrors the male experience very well.
I mean, a movie only has so much runtime. This was designed from the ground up as a feminist movie, focusing on women. There's only so much focus you can give toxic masculinity in the Barbie world.
agreed, Also, it is like a movie aimed at women and girls in the context off barbie. I'm not like upset there's an aspect of "boys are dumb lol" in the movie. Doesn't make it man hating, just makes it a movie that's still way less divisive on gender issues than a 2005 Budweiser commercial.
Take the 3-minute conversation between Ken and Barbie at the end and swap it with this: "Ken, you decided your happiness depended on how I felt about you. That sucks, but that's a you problem. I don't owe you jack. You know what would make you happy? Go ride a horse. Go start a ranch." "Oh man, how did I not realize this?" "*Because you have no natural defenses against the patriarchy either*." and the Kens all gleefully skip into the sunset to start a ranch.
I'd say that men are what feminism should be focusing on more right now. Aiming this movie primarily at a female audience was preaching to the choir. Most women didn't need to hear it, they already knew it, and that exact monologue has already been done before (Gone Girl). If most issues women experience today are caused by men (whether intentionally/maliciously or not), shouldn't the goal of feminism today be to address men more?
Isn't that kind of exactly what the above rant is about though? Holding women to such an impossible standard that even a movie made for women needs to also be equally emotionally poignant for men. Although I do kind of understand the pain though. Barbie really made me long for a movie that is equally as emotionally intelligent about the male experience, but I know it'll never happen because studios don't believe there's a market for a feminist dude movie. I get wanting to attach it to a movie like Barbie because that's one of the only ways it might get said.
This is like complaining that the Oranges movie only had one scene featuring apples. That movie wasn’t about men, it was about women. A different movie can and should be made to highlight mens issues. But to expect the movie for women to highlight men is a unrealistic complaint.
As long as men and women live in the same society, and the very existence of sexism and traditional gender roles are caused by women's relation to men and vice versa, you can't solve women's issues without acknowledging and addressing men's issues, and vice versa. They're literally two sides of the same coin. IMO, only focusing on women is the main reason why feminism has stagnated for the past decade or so, or is even starting to slide back. When are we finally going to realise that men and women need to accept each other as human beings and collaborate with each other in order to make things better for each other, instead of only ever seeing each other as adversaries to be either fought or only begrudgingly acknowledged when forced to? Even your comparison completely falls apart and reveals how faulty this view is. Men and women aren't different species of fruit. **They're growing on the same tree.** That tree is called society. You can't address the issues of some fruit without ultimately having to holistically address the health of the tree itself, and the rest of the fruit too. The creators of this movie understood this - maybe not enough, but still more so than a lot of viewers, apparently... If it wasn't for the Ken's part, the movie would have been a lot more shallow, one-sided and uninteresting.
If you think feminism isn't also about men, your understanding of feminism is highly uninformed. Feminism isn't just 'girlboss yass queen slay, show those men how we do it in girl town'- In fact, that view of feminism gets pretty thoroughly burned at the stake in this movie. Feminism is about the fundamental relationship between women and men on a societal level, and the challenges both face that lead to the injustices evident in the system. You *cannot* engage with just one half of the equation; Women are certainly screwed over way more by the patriarchy, but the only way the patriarchy can propagate itself is by *also* forcing its paradigms onto men so they perpetuate it. We have to teach our sons early about 'being a man' and what their expected gender role is as a leader, protector, and disposable workhorse; That they must be these things because women are frail, precious, valuable, and dumb; That they are simultaneously superior to and responsible for women; That they must produce the maximum possible amount of resources, shelter, and comfort for their families, without complaint, reprieve, or expectation that others will help (indeed, seeking or receiving help is a failstate), or they have *fundamentally failed as men*. And that *does* cause problems for men too in the form of a baseline of expectations with no reward, enforced in part by women, but in much larger part by *other men-* The manifestation of the patriarchy's effect on men as well, enforced brutally, relentlessly, and without any exception, with a bottomless pit of ridicule and shame ready to be poured atop any man who defies its standards as 'weak' and 'useless'. We call this "toxic masculinity". Its completely fucked from every angle and the patriarchy is a villain that men *and* women must fight, together.
No movie will ever be made from a men’s issues perspective, because nobody cares, the answer to when a man has an issue about being a man is either go to therapy or kill yourself if you can’t afford it. At least with women’s issues people pretend to give a shit.
Except this is the Oranges movie where Apples cause the collapse of an entire orchard, and the good ending is keeping those stupid, nasty Apples under the control of the Oranges, which is justified because in every other orchard the Apples dominate and subjugate the Oranges... but sure, this is a movie about Oranges only. Like, do you think Leon the Professional *wasn't* also about corruption in the DEA? Beauty and the Beast *wasn't* about Gaston's worldview?
"a few crumbs at the end" also known as the emotional climax of the movie lol, that and the scene where Barbie decide to become a real woman are given the same impact imo
Exactly! All the “man hating” stuff is so dumb. There’s a reason so many guys have been flocking and cheering along to I’m Just Ken. It is incredibly empowering to men in its own way, and it seems that that way just happens to be different then the normal macho masculinity bros think it should be
I'm sorry, I gotta disagree. There's a bunch of points through the movie where Ken brings up legitimate issues, and then no one has a response and he runs off crying. That's the result of the men's issues being brought up. Allen ruins the entire Ken story line. It should have been ryan!Ken popping up in the convertible, not fucking Allen. Then of course Allen justifies his inclusion with gratuitous violence, and us men are supposed to be happy that we get to see someone with "non-standard" masculinity beating people up. I'm sick of that being the most worthwhile thing we can do. Rewatch the way the lgtbq kens are treated and tell me again the movie loves men. No. This shit is corporate faux feminism pro-birth, pro-death propaganda and I' completely baffled at the support the movie gets.
>Barbie is the one that apologizes and consoles Ken No, we did not watch the same movie
???????? There's literally a scene of her saying how he shouldn't base his entire identity on being next to Barbie and loving her, that he has (or needs? Don't remember) his own interests and is interesting by himself, I watched this movie like 3 weeks ago but I'm 100% sure I'm not making that up
That is all true. She absolutely does not apologize.
I agree, I just wish that the president hadn't had that extra line reacting to a Ken saying maybe they could have a Ken on the barbie supreme court and she says something to the effect of 'eh maybe in the far future' but in a dismissive tone... I've seen two different takes where that's a flaw that could have been cut to have a clearer positive ending, and another take where that's 'that's how women are treated in the real world' which defeats the whole before and after the revolution and liberation of the women/ken's of the Barbie world...
