#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.

[jenjen4280]

Fun at the Wellington Museum! Butch Barbie with Hot Wife (“I’m not any kind of Barbie”) accessory!

[carebeardean]

religious trauma sold separately! 💅✨

[starlooove]

“There is no fanfic on Stephs treatment I have checked” that’s like the whole point.

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Me @ Netflix if they cut Foxglove and Hazel or A Game of You or yassify any of the girls

[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.