#queer take on barbie

[imaginarylungfish]

ok making an actual post about the barbie movie:

so i saw the barbie movie last night. and idk it was like ok. maybe the hype made me have really high expectations. but like i felt kinda alienated and kinda got some gender dysphoria ngl.

part of me related to growing up playing with barbies and growing up seeing misogyny play out on small and large scales. but like the whole movie was so girl-focused. like i get it. it's barbie. but barbie isn't just for girls. and also i'm not a girl (so ok maybe i'm not the target audience). but i'm afab and grew up as a "girl," so i know i am also the target audience?

so part of me felt like an outsider watching cisheteronormativity play out while i was thinking to myself, "thank god i don't have to deal with this" (cause like i don't get it sometimes). but like i still do have to deal with it. i still am seen as a girl/women by people. i am still negatively impacted by the patriarchy.

but also i'm not in some ways cis women still are. like i am also visibly non-binary sometimes which grants me some sort of privilege to not conform. but that privilege comes with a bunch of other downsides too. it's not privilege in the way men (whether cis or trans) get.

i wanted to really love the movie. other people seemed to! and i'm glad. but i just don't think it was made for me (a genderqueer afab person). it seems to be made for cis people.

so yeah, i felt alienated. and i guess that was the point? but i feel like that's kinda a crappy point to make. genderqueer/queer people in general already feel alienated, so i don't think having another movie with that takeaway was super necessary.

like i get weird barbie is neurodivergent- and queer-coded and that's the character we get to identify with (what a crumb). but like it's coded, not explicit (and again, maybe that was the point, but really? that's annoying). and allan i think is non-binary-coded. but like again, coded. i saw myself in those characters. but like the rest of it felt kinda unrelatable.

so idk i guess i'm trying to say, i thought the barbie movie was going to be more queer and relatable to afab genderqueer people like me, but it wasn't. i'm not surprised as this is normal in our cisheteronormative society, but it still sucks and is disappointing.

but also idk if i'm not too autistic to see that the movie actually wasn't for me and i need to move aside. like plz lmk if i should stop critiquing this.

[carebeardean]

religious trauma sold separately! 💅✨

[rolaplayor101]

Buy as a hoodie or cap, etc!! Oooo you wanna Commission me so badd oooo! Pls don’t ignore my DNI! Reblogs are So so so appreciated! I missed my boy

[killrisma]

I’m actually shocked that incels and terfs exist on this website, like what the fuck? Bitch this is the gay supernatural website, go back to reddit

[non-un-topo]

Lord help me I’ve gotten nothing done on my assignments today but I am outlining a fic that’s more like a bloody novel

[violentviolette]

im gonna keep saying it until these hot takes stop crossing my dash because literally if ur argument is indistinguishable from a facist conservative on facebook u cant keep calling urself a leftist!!

when ur bitching about "pandering diversity" when u see a queer brown man in a videogame or ur mad about "glorifying femininity" when shit is pink and femme and ur out here frothing at the mouth over a dude being a himbo with his tits out then i hate to break it to u but uve drank the cool aid and we are no longer on the same side

when ur immediate reaction to seeing things be queer, femme, flamboyant, full of poc, ect. is to scoff at it and bitch about how it's stupid and shouldnt exist then buddy ur an idiot not a leftist

[barbie-pride-flags]

Queer pride flag color picked from Barbie "Brooklyn" Roberts from It Takes Two!

[mrrrpmeow]

.

[stillgeekingout]

#it's very strange #because i often feel like the culmination of those characters arcs #like if the point is they're ace great but like... #the option of lesbianism just *never* occurs #which--and again not to discredit any ace people or ace readings of her work--is such a common lesbian experience! #like myself and a bunch of other lesbians i know had that journey #of going 'hmm i don't like men... guess I'm asexual! (do not ask me about women i will combust)' #like lady bird... whatever #little women... alright i suppose if you wanted to make a comentary on how lma was forced to add the heterosexual romance at the end #and not suggest anything about a real person and also not deviate from the source material #but barbie was insane #the coding was next level #like c'mon birkenstocks??? #and i argue that barbies acceptance of genitalia could be read as an acceptance of sexuality or the very least exploring it #so why isn't she a dyke??? (other than mattel probably giving a hard no on that)

I don’t know, the thing that really bothers me about Greta Gerwig’s films is that there is just this gaping hole where gay women should be. Like, when you’re making these movies about the trap of heterosexual marriage, breaking free of that, and the only concrete answer is to be a single woman over and over and over again, it feels like an intentional absence. You can watch the movie with a queer lens, but it is egregious that you may only consider homosexuality in her movies in this way. It ought to be in them. There is no reason for it not to be there. Women don’t fuck women in Greta Gerwig’s feminist liberations. Often, they don’t have sex at all.

[msclaritea]

From ‘Poor Things’ to ‘Barbie,’ a Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies - The New York Times

A Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies

In 2023, male characters pouted elaborately after something they saw as their birthright was put in check.