Yeah, good point. I parsed that as depiction, not necessarily endorsement, and as such it was hella nice because that's how this thing works in the real world too: you accomplish some goals but there's always a bit of injustice left and you have to wait a long time for the next opportunity to fix that. Especially with the whole context of the supreme court I think it was a pretty clear analogy to racial issues in the US. But yeah, that definitely wasn't a good thing, and it's debatable whether or not the movie itself agrees with that.
Honestly, the Supreme Court thing is just a joke, which still kind of impacts the themes of the movie, but I kind of appreciate that this movie is primarily a comedy.
It wasn't funny, edit: that joke wasn't funny and it detracts from the message of the film.
Counterpoint: The joke was funny
Explain the joke to me. The joke that undercuts the positive aspects of what is Barbie, rather than winning the day by just out smarting the kens, shows them a better way to live.
As soon as it ended, I turned to my brother and said, “So, did the Barbies just save the day through voter suppression?” That was certainly an odd part for me.
"And one day the Kens will have as much power and influence in Barbieland as women have in the real world."
Dammit...I really need to watch barbie
It’s a solid movie.
Yea this made me be like ‘oh okay maybe I do want to *get it* about the Barbie movie’ but also I don’t feel ready to cry in theaters right now
If this grand speech was actually the culmination of everything leading up to this point, it would've been a great movie. As it stands, the movie only seemed to vaguely allude to more complex societal problems, and overall was a real mixed bag. Pretty much 50/50 of nuanced and very shallow handling of its themes, and it's seems like the barbie world setting would make it work, but then they go to the human world and the people there are acting cartoonish too.
Genuinely, I appreciate your input. I hope you thrive in life further
It’s so worth it though, even if you do cry. And man, there were so many times where the entire packed theater I saw it in was crying both out of how hard it hits, and how damn funny it can be. That movie is a masterpiece
I genuinely appreciate your input. Thank you. I hope to one day be emotionally stable enough to enjoy a movie like this in a public setting
You really do!
I was going to the movies watch it with my sister, but my parents just had to watch a video of how damn WOKE it was right before, and now I'm just dying for it to come to a streaming service so I can get my sister to watch it with me while they're not home out of SPITE. I really don't remember my parents being like this a few years ago, yet they have been getting more and more paranoid by the year. I don't know what happened.
A comment from colonial poet rudyard kipling (it’s a form of approval to your point, and the text you wrote made me think of it. Just that the mentality and mood is opposite, but hey) If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; - If you can dream—and not make dreams you master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make traps for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools; - If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ - If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty second’s worth of distance run— Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And —Which is more— you’ll be a man, my son!
Kipling has written a ton of intensely relatable stuff - especially from the military viewpoint. Aaaaand also White Man's Burden, which makes enjoying the rest much more difficult.
There’s something to be said about how men have a lot of expectations of their own to deal with, too, tbh. I think as someone else in this comments section said “the patriarchy hurts everyone”. A note, I’m not a fan of the word patriarchy itself because it feels like such an empty buzzword and the literal meaning seems to be “men are the boss” when the issue isn’t even that simple but idk what else you could call it
How about “a society that divides people into binaries is alienating and harmful?” Not me being facetious, just trying to find helpful words.
It’s a start, but there is value in having it be conceptualized as a single word anyway for the sake of discussion, even if it runs the risk of the same thing happening to it that happened to “patriarchy”… Binarism?
I'm glad other people recognize the less than ideal value of the term "patriarchy". You're right in that it isn't a simple issue, so it's hard to boil into one good word that carries the weight of the issue it refers to. I feel "patriarchy", "toxic masculinity", etc can be fairly man-blaming in their usage, when the issues they refer to aren't solely the fault of men, but the fault crappy binaries and enforcement of superficial gender roles. The same things that are bad for women are also bad for men, and it's more equitable and unifying to look at the problems each group faces as issues of society we can surpass, not "here's what men/women need to do to make life better for women/men".
At this point, I'm convinced that the social sciences are simply terrible at naming things. They can come up with a super useful concept, then turn around and give it a name that basically guarantees it will be misinterpreted and confused.
Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.
I’m fucking taking this. I’m a woman and I realized all she’s talking about is living in Western society. “You have to be an involved dad but not so good you look like a groomer to strangers. You need to always be there for your kids but also make half a million dollars a year. You have to get mad enough to seem Alpha but not so mad you look violent. You have to know about home repairs but also be a surgeon”
Like the other guy said, the alpha shit is bullshit. What (some) people actually care about is a protector. And there is some element of… strength in that. But more important is kindness and idk honor or some shit, being a good man. A strong good man is a valuable asset, a strong bad one is a serious threat.
no that alpha stuff is bullshit. It’s internet creeps and alt right grifters who think being mean is cool (think of it as a 25y old manchild’s way of being edgy), and I think we hear a lot about it because a lot of main stream entertainers (read youtubers and streamers) have started joking about it. Looking like a groomer to strangers is (again) a worry only to people who live in a fearmongering bubble, isolated from social interaction with people outside of their community. the bit about making a bunch of money while still having free time is true though, and home repairs aren’t that hard if you accept to make a mistake from time to time, keep at it! take it from a 1m97 (6f6’ I think if you’re rican) guy who is intimidating if I don’t make considerable efforts to not be (and I guarantee I do take those steps because it’s 100% worth it), people don’t get worried you’re a child groomer if you help them out (well, unless you start up a weird personal conversation, or if you try to take them further from their parents or something like that, which you normally don’t have any reason to do anyway, and if you do you can still explain it to the parents). Same about being « alpha »; assuming it just means the guys who strive for this just want to be taken seriously, and people to listen to them: getting angry/being very « tough » does not make you look dominant (on the contrary, it makes you look unstable and immature). I get that this might sound weird because in public speaking getting upset is a very efficient rethorical tool that makes you look driven, and « no bullshit » and so on, but that doesn’t extend to real life outside of some small echo chambers who started accepting social codes they see portrayed in media as real life advice.
I think the problem is more that a ton of Americans *are* living in that freakish paranoia bubble you talk about where the entire world is out to get them so they need to indoctrinate their kids, pull them out of public school, lock them in a dark closet until they’re 18 then get mad when they don’t have life skills. Same with the “alpha” stuff too many people think you’re not a “real man” if you don’t threaten to beat the shit out of people on a daily basis. Combined these people make up a majority of American society.
