At the risk of sounding like a humorless old bat, what is all this Barbie hysteria? Why are so many grown women cringing like pre-adolescent fan-girls at the idea of another grown woman (Margot Robbie) playing an anatomically impossible plastic doll?
Everywhere you look, it’s Barbie this, Barbie that, Barbie as cultural phenomenon, Barbie as postmodern ironic feminist icon, Barbie as global marketing juggernaut.
Even my young daughter is painting her nails pale yellow in a special way – part of the official Barbie merchandising. Yuk
Did people suddenly create pink candyfloss for the brain? Am I the only person who still thinks Barbie is, at her core, just another cog in the cultural machine that tells little girls they can’t be thin unless they’re tall, a size-three-foot white blonde, perky breasts, a tiny waist and a Certain white smiles, they are worthless?
Even my cute friends seem to be infected. ‘Oh, but it’s directed by Greta Gerwig,’ they say, as if the actual movie was made by a feminist and legitimizes their breathless excitement at the prospect of spending an hour and 55 minutes with Miss Plastic Fantastic 1959. friends
At the risk of sounding like a humorless old bat, what is all this Barbie hysteria? Why are so many grown women cringing like pre-adolescent fan-girls at the idea of another grown woman (Margot Robbie) playing an anatomically impossible plastic doll?
(Barbie’s 64, by the way. Not that she’s allowed to see it. Even Hollywood hasn’t woken up enough to embrace ‘menopausal Barbie.’)
Gerwig is a darling of the great filmmaking scene – America’s equivalent of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I don’t doubt that he is extremely talented and brings humor and irony and all sorts of clever things to his films.
But still. It’s Barbie: Every little girl’s gateway drug to a lifetime of self-loathing.
Maybe I’m just old. Young women (the category in which I include Gerwig) tend to forget how relentlessly oppressive the pressures on women were.
The brutal truth is that Barbie is a pernicious plastic representation of impossible femininity (if her physical proportions were translated to a real woman, she would only have room for half a liver and a few inches of intestines).
Her image is a worm that creeps into girls’ brains at a very young age and many of us feel despair when we look in the mirror.
When Mattel started creating ‘inspirational’ versions – Barbies, astronauts, dentists, doctors, scientists, lawyers, presidents and more – to silence critics, it made things even more difficult. Girls were expected not only to look like supermodels, but also to be some kind of talented philanthropist. ee………thanks.
And now here she is again, popping up like a bad penny, surfing the zeitgeist and repackaged for a post-feminist era where young women seem less concerned about breaking the mold and filling their bodies with silicone enhancements to achieve universality. Happy longing looks allowed.
What is ITV’s Love Island for if not an assortment of surgically enhanced human barbies, performing tricks for a team of Kens who are also, shaven, shiny simulacra of masculinity?
What if Instagram and TikTok weren’t competing for likes and clicks on filtered, preening human dollies?
My generation took pills and starved themselves to fit the stereotypes – my daughter just hacked it all on a credit card and got on a plane to Turkey.
So maybe this film – and the huge buzz around it – is just a sign of the times. Maybe we should celebrate the fact that young women today are so blissfully unscathed by the limitations imposed on their sexuality in the past, they seem capable of playing dress-up with the devil.
On the other hand, maybe we should be upset that so many people want to shoehorn themselves into Barbie’s image, often with the help of a plastic surgeon.
Barbie’s renaissance is the ultimate representation of the wave of body dysmorphia, dressed up as self-expression, that seems to be sweeping through the younger generation.
Could be my mistake. Perhaps I will be converted by the film. In fact, the tagline is ‘If you hate Barbie, this is for you’. The trailers suggest that there’s a cheerful self-awareness to the script which I’m sure will make for a very enjoyable watch.
But while publicists have created a wide variety of casts and characters, from Kate McKinnon as eccentric Barbie to Issa Rae as President Barbie, the truth is Margot Robbie — Hollywood’s quintessential thin, white, blonde queen — felt no real boundary-pushing in casting Gerwig. being
Not in the real world, anyway.
It looks like Ken has a secret: his pink and pale green shirt, right, suggests he’s a member of the exclusive gentlemen’s club The Garrick.
Ken is Barbie’s loyal and devoted boyfriend – as the new movie’s tagline puts it: ‘He’s everything. He’s just why.’
But it seems Kane has a secret: his pink and pale green shirt, right, suggests he’s a member of the exclusive gentlemen’s club The Garrick.
If so, it’s hard to picture dining there at Pheasant and Claret with the likes of Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville. But can you blame him? Sometimes a chap needs to get away from it all.
And where better to escape the Barbie hullabaloo than at an all-male club that has resisted the march of feminism for nearly 200 years?
Artist Grayson Perry was in a typically subversive mood after recently being knighted, saying: ‘It’s fun being a sir, especially when you’re dressed up.’
Hang in there, Grayson: you don’t want to be accused of self-delusion.
Tory MP wife Felicity Mercer’s (right) account in yesterday’s Daily Mail of her fight against her husband’s Twitter critics, particularly Carole Vordman, was fascinating.
When Carroll wasn’t so anti-Tory
Felicity Mercer’s account of the Tory MP’s wife in yesterday’s Daily Mail for fighting back against her husband’s Twitter critics, particularly Carole Vordman, was fascinating.
I have only met Ms. Vordman a few times, once at a lavish Conservative Party fundraiser.
I don’t remember him having any complaints then.
No doubt we’ll be seeing more of Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrosova’s tattoos. They’re so on trend – countless Gen Z-ers are decked out like fairy wings and cute little homilies.
However, it rather negates what I always thought the purpose of a tattoo was: to stand out. It seems the most rebellious thing a young man can do is not get any ink.
I hope Rishi Sunak plans to abolish inheritance tax. It is the most cruel of duties. Not least because it hurts people in times of sorrow but because it is a tax on ambition.
What’s the point of trying to pass something on to the next generation if the government takes it over?
It’s bad enough that we spend half our lives paying taxes – can’t we get a little respite in death?
A former Goldman Sachs employee has accused the investment giant of fostering a ‘bullying culture’ that involved long hours and crying at staff meetings. At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, what did he expect?
Goldman Sachs employees have little luck because high finance is a dog-eat-dog world. If you want to be beautiful, join a convent.
Chris is not Sir David
The BBC’s decision to let Chris Packham present its new five-part nature series, Earth, suggests that he is the unofficial heir to Sir David Attenborough’s corporation.
But whereas Sir David adhered to the BBC’s policy of neutrality throughout his decades of broadcasting, the same could not be said for Packham.
For example, he supports the Just Stop Oil strategy.
Admittedly, BBC chief Tim Davey has other things on his mind, but he should address the fact that a top presenter is openly supporting the criminal tactics of a group of extremists.