Every Moment In Barbie That Made Me Cry My Eyes Out
This article contains spoilers for "Barbie."
Alright, let's not waste our time with flowery introductions explaining why "Barbie" made me cry like someone stole my lunch money because I already spent over 9,000 words expressing my love and adoration for all things Barbie. Barbie means a lot to me, and I expected the film adaptation from Greta Gerwig co-written with Noah Baumbach was going to bring me a lot of joy, but I did not anticipate how emotionally decimated I would be by the end of it. I don't know why I didn't expect it, as both "Lady Bird" and "Little Women" left me in shambles, but I think I had convinced myself that Mattel would prevent Gerwig from making a Greta Gerwig movie. Thankfully, I was wrong, and "Barbie" is a Gerwig movie through and through.
Which means I cried. A lot. There were lots of little moments that inspired tears to fall through laughter, but here are the moments that had me so verklempt the people sitting next to me wondered if they should probably call someone.
The Kubrick-inspired opening sequence
Before Warner Bros. and Mattel started allowing the world to see the candy-coated delight of Barbieland, our first look outside of some production stills and paparazzi photos was a parody of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Margot Robbie's Barbie arrives on a beige, primitive land filled with little girls playing with baby dolls and practicing for a life of motherhood. Just as the monolith in "2001" sparked evolution, Barbie's arrival inspires the girls to smash their baby dolls, kick over the cribs, and embrace a doll that would change the world forever.
I'm going to quote myself here with a point I brought up when this scene was first released because quite honestly, I only feel more passionate about my opinion now that the discourse surrounding "Barbie" has kicked up. Here it is again, once more, with feeling:
Greta Gerwig is so clearly treating "Barbie" with the same reverence for the material as any other fanboy director getting a shot at making a movie about his most treasured childhood IP, but because Barbie dolls are "for girls," there are plenty treating the film with the same amount of respect they hold for women in other areas of life — none!
When "Barbie" started and I realized this scene was actually part of the film and not just a cute promotional piece, I started to cry. She willingly presented Barbie's importance to the cultural fabric of American culture through one of the most easily recognized moments in cinema history. As I said before and will say again, "Barbie is just as important to culture as anything Kubrick made, and Gerwig is putting some respect on those plastic heels by drawing her own comparison."
Barbie meets Ruth Handler
You know when you're watching a movie in the theater and you notice something that no one else around you seems to understand? That was me when Barbie ran through the Mattel building and wound up in a surreal kitchen washed in warm lighting and sat down next to Rhea Perlman with curly, white hair.
Even before the character told Barbie her name, I knew that Perlman was supposed to be Ruth Handler, Mattel's co-founder and creator of Barbie. Perlman was one of the only high-profile actors to not have a "Barbie" character poster, so fans have been trying to speculate how she'd fit into the world for months. Seeing Barbie sit down with Ruth broke me, and the warmth Perlman delivered was as if I was watching a mother reunite with her child. After all, Barbie is named after Handler's own daughter, Barbara. "There's this shot where Ruth hands Barbie a cup of tea, and the way we lined it up is the exact way that God is touching Adam on the Sistine Chapel," Gerwig told USA Today. The film's cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, told Gerwig, "Throw it in! Barbie deserves it. Michelangelo, let's go!"
Handler has a complicated legacy, as she fully ripped off the Barbie design from the Bild Lilli German gag-gift doll and also falsified financial documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but her impact cannot be overstated. Barbie changed what was possible for children's toys, and in turn, changed what a lot of young women thought was possible for themselves. I was already choking on tears before Perlman introduced herself as "Ruth," but the kindness of her smile as she said her name unleashed the waterworks