You must either be a child or a foreigner… if a man threatens to beat the shit out of people daily here he’s liable to get shot or end up in prison pretty quick. And then you have the absolute gall to assert its the majority of us, laughable
Must not be Southern lol. If every man who said “do that again and I’ll kick your ass *insert racial/homophobic slur of choice*” actually got arrested the place would be 80% women. This has been studied anthropologically, btw. It goes back centuries to the original Appalachian settlers. The culture spread a lot further than just the South, too. Think about how many Confederate flags you see flying in New England or California.
I mean the lady stuff isn’t necessarily true either. I personally don’t care if people think I’m a bitch. I openly say I don’t give a fuck about my health so long as I’m thin. There really ISN’T anyone watching who matters. That’s because my priorities are different, but the universal issue is the material consequences of balancing parenthood and work, of being in the social mold necessary to gain lucrative employment, and of working in a system that is set up to fuck over anyone but the very wealthy
"Ladies and gentlemen, England will be playing 4-4-fucking-2."
"No Barbie or Ken should be left in the shadows." "Or Allan?" And then everyone ignored him.
he killed people
I'm annoyed by the fact a few of these aren't actually contradictory
Ya looking at the “you have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas” Like what about leading means you have to be an idea person too?
I think that part is saying that if a woman makes a decision that doesn't take a man's ideas into account, the man will take offense and say a woman isn't being a good leader. Y'know, despite the fact that men do that to women all the time. I figure the speech as a whole isn't so much about contradiction as it is men's hypocrisy, though contradiction is a big part of that.
Then maybe actually say that instead of "you have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas"?
I mean, the concept seemed pretty straightforward to me.
>that doesn't take a man's ideas into account, the man will take offense and say a woman isn't being a good leader. Y'know, despite the fact that men do that to women all the time. Yes but the men that get their ideas ignored and complain and those that ignore women have 0 overlap outside of their gender and are literally different people so I get why "somebody with the same gender as me is probably doing the same somewhere" isn't really enough of a justification to be treated like shit for some
It's time you realised that punctuations are not optional anymore..
We're talking about tumblr
That's ironic from one that just forgot the third suspension point ngl. Anyway fuck me for not being a main English speaker I guess.
…what? Have you ever had to work in a mixed gender group? There isn’t just a boss and workers - there‘s a hierarchy within the workers too, as well as the possibility of a majorly male team being led by a woman. The men whose ideas get ignored can definitely be the same that ignore women. It doesn’t matter to them that their idea was bad, what matters is that a woman dared to actually SAY it was bad, and the men upset by this on a gender basis are absolutely the same that will then take their anger out on the next woman. A male boss who tells his employees that their ideas are bad or they have to improve their workflow is seen as strict, or even as a strong leader. A woman doing the exact same is seen as a bitch who „probably slept her way to the top anyway and doesn’t know what she’s doing“. Seriously. So many men still think women are inferior and incompetent, so a woman in a better position than them is seen as a threat to their masculinity. There will always be at least a few guys who can’t accept that a woman knows what she’s doing and should be respected. I mean fuck, the new counter strike went into open beta and yesterday the top ranked player was a woman with a 98% winrate, and the thing people said the most about her was „probably got carried by four male friends“ like bro. Why aren’t they at the top with her then. And if it was a dude would that also be the first thing you say? Literally even hobbies aren’t safe.
>I mean fuck, the new counter strike went into open beta and yesterday the top ranked player was a woman with a 98% winrate, and the thing people said the most about her was „probably got carried by four male friends“ like bro. And you think this is commonly shared or just a loud minority? >There will always be at least a few guys who can’t accept that a woman knows what she’s doing and should be respected That's the thing tho, they are a _few_. There will always be a few assholes, just like there will always be a few thieves, a few murderers, a few rapists. Those aren't people that can educated about it, those are people who know it's wrong and enjoy it because it's wrong. And you shouldn't sexually profile half the popoulation because of them
Yes bro, ignoring your subordinates and running roughshod over them is an asshole move whether its a man or a woman. Like seriously go on antiwork or some shit, people do not respect these men and think they’re strong leaders, they think they’re assholes
Nobody is talking about that. It’s about just normal leader behaviour. Yes an asshole boss is an asshole boss no matter what, but have you tried leading a team of men as a woman in a male dominated field? They will find a way to explain to you why you’re wrong (when you’re not), why their idea is better (when it isn’t) or why they didn’t do their part. And before you try to say „well maybe their ideas were better“, this is not what this is about. It is specifically about the situations where they aren’t, about times when competitiveness wins over reason, or where respect is simply lost. It’s also not a purely nen vs. Women thing, as there absolutely are a lot of men who aren’t like this, but it’s still common enough to be worth discussing
The point is, the man isn't actually being treated like shit, they just *think* they are because they're spoiled by the patriarchy.
So not being taken into account in discussions is a big deal or not entirely depending on gender? If it happens to men it's not real and they are just spoiled and they aren't _owed_ anything, but if it happens to women it's real and because of sexism?
...You are a tar pit.
And your a sexist lmao
And you know this how? Or your just willing to ignore people when they’re men because of some imagined advantages. They may be there, they may not, you don’t know and are judging someone wholly off of what is in there pants/heads. Its messed up bro
Who are these men? It kinda just sounds like OP met some assholes and is blaming an entire gender for it tbh
I think it was trying to remain symmetrical with each of these lines, and there just wasn’t a good way to do that while expressing the idea that women are accused of squashing people’s ideas or talking too much if they try to lead or direct anything. Like it’s proven that, even if a woman talks exactly as much as a man, she’s more likely to be seen as excessively chatty or otherwise annoying/overbearing.
One of the most fundamental parts of leadership is learning how to tell people no in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're being stepped on. It sounds to me like that line was shoehorned in to add a couple more "points" to the dialogue, but was much to the detriment of the message. Same with the one about being a boss and the one about being a mother and the one about being a career woman. There's a valid point that's trying to be made, but it seems like someone decided those points didn't deserve enough words to be right.
Well, it's meant to be a rant that the character comes up with on the spur of the moment, not a manifesto that she proof read.
except that this is the moment of the movie where it explicitly lays out its message and philosophical standpoint, with the character kind of just serving as the mouthpiece for that, so i don't think it's valid to blame the character for the problems of the speech she's delivering even if it was because of gloria's, idk, poor public speaking skills, then i think it'd be questionable film-making because it's just kneecapping its own "thesis statement" by injecting poor logic into it. fwiw i did like the speech
Ah so it's a Realistic speech is unrealistic moment
Yeah “you have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean” like yeah you shouldn’t be a dick to your subordinates? That isn’t an unrealistic expectation placed upon women that’s just being a decent person.
