I'm a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world - 4 reasons why it doesn't work!

Okay, spoiler alert first.

This is about the 2023 Barbie movie which apparently distills its older misdoings of happy-everywhere-everydays by bringing a reality check in the Barbie world.

In the process, it takes Barbie and Ken down to mortal living, brings a tween-mom pair up to their dreamland, and goes through their version of mission accomplishment by comparing notes on wellbeing, patriarchy, and tokenism about female leadership.

So far so good.

BUT.

The joke falls on us. As the tokenism actually runs through the vein and nerves of the entire narrative.

Here's 4 reasons why I find this script of 2023 Barbie grossly problematic:

1. It makes it men versus women, which is an utterly butterly and totally facepalm idea.

Absolutely self-defeating, to begin with. Doesn't help. Doesn't go anywhere. Doesn't even begin to...

For starters, we need all of us. Together. In it.

All the way!

2. For a quick sweep of a happy-ending promiseland, Barbie descends on earth to embrace reality.

And then, you wonder - what would she become? Who would she be?

Lo and behold.

She steps out of the car with a blush on her cheeks...

No.

Not to start a job, or to get a ticket for a train ride.

Turns out, she is there to see the gynae!

I mean, why on earth?

As much as I personally love being a mom and think it's a cool superpower to have in our puny mortal lives, having emancipation in the form of a gynae visit took us several centuries back in one stroke.

Imagine what magic it could be if only we saw her in a dishevelled hairstyle or a sweaty public commute instead?

3. The film began with somewhat of a promise of deep thoughts as one of its highlights.

"Do any of you ever think of death?" - Barbie had slip-tongued abruptly, interrupting her fellow peery funny jigs, only to retract it quickly to save the pink-washed happiness.

But that was a sign.

It launched into women and their never-ending juggling with life and livelihoods.

It almost seemed that that-after-all was the point - to admit it's not all well all the time.

And yet the climax took a very different shape - made of power struggles and gender warring spoofs.

We forgot what we were here for, and never spoke anything of mental health, self-doubt, and despair in women that was the spine of the crisis after all.

It lost the plot.

4. As a final tick on their feminist checklist, the scriptwriters put a placeholder in the name of 'not-all-men-are-so-bad'.

This guy is our quintessential chocolate hero and goes by the name of Allen.

He is cute and fairly voiceless.

He hitches a ride, just to give company while doing nothing much.

The film explains nothing of Allen's allyship, no back story or logic, and by that makes it into a tokenistic few-good-men stuff.

And he doesn't really do anything.

Nothing!

Like the Mattel Headquarters, this movie too looked like a candy-wrapped mansplained narrative in the form of a consolation prize.

A sorry attempt to say -

Feminism is the new female fashion.

And, 'coming-of-age' is the new commerce.

And we are pawns.

Actually.

The box offices will toss us around the phenomenon of "we drowned you and we will save you back. And we will make all the money both ways."

We will continue to pay.

We will continue.

To pretend-play. Barbies.

Much like ever before!

~

I’m Sinjini Sengupta - Founder, Lighthouse - the actuarial leader turned author, speaker and story evangelist.

I believe stories can change everything we think, do or feel, and therefore the world as we know it. Its power is immense. We are only one story-step away from being a better version of ourselves.

LIGHTHOUSE is your one-stop-shop to discover and use your stories to build purpose, engagement and trust. This will transform you into a better leader, founder and speaker, and build a powerful legacy in life and at work.

We work with both individual leadership story-coaching and corporate leadership programs.

DM to founder@lighthouse.co.in

#founders #leaders #DEIB #leadershipcommunication #leadershipdevelopment #keynotes #datastorytelling #businessstorytelling #lighthousestories #sinjinisengupta #storieswithsinjini