"The gender dynamics of “Anatomy” are thornier than those in “Fair Play,” but the two films play well side by side. Triet and Domont share an interest in how power seesaws in contemporary straight relationships."

So nice of The New York Times to openly admit these films are basically about emasculating and beating up on men, while portraying women as out to get them or completely unfeeling towards them.

Barbie, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall and the grossly titled Fair Play (the term used by Scientology as an excuse for harassment) are your basic Social Engineering fare. It's the dispassionate dissecting of 'STRAIGHT' relationships. Please note, the casting of the actress from Bridgerton, in Fair Play. And we all know that straight men are not being replaced by women in the business world or anywhere else, when we can't even get the basic healthcare we need. I'm guessing the writer of this crap is yet another Feminist.

[svperbitch]

Listening to knit and natterers chat some of the worst homophobia and transphobia (and ooh they're onto racism now, original) I've heard out in the wild in a long time. This hurts actually :))

[tea-withnofixinsplease]

I personally feel real bad for this new generation of fandom dwellers bc they're simultaneously the most thin-skinned and bloodthirsty persistence hunters I've ever seen.

Y'know u can always just block or mute the things in fandom you dislike? I do it all the time, Incest included, No need to break out the witch hunt torch Prudence,

"x ship is normalizing incest-"

Buddy

If game of thrones hasn't normalized incest by now (pulling over 10 million views in the 7th season alone) then a small fandom ship most certainly won't

[onefleshonepod]

On Barbie

I'd like to share my thoughts on John’s choice to house Alecto in a body that looks like Hollywood Hair Barbie.

To the best of my recollection over the past year, I've seen several people claim that Barbie being a famously unattainable beauty standard for women and arguably a sex symbol was irrelevant to John's decision to make Alecto a Barbie lookalike, and that rather the main impetus for this decision of John’s was his trauma, gender non-conformity, internalized homophobia, and desire to return to the comfort of childhood. This argument posits that John's decision had little or nothing to do with patriarchy, misogyny, objectification of women, or impossible beauty standards placed on women by men.

I empathize with the above position to a certain extent — it's absolutely crucial to remember and consider in our analyses that John is a queer working-class Indigenous man.

But………....................

John is not a real person. He is a character written to advance plot, themes, and political commentary within a carefully crafted story.

If I'm Tamsyn Muir writing John 1:20 in Nona the Ninth, and the point I want to make about my character is specifically and only that he is struggling with self-doubt, trauma, gender non-conformity, internalized homophobia, and yearning for the comfort of home and childhood — and I want to say nothing about patriarchy and misogyny?

I'm not having him make the soul of the earth into a Barbie!

I'd be having him model Alecto after a completely different popular 1990s toy for girls, like a Polly Pocket, or Betty Spaghetti, or a Raggedy Ann doll, or another doll that doesn't carry the same connotations as Barbie. Or, hell, I’d be having John make Alecto look exactly like his mum, or his nan, or female Māori mythological figures from stories he must have heard from his nan in childhood, like Papatūānuku, or the first woman, Hineahuone, who was made from earth.

I'm not smarter or more creative than Tamsyn, and the above ideas are just the alternatives I thought of in five minutes that would have specifically symbolized John's personal trauma and nothing else.

But Tamsyn didn't do that. Tamsyn picked Barbie specifically. I think that's worth taking into consideration.

Let’s examine exactly what John says in John 1:20.

Hollywood Hair Barbie's physical appearance comes first in the list of reasons why she was his favourite, and her other characteristics come last. He lists two physical traits and one non-physical trait of hers. “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures.”

He discards as an option a model of a woman who doesn't conform to patriarchal, Eurocentric beauty standards specifically because of her appearance: “There was also a Bride’s Dream Midge, but Mum had cut Midge’s hair into this weird mullet.”

He chooses a blonde Barbie body that he can mould into and mentally map onto glamourized versions of women created by men through the ages. “I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy … I made you look like a Renaissance angel … I made you Adam and Eve … Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.”

Our famous cultural images of Renaissance angels are all idealized depictions of women made by men — Raphael, Titian, Albrecht Dürer, etc. Frankenstein's monster, a man loathed and discarded by his creator, is a more nuanced comparison... but the only thing John notes is that his version has long yellow hair.

I'm not even getting into the whiteness (or the plastic-ness) of it all, but three of John's comparisons here are specifically coded as white women considered beautiful by Eurocentric standards in the Western cultural imagination (Christmas tree toppers, Renaissance angels, and Barbie), and the others are often depicted as white.

Galatea specifically is such a telling comparison. This myth is the story of a man caging and controlling his idealized, beautiful female creation, which exactly parallels John’s goals with Alecto: “From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done.”

Given all of this, I genuinely think that John's choice of Barbie as a model for Alecto was intended to position John as a symbol of patriarchy, misogyny, and objectification of women, through both a political and religious lens. Tamsyn is way, way too smart to have not made a careful, considered, intentional choice here.