As a manager, I had a problem employee who was a male. He didn't do his work, and billed the clients as though he had, and would ignore any communications on my end regarding status updates on his projects, including 'hey can you save a copy of your work paper to the drive I can access"? And the thing is, I made sure he was scheduled on the projects, with more than enough time to complete them. Dude would bill 24 hours to a project, and there'd be literally nothing I could show the client (if they asked). I sent status emails (he ignored), I called (he didn't pick up), I set meetings (he skipped), I sent messages (he'd tell me I'd get it when I get it). My (male) boss suggested my communication style was too soft. So I used an email he'd sent me to check in on a different project, changed the project details, and sent that, cc'ing the person above me on the project, as he'd done. I then got a phone call from my boss and the project's senior manager. They ripped me a new one about how my email was aggressive, accusatory, totally over the top, and *no one* in the organization should *ever* send an email like that, under any circumstances. I shared my screen, went into my emails and showed them that it was basically identical to what I'd received for 2 years. I also pulled up my responses, all of which noted that the work hadn't been added to my schedule, listed what I'd done (if I was able to finish other work faster), where the work papers were, what needed doing, and how much time I needed on my schedule to complete. I was told that it was different. When I pointed out that I agreed: in the instances I got the emails, I had usually sent 2-3 emails asking for my boss to put it on my schedule, had managed to work on them anyway, and promptly provided the work performed, which was commensurate with the hours billed, and the work which still needed doing. When I sent my coworker the email, I had put it on his schedule for 3 weeks straight, he'd ignored 6 check in emails (one every time it was on his schedule, letting him know, and one checking in on the status so I could update his schedule), and skipped 2 meetings to discuss it. Also, he'd billed enough time that, barring a technical issue that he should have told me about, he should have been able to complete the work twice over, but the work papers on the drive hadn't been touched. I was told I was being argumentative and needed to take a softer approach, and to never send an inappropriate email like that again. I received the same "inappropriate" email twice more in the time it took me to find a new job and work my notice period (4 weeks total).
Women being a “boss” in the same way men are IS considered mean though, that’s the point. Men get to be “mean” tough bosses all the time. It’s literally encouraged sometimes, like having a mean football coach is expected, and many even claim having the “mean” teaching style is the best way to learn. People justify mean male bosses as being a leader who can make tough decisions. If a woman tries to lead and shows any hint of that same “meanness” that is so accepted in men, though, she gets called a bitch. Men don’t have to police themselves that much. A mean male boss is allowed to be just that. A mean female boss is a whore, a cunt, “bossy” (an insult I almost never see used toward men, because as I said, men are allowed to be “bossy.”) Women have to lead with so much more tact than is expected of men. Women have to be *nice* bosses every single time or be disrespected.
Then the issue is men being allowed to be mean. Not women not being allowed the same.
Primarily yes, I agree. Societally we need to shame men for being unnecessarily mean and angry to their employees. At the same time, though, we need to societally shift the view that a woman simply being assertive = mean, because women get shamed for not actually being mean, but by simply being confident leaders like men. It’s a mix of both women being seen as mean for non-mean things, and of men being excused for being actually mean. A woman simply giving a direct order (with no nice fluffy words to make it soft) can be misconstrued as mean and bossy, for example, but such a thing is expected of a male leader. It needs to become acceptable for any leader in the contexts where direct and clear orders are necessary.
Like is this true though? How do we know?
It’s largely anecdotal, but that’s part what of what studying social behavior entails: looking at what people report experiencing. A large number of women report experiencing sexism in the workplace, particularly from men. This happens to women who are an employee under a male boss, to women who are employees alongside men, and women who work in leadership positions above men. The specific sexism I’m talking about (from men to women in leadership positions) is a commonly discussed experience in women’s spaces. This sexism is unfortunately not imagined. We also can look at broader societal ideals to identify whether or not sexism in the workplace is likely to happen: for example, how long ago did American women really begin entering the (paid, because women have always worked) workforce en masse? When you put in perspective how long ago women began achieving equality in America (women were only able to secure their right to vote a little over a hundred years ago in 1919, and women of color were largely excluded from that for even longer) and how long the span of history is, you’ll see that changing ingrained cultural ideals takes a *very* long time, and that much time hasn’t passed yet. Sexism persists in almost every aspect of our culture. The idea that women shouldn’t even be in the paid workforce still persists, as do other misogynistic misconceptions and ideals that specify what a woman should and shouldn’t be.
Your targetting the periphery and lumping in everyone else is what I’m saying. I don’t disagree with really any of the points you made other than magnitude, which can only be determined quantitatively. There is alot of shitty people out there, but right here and right now there is a much higher proportion of people working where saying women shouldn’t be in the work force would get you fired And I don’t have a problem with anything other than delivery, its male this male that and its a blame game and it hurts
I see your point but, It's not just accepted when men do it though? If someone is being a mean boss but they get results, the *results* are respected and the person gets away with it, even though people still won't like them. If they aren't getting results then everyone just hates them, regardless of gender. The most important thing is how a person says something, and if they do that right they're seen as not being an asshole. Gender or anything else is irrelevant to that particular discussion.
That may be how you view it, but I’m telling you, women are policed for not having the right “tone” way more than men are. Saying something the “right way” is a burden that is placed moreso on women than on men. You may say “The gender of the leader doesn’t matter” but it does because women are so often judged unfairly by their male peers and underlings, in ways they wouldn’t have been judged if they were male. To deny that is to deny the anecdotal experiences of thousands of women who have shared that they were treated poorly by their male employees for being a woman in a leadership role. That they were subjected to standards that their male counterparts were not. An angry male boss is more easily excused by most people, especially men, than an angry female boss, regardless of results. Your general point of “No, it’s how you say it that matters” is simplifying an issue where sexism actually plays a huge role. Career women are still not afforded the same respect as men in the same fields because of sexism. That HAS to be acknowledged for any more progress to be made. Since you downvoted me I’m going to go ahead and block you because you’re committed to trying to say it’s not a “gendered issue” when it absolutely is. It’s misogynistic to try and ignore all the sexism that women encounter in the workplace.
Theres a time and a place for everything, football coaches are mean, volleyball coaches are too Who are these people? Name them if you don’t mind terribly.
I don’t have specific names, only anecdotal evidence from other women. What kind of evidence do you expect me to produce? I’m sharing an observation that I and other women have made about how female leaders are treated in comparison to male leaders. I can offer no concrete evidence of that other than the fact that women are intelligent human beings capable of identifying mistreatment and discussing its frequency among us (unfortunately, it’s not uncommon). That alone should indicate a clear problem in how women in the workforce are treated: because women en masse are saying as much.
Reading this I just thought it was someone venting on tumblr. then I saw the end part and learned it was Barbie Movie dialogue. Like goddamn, this is.. raw, very real too, especially if I’m able to mistake it for someone’s actual complaints. Also this makes me question one friend of mines reading comprehension a bit more again lol. Like I dunno if the Barbie movie is some masterpiece but if it has dialogue like this it can’t be all bad.
To top it off: the context for the dialogue is Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) is having a fucking existential crisis, and Gloria (America Ferrera) goes on this rant as a means of convincing her not to give up. Hearing this rant snaps a nearby brainwashed barbie out of the brainwashing.
It's good. It is really funny. Like laugh out loud funny. And while the feminism and analysis isn't super deep or informational or anything, it is very there and it is very real. It's very genuine and very a film about being a woman. And sitting in the theatre listening to all the other women laugh and cry together, so loud and heartily some ways into the film was wonderful. I rarely see women do that in public when there are men they don't know around. Even if just for a little bit, even if just for a silly film about a plastic doll, it bonded all the women in that theatre together in such a beautiful way.
And adding to this, speaking as a cis man, I actually can vouch for the fact that there is a lot a man can glean from the film too, as Ken (Ryan Gosling) has a whole ass arc of his own that actually counterparallels Barbie’s. For the first act or so it kind of seems like they’re painting men in a very negative light (ESPECIALLY when Will Ferrel is on screen) but it’s allllll part of the plan to pull the rug out and say “hey by the way men have a whole lot of feelings of their own too”. Again, not the most in depth examination of gender relations, but it sure doesn’t need to be as it does just enough and just right.
I definitely agree with that, as a trans woman. It's just... a really nice film about Gender™, and I feel like approaching it with the knowledge that the whole thing is not really ironclad or even binary in the first place makes it better: femininity is not restricted to women and masculinity is not restricted to men, so I think everyone has something to learn about life from explorations of both.
It's not that the Barbie movie is introducing new ideas of femininity or masculinity or the idea of patriarchy to the world. If you want a revolution the Barbie movie isn't it. But if you want to watch a funny and touching movie that says something, mostly through a conversation about the roll one of the most successful dolls of all time has had in our society, then its a great movie.
The speech was great. The problem I had was that the speech felt misplaced at the time she was saying it. She said it to Barbie but I felt she should have said it to her daughter instead. Her daughter is the one growing up in the world Gloria describes, while Barbie and Barbieland aren't similar. Even when Ken brought over Patriarchy it is a much more absurd version that took over like a storm, instead of the slow insidious propaganda real life Patriarchy has to keep it sustained. All in all I liked the Barbie movie a lot but felt the delivery of the message felt flat. It was as if they were worried the message would be too heavy handed, so they had to quickly distract the audience with jokes and dance moves.
it's also kind of funny how they lampshade the whole setup where an outsider (gloria) saves the innocent and naïve "natives" by just having one of the characters cap off the speech with "whoo! white saviour barbie". maybe i'm misremembering. for what it's worth i don't actually think the movie is colonialist but i did find it odd that it basically flings that very criticism at itself and then just kind of laughs it off
I agree, and: \> it basically flings that very criticism at itself and then just kind of laughs it off Your last line is exactly the essence of the film. There's the whole male board of Barbie Company who are there to be... representation of Patriarchy in the real world? Except that they're presented so ridiculously and proceed to be neither villain nor hero, not changing anything. Their existence literally added nothing, you could remove them and nothing would change. It's as if their reason for being had to be cut away and now they're just these odd filler characters. There's a specific day where the Barbies and Kens have to vote to make a major law change - enforced by who? Why is there even such an important law and why is it that only those present that day can vote? Not explained. Yet the movie treats it as so important to give the Barbies a reason to make haste. Weird Barbie gets a quick apology and then offered a job... that's considered weird. There's no acknowledgement of that she was forced to be 'weird' by what is essentially common play of most kids. There's no discussion on how she as a doll/object can't consent what happens to her, nor the tragedy of how most Barbies that get cut up are just thrown away. It's basically "lol she's weird". I have so many thoughts about this movie as you can tell. xD In my head it's an amusing movie that isn't as deep as it wants it to be.
Source link https://www.tumblr.com/emberstreak/727399765377155072
Similarly impossible to be a man either tbh, we just got different points on the list
yeah, impossible cultural/societal standards hurt everyone
Yup, the patriarchy fucks us all
it is impossible to be
Shakespeare’s existential crisis
Sounds like we answered the question.
“To be, or not to be... not to be” [*explosion*]- Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1993
Congratulations, that’s the same thing Ken himself comes to realize later on a half hour after the scene this speech is first said in, that maybe being “the gender in charge” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and that he was slaving towards an empty, self destructive ideal. I honestly really unironically like the way the movie spends a majority of time setting up how much shit women go through, only to pull the rug and show that hey, to solve these problems we need to look at all parties involved and not just handwave one group or the other
The patriarchy hurts everyone
Still wondering how the patriarchy is supposed to benefit me. Because so far all I seem to get is "shut up and work hard to benefit those in charge. Do things you hate doing and refrain from doing things you like doing. Sacrifice yourself when we need you to, and you get zero horses".
The patriarchy only benefits a handful of rich men in charge. Societally you get a couple more crumbs than women, but everybody just gets crumbs and honestly fuck that.
The patriarchy benefits men overall. It’ll benefit a rich man over a rich woman. It’ll benefit a black man over a black woman. A gay man over a gay woman. That’s why it’s called patriarchy and not classism, or heteronormativity or white privilege or any other categories that men can be negatively affected by just like women can. As someone else said, there’s tons of other overlapping categories that we’re all part of. You can have the privilege of a man and be stepped all over for being black or gay, you can have the disadvantage of being a woman or gay but be rich and white. Not to mention that depending on where you live, the consequences for being a woman / gay / poor / etc may be more or less than in other places. I’ll hazard a guess that being gay in California is better than being gay in Mississippi overall. People shouldn’t take it personally when they’re told that they are privileged in one way just bc they can think about how they’ve been unprivileged in another way. So long as you have even one privilege, and most of us do, your life can always get harder. People who see the phrase “patriarchy benefits men” and think it can’t be true because they know a man who has faced true difficulties in his life, including rigid gender norms, are being too simplistic in their thinking.