John didn’t make Alecto into a Māori goddess from his nan’s stories. He didn't make her into a cheerful Raggedy Ann. He made her into a beautiful, blonde Hollywood hair Barbie.

[medusas-daughter]

My favorite part about Weird Barbie and Allan and all the other discontinued discarded Barbies and Kens is that they weren't affected by the brainwash, because of course they weren't. They didn't hold that much power in Barbieland, why would the Kens care about them in the Kendom. They're the queers and neurodivergents and disableds of society, those who don't quite belong or feel like part of the sisterhood, but are still absolutely victimized by the patriarchy. Those who stay loyal to feminism and human rights, even those that don't concern them, because they know first hand what it's like to be on the sideline. The compassion and empathy that Weird Barbie (or lesbian Barbie as I like to call her, we all know why she's always in the splits ✂️✂️) shows all the Barbies even though they call her Weird Barbie behind her back and to her face. The fact that, even though they don't like her, the Barbies know that if they ever need help they can go to her and she will always help them, and they trust her judgment. The symbolism behind the fact that when President Barbie offered her a job, she asked to clean Barbieland. She's essential to maintaining this society that rejects her. Sugar Daddy Ken and Magic Earring Ken and Allan are the epitome of queer men and trans mascs and non binary people. They're not nor will they ever be women. But they'll always reject and be rejected by the patriarchy. The discontinued Barbies are the disabled Barbies, they're angry about their design flaws, and they're right there in the trenches trying to get the leading Barbies to wake up and take back Barbieland. Oh I could talk about this part of the movie and the characters for hours. I love them so much.

[barbie-pride-flags]

Queer pride flag color picked from Barbie "Brooklyn" Roberts from It Takes Two!

[shaylogic]

Queer Experience Watching Barbie - AFAB Masculinity

I started to go into this in tags on another post but I wanted to type this up separately and try to develop my thoughts a little more. . .

Ryan!Ken’s arc in Barbie (2023) has been buzzing in my head for days.

I got fixated on it for a couple of major reasons:

1) We rarely have seen a feminist movie take time to address men with compassion in how patriarchy harms them too.

2) As a trans masc person, I think it hits a specific part of my identity that I don’t consciously let myself think about for too long. Something about being raised in a female world with sisterhood and community. Then being isolated in adult manhood without the tools to prepare you for that. Conscientious of respecting women and being unbothered by feminimity around you, but not knowing your place in the world.

How do I put it?

I know it’s not the direct intention of the film itself, but I’ve seen other trans folks (especially transmasc), reacting similarly to the feeling we get from it.

Ken’s arc feels pretty reminicent of the struggle afab lgbt folks go through when considering masculinity in their identity (butch lesbians, afab nbs, trans men, etc.)

How to make peace with masculine aspects of yourself without losing the women in your life? (One can argue Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie has aspects of this as well.)

Of course, then Ken goes off on the adopting patriarchy ride, which IS the point of the movie, and may skew a bit from the transmasc read on it--though I have known a trans guy here and there who avoids being misgendered so hard that they can become somewhat sexist. To which I say: “You don’t need to have a dick to be a man, and you don’t need to BE a dick to be a man.” But I digress.

Something about Ken being comfortable in a woman’s world but not understanding why he’s being shut out from socially bonding with them (in any sense! Romantic, Familial, Platonic Friendship. . .)

The overall theme of the movie for both Barbie and Ken--in an allegory of heavy gender roles harming all--leading them each to have to figure out who they are in themselves, regardless of others. . . 

Trans masc folx can relate to both Barbie and Ken’s arcs.

I don’t want to detract from Barbie’s arc being the main point of the movie.

I think the reason why we get hung up on Ryan!Ken’s character is because. . . we’ve related to the Barbie plot in other movies and shows before, thinking back to our “girlhoods” as children.

I have never seen the arc Ken has in this in any other story!!!!

There are some Man Movies that have attempted to discuss the struggle of Being a Man--but they often come off as too dismissive of feminine experiences, and are therefore as offputting to transmasc people as women.

Because of the nature of the two worlds exhibited in this movie, and Ken’s backround in his setting, personality, and purpose in relation to the Barbies, he’s a Man living with Female Socialization, in a Woman’s World; he’s a male character that inherently admires and respects women in his nature (until the real world influence distorts it).

This isn’t a perfect example of a transmasc experience either, but it’s a lot closer than most of us generally get to see! That’s why so many of us are getting caught up in this.

Please, other trans folx (transfems, too!), I really need us to have a discussion about this. What were your experiences and thoughts around this movie?

P.S. Yeah, we kinda get that nonbinary allegory from Allan (not a Ken, not a Barbie, siding with Feminism in the Gender War), but he wasn’t in significant focus of the plot the way Ryan!Ken was. If I try to read into Allan, I don’t have much to work with.