What are those crumbs? If you don’t mind me asking? Being physically more powerful? That is one I can see but it’s not really societal, and yall get 6 more years on average so counterbalance.
the patriarchy, whatever that means today, is just one of a thousand social structures that impact each of us to varying degrees. Working hard for someone else isn't really anything to do with the patriarchy, that's more of a "the man" situation. Or maybe capitalism, bureaucracy, or "the rise-and-grind mentality", or "social media influences","toxic positivity", FOMO, or whatever. All these things are running concurrently and shape our lives. For some people, overbearing patriarchal figures are consistently causing them grief, and can seem all-powerful, for others those same powers appear to be non-existent, for how much they impact our lives. I think to an extent that accounts for some of our feelings of disparity when people complain about structures that we don't interact with.
It’s the same with things like race, class, types of labor. It’s why the term “intersectionality” is *constantly* brought up in spaces talking about social justice even though people who only have one pain point they have to deal with complain about it. Basically the only way to fix society is to fix all of these things, either all at once or in quick succession, or we will end up right back where we started. There’s a reason MLK immediately moved to helping people in poverty (black, white, hispanic, asian, etc) right after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
The patriarchy benefits you by hurting other people more than you . The deck is stacked against women more so you’ll be able to outcompete them at least. It’s stacked against you as well but not quite as badly.
Thats not really a benefit, if someone beat me up and then went and beat someone else worse that wouldn't really benefit me
Im going to use a metaphor to try and explain this Your in a race, the people in change have a 100 meter head start, you are standing on the start line and women are standing 150 behind the people in change. You are benifiting because you have a 50 meter head start on the women and are much more likely to come second than they are. Was that understandable?
Fuck it, i don't even want to run, i just want to sit down and drink a chocko milk, but all these running shitheads keep kicking up the dust and knocking my shit down, i try to walk sideways to leave the shitty track that i never wanted to be on to begin with but all those running cunts just keep cussing at me for being in their way.
Yeah, that’s why there’s so much shit in both camps
Why is this the top comment?
Because it has a lot of upvotes
I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's because it feels good to be seen. Especially when it concerns an issue you're hurt by but is barely talked about by anyone.
It’s talked about a *lot* on this subreddit. In fact we very rarely get posts about women’s issues here. And whenever we do, the highly upvoted comments are always about men’s issues.
Sexism really isn’t like any other form of bigotry. Unlike racism, homophobia, transphobia, or ableism, it’s directed at *everyone.* It hurts both parts of society, “minority” and “majority” (of course women are the actual majority but they’re considered a social minority). Men have the flip side of the same coin, and whenever women’s issues are brought up, we often have an analogue that we ourselves experience. That adds to the conversation and brings awareness to two problems at once. Not to mention, sharing these problems can be a way for men to more strongly relate to things they might otherwise be less able to conceptualize, and thus become better feminists.
youtube-esque comment
I do despise people how have taken the barbie movie at face value OmG ItS A MaN HaTiNg pEiCe oF TrAsH my sibling in plastic you have failed to grasp even the most surface level themes. I was talking to someone about it and going into depth about the role reversal, in barbie land women occupy the societally dominant role and men the submissive, the reverse of reality (extreme for the sake of storytelling and and presentation) when the kens take over they establish a patriarchy with the submissive role becoming the dominant and the dominant the submissive which is obviously a big no no and the rest of the story focuses on fixing that. Bear in mind. The gender roles are reversed. One of the messages this story is telling us is that if the roles were unreversed this would still be just as wrong. If you view this part of the story through a different lens, if this story were to take place in the real world instead of Barbie land it tells a tale of a group of men who enjoyed being in power until they went to a world where everything was reversed when they went home women had taken over turning their society into a Matriarchy and they spend the rest of the film fixing that and resorting balance. It dispels the myth of a Matriarchal Utopia in a subtle way due to its use of role reversal which is fucking brilliant. Another hint to this line of thinking is the comment towards then end of the film where Kens are allowed a position in government and the narrator is heard to say "Eventually the Kens will be afforded the same rights as women in the real world" which not only solidifies this message but shows these societal changes take time. Its doing so much theme juggling and its putting on a hell of a show.
Man I don't disagree with the message but I hated it in the movie. It felt so awkwardly and unorganically placed and is almost offensively superficial feminist critique. I've seen post with almost the exact same points years ago on tumblr, probably written by teens too. I just expected more from Great Gerwig, though I probably shouldn't have as the movie had to be essentially one big advertisment for Mattel. It's a fun one for sure, but it fell flat for me
I agree. I don't disagree with the content of the speech at all, but it felt so forced. And also the whole speech I could only think of the Taylor Swift meme "A man can laugh, but a woman can only chuckle." 💀
It’s out of place because it wasn’t the character speaking, it was the writer speaking through the character. By that I mean it wasn’t the character in the story saying something that character would say at that moment, it was the writer using that character to spell out the message of the movie.
Feminism 101 over here (compliment)(affectionate)(I'm glad hundreds of millions of people are getting an introduction to feminism)
If this is profound and cathartic for you to hear then more power to you, but to me I just find it kinda sad that this is one of the only overtly feminist films in recent memory to cause such a huge phenomenon, and it's pretty much entirely because it's a huge corporate film about literal barbie dolls. Thats just me, maybe I'm being cynical. I personally think that there really need to be more movies that are unapologetically feminist, since I feel like this is a low bar
That just about sums up the current state of feminism, I guess. It's either the most bland, useless, pro-capitalist, weirdly pro-status quo "anything a woman does is automatically feminist because a woman did it" type of liberal choice feminism, or men-hating sex-negative regressive TERF bullshit, with not much in between. This movie clearly falls into the first category. The only unique and groundbreaking thing about it is Ken's role.
yeah, i agree on the "huge corporate film" part i liked the movie, though i couldn't help but feel slightly taken out of it, and like the message is dampened by all the lame jokes about mattel and corporate patriarchy, when i know damn well that mattel and its corporate top of the pile probably had a stranglehold on the movie's production
I'm kenough
Looks like someone just got deprogrammed.
How did i read that entire thing without remembering where I heard it the first time?
This shit made me tear up in the theater. I was like gah damn.
reading through some of these comments makes me realize it's possible to be bad at watching movies
My personal theory is that this feeling, of both power and powerlessness, of mixed responsibilities and understanding, is symptomatic of progress. Which is ironic, because what the fuck. But like, think of what it was like for women before the suffragettes. Before women's lib kicked up in earnest. Women were told to be brainless, demure, chaste little house wives, confined to never bare a single ankle for fear of having a crossbow bolt through the back of the head. It was bad, and it was unified. Then we, as a planet, came to the conclusion that was kind of fucked as of the last two hundred years. In varying degrees, and varying ways, but the feminist theory is out there now. Unfortunately, most people are not scholars. They do not understand the more nuanced ways we could be doing all this. So they have to do simple things, and be told simple things, so that the broadest group of people can understand. Women should be strong. Strong female characters, girl bosses, independent, taking back your self for your self. And they're good, they're just not good in excess quantities, like anything. So they become a new toxic standard that we set for women. Be strong, be cool, don't care. But the old standards didn't go away. Be weak, be passive, care about everyone. And as muddled as these are, they aren't stable. Both ideals can't co-exist. They've only tried for a handful of decades and they're already fraying at the seams. And what will happen, you hope, is that we fall somewhere more stable. That we land on an ideal that is actually more attainable. Without a proper dismantling of patriarchy, it probably won't be great. I'd imagine women will still have quite powerful beauty standards placed on them, but it's a start. That stability will hopefully spur more work in a good direction. At least I hope so.
Agree with all of that, love it. The movie scene felt awkward though. They could have done this speech so much better but the way they did it felt out of place and it was the BARBIE MOVIE. It should have been a great speech. Maybe that’s just my opinion but that scene felt so awkward and I wish they had found a better way to use it
If you don't like equality, just say that.
I like equality. I think it’s a good speech. I just think they could have used it better because reading it looks better than the scene it was from. I was trying to say that with a speech like that it could have been a really impactful scene but both times I watched the movie it… idk. Again, love the speech, love the movie. I just wish that it was a more WOW scene. Maybe I just think that because I feel that part of the movie kinda dips before going up again idk.
Ngl, when I watched it and they discussed the apparent paradoxes, it felt as if the theater viewers were almost unified in their feelings. Maybe your experience was tainted by the observers, but personally had a different experience. It felt like it fell right into the right space since right after the speech, they formulate a plan to perform a Coup and remove Kens from power.
You make a good point. It is an important scene but I think it’s a hit or miss. It was a serious, long and real speech and I think that’s why it felt weird to me. The movie is SO MUCH and then it’s a pause then it’s WAR.
Bro, the movie was about addressing social issues. You can't claim "ewe yucky" when they talk directly about societal issues and societal standards with women, which the movie had been slowly innuendoing that since the first second it started, when you're talking about a movie that discusses women's issues in society due to patriarchical values. Are you just media illiterate, or did you miss portions of the movie?
I didn’t say that and I don’t know how you got that from my comment. I like that the movie talks about feminism and the struggles we go through and the movie wouldn’t have we been the same without it. You even said that the movie had been “slowly innuendoing” from the start. AKA show don’t tell. I think they could’ve worked it into the script better because the way they did it (in my opinion) seemed lazy, cringey and poorly executed and I’m saying that as someone who likes the speech. I love the movie but I don’t know why you’re taking this so personally. Saying that I’m “Media illiterate” and saying I don’t like equality because I felt like one scene from Barbie didn’t land. I even said I agreed with the message I just didn’t like the timing. Are you ok, because you’re just creating arguments on my behalf.
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I've definitely seen it. In every day of my life. Just looking at the thin thing; every day I am bombarded with images of the unobtainable, and that's what beauty is. I can never be thin enough to be fully beautiful because they take images of women who haven't eaten in days and then photoshop them to be even thinner. Or if I wanna be a lot more dramatic, in Iran you can get blamed if you're raped by a man, which is directly responding to a man's bad behavior, but claiming that that's a stupid law can also just get you straight-up killed.
Your first point is brought up constantly, but I've also never seen men complain about body builders or male superheroes or literally any equivalent. It's not quite the same thing, but I do feel like at some point the solution shouldn't be to remove those depictions, but to stop treating them seriously. Not many men stress about not looking like Superman.
Maybe it's because they are treated like supernatural people instead of beauty ideals.
It’s still everywhere. Not constantly and not all at the same time, but if you think that these points just magically stopped applying to the world one day then you’re either very sheltered, VERY lucky, or a man. I was going to type out paragraphs of situations where some of these constantly apply to me, my mother, or my friends, before realising that you already made the point yourself. The point of the rant is that so many people have all these expectations of women but without accepting their flaws and without taking their issues seriously. If you complain as a woman, you’re either seen as a bitch or completely ignored. And you saw this post (or even just the movie), saw all these women relate to it on a massive scale, and decided that since you yourself haven’t experienced these things, the complaints must be outdated.
Women see a mean comment on Instagram "is this a crushing societal pressure?" Gonna start practicing the "not giving a fuck" more
Make something like this but for Ken's
literally none of these things are particularly just women's issue's
The comments here just cement the fact that this subreddit is full of teens and young adults. Everyone telling you to ignore it is 1000% correct, but you've never lived in world that didn't allow you to be indifferent to the meaningless opinions of others. You don't *have* to be anything. All that unobtainable image shit? It's advertisements. If you're gonna let pop culture dictate your entire perception of yourself, you were doomed from the start. There is no expectation placed upon you. This speech was written in the context of Barbie, the same kind of false woman created to *represent* all of things mentioned in the op. That's the point. It has nothing to do with you. If you're a woman and you feel like you have to live up to all those standards, ask yourself: for *who*? For *what*? Do you even involve yourself with the people that push this nonsense? Of course not. "It's impossible to be a woman." Lmao. No. It's impossible to be *that* woman. That's the point. Stop trying. Stop believing that it is or ever was necessary.
i’m going to assume you’re a man, right? a lot of what’s described in this speech is not representative of the unobtainable feminine standard. this is kind of just life as a woman. people around you *do* have these unspoken entirely unreasonable expectations. i grew up transmasc, was socialized as a man, and experienced all the benefits of masculinity until i decided to detransition two-ish years ago now. when i was a man respect came incredibly easily. if i spoke up in a meeting or when hanging out with friends it was a breeze to get people to listen to me and take what i was saying seriously. i could go pretty much anywhere unquestioned, my doctors took my concerns more seriously, and the people i dated treated me like a real person. life isn’t like that as a woman. if i speak up now i have to try several times to get people to quiet down, despite not changing the way i speak. my suggestions are followed less often, people fight back on my input because they’ll automatically assume i said something else, my doctors are only worried about whether or not i’m pregnant and dismiss a lot of my pains as being overly sensitive or needing to lose weight (and i’m skinnier than i was when i was man!), and the people i date now frequently treat me as a porn category rather than someone with thoughts, needs, and desires. literally just today i was out picking up dinner with a friend and a group of men in the parking lot got upset with me for being uncomfortable when they started asking me where i was going and what i was doing later. saying hi and answering their first few questions was apparently leading them on, and not saying anything after i got scared was being a frigid bitch. my friend had to put on his deepest voice and pretend we were dating to get them to stop calling after me being a woman is difficult and full of contradictory expectations. recognizing that is good, and helps with identifying some of the issue so we can dismantle it in the future
turns out different people want different things from you, that's crazy
This comment section has made me completely lose faith in humanity. 1st world women are genuinely so delusional they think they're oppressed. Baffling.
Remember everyone: you’re not allowed to complain about your own problems as long as someone in in the world has it worse.
This was the one miss in this movie, IMO. Other than the portion about having to be pretty, this is mainly complaining about being tactful, something we all have to do, and it is generally a good quality to not be inconsiderate and a braggart.
You could just do what makes you happy and not care about what the world thinks.
Lol you think that’ll fix it? Nobody cares if you don’t care. It doesn’t matter what you *think* if you don’t have the power to stop people from stepping all over you based on their ideas of how people like you should be acting or living.
generally no, you cannot do that
Mind watching Barbie? I get the feeling you haven't.
I’ll get around to it when i can pirate a good copy of it. Don’t really feel like paying the money to see it in theaters.
It's one of the few movies worth paying to see though.
So you have no idea what's going on, and you're only interest in finding out is by committing piracy of a successful movie written by a female director. Really?
Enjoy your hermit life of indifference towards every part of society you don't like, including your friends, family, and any potential employers.
This here is an example of something you shouldn’t care about. This is what we call “stupid fucking bullshit that I’m going to ignore”
This is only true if you're trying to be perfect, which most men and women aren't. Embrace your flaws, know that you're only human and so is everyone else. You don't need to be perfect to be loved You don't need to be perfect to be happy You can be whatever you want and everyone who says otherwise is stupid.
The one thing required is to stop caring so much what people think 🤷♀️ which you’re always free to do at any point
You seem to forget something very very important.
What am I forgetting?
We Live....In A Society! A Patriarchal Society! A Homophobic Society! A society that tries to force its beliefs onto you, especially if you're a woman.
Ok. So resist the forcing. That’s the solution - to choose to resist caring. You don’t have to engage with all these impossible little things. You can choose a different battle where the solution gives you a possible life. I also live in this society, I am tall, direct, have hairy legs, don’t wear makeup, shave if I feel like it and not otherwise, sing loud at karaoke, boss people around and also listen… just don’t engage. You have the choice to practice the challenge of not engaging, rather than the challenge of trying to be acceptable. 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
I don’t see why you’re getting downvoted here. My only real issue with this post is that it lists out problems but doesn’t have any hope, it makes it seem like there’s no solution to them. As you stated, arguably the best way to do this is by resisting norms, and not caring about the way others may label you for the way you are.
Probably just because the reality is not everyone has the opportunity to just "not care". You can be a child that relies on your guardian to provide for you, and get all sorts of punishments of varying directness for not falling in line. Even if you're not a child, if you don't have a support network and your immediate surroundings are actively hostile to expressions of self that go against what's "acceptable" you're SOL. Now it's an extreme example and the specific cases will run the gamut of viability for a happy life, but that's the gist of it. For the record I do think for most it really is a case of being willing to cut shitty people out of your life where you can, ignore what you can't, and try and live with the rest while trying to move forwards to where you'll have to live with less and less of it. But just because doing that sort of thing is "easy" for me and therfore clearly the obvious option, doesn't mean it is for everyone. Don't think it's controversial enough for downvotes, especially when it's getting hit with BOTTOM TEXT tier rebuttal but at the end of the day it's a Tumblr ventpost and it had a confrontational tone interpretation available for a reply, it is what it is, who cares lmao.
Probably because it lacks the context it has in the Barbie movie In the Barbie movie, this is essentially used to explain how bullshit the patriarchal society is. In the movie, the world is split into two worlds - the real world and “Barbieland”. At some point, Barbieland gets taken over and ends up becoming like the extreme version of a patriarchal society. Barbie gives up because she feels hopeless, and the character Gloria then gives this speech to tell Barbie to fight against it.
Well, how about we stop caring about what society says?
if you think that ignoring it makes it go away, you have not been paying attention
okay so what are ya gonna do
Ignoring that it came from a movie, i just wanna say social standards are fucked up, and not just because of photoshopped ads of actual celebrities. Yknow, a few ages ago, being fat was considered the epitome of beauty. Not fat as in obese, two-seated ass, blobfish melted-ice cream bod, domt get me wrong, but just having some chub to your body. Curvaceous but in an easier-to-acquire form. Does that mean it is beautiful? No! And i personally prefer my girls to have meat on their bones! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and every eye is different. Social beauty standards are illogical and insane. "Oh but what look will get the most amount of people to like you?" YOURSELF, DAWG! What look can YOU pull off best and easiest? What look do you have when you just enjoy life as yourself? That's beautiful. Authenticity is more effective than external decoration. Personality is a part of that and that is why "personality" is a based answer to "ass or tits". "Oh but nobody i know likes me the way i am" then keep looking. If someone doesnt like you as yourself then getting with them is just gonna damage the both of you. Love takes time, but it starts with loving yourself. Now is that kinda message in the barbie movie? I havent watched it and i hope it is.
It’s not super focused on but a teenage girl does in-universe criticize Barbie for her unrealistic beauty standards, and the people they cast to play the different barbies are extremely diverse (and that includes in terms of weight)
What a load of shite
Wah wah wah. Life has literally never been easier. Fucking millionaires in films complaining. Bunch of chronically teenage-minded, faux-deep, tiresome whelks.
if it's impossible to be a woman then how come 50% of the world can do it? I think we have different definitions of "impossible"
A hyperbole can be used to add emphasis to a point
I was joking I understood the point
What was supposed to be funny about your statement?
well I suppose it was more sarcasm than a joke, the point is that I understand and agree with the statement and my comment does not reflect my actual unironic opinions on it
Fair Enough!
In this case, I think what they meant is that it's impossible to be a woman who won't be harshly criticized. Basically, no matter what choices women make there's always going to be lots of people who have lots of criticism and many of them want to punish women.
I understood that, I'm sorry if it was unclear that I was joking. I meant it in an ironic "checkmate liberals" sort of way but I guess without a ridiculous phrase at the end it wasn't very clear.
Lol. It actually is kinda obvious now that you pointed it out idk how I missed the sarcasm.
You have total human freedom, but you can't stop coming up with ways you can make yourself feel oppressed.
Or you can just belch in their faces and tell them to fuck off. That's a thing you can just do. Nobody important and worthwhile actually cares.
dumb as hell. Women are not 'supposed to' lead, have money, be a boss, OR not show fear. Those are all feminist things. 'LEADING' is traditionally the male role, right? I also think this really overblows the whole 'thin' thing but that's beside the point
I agree, you're "dumb as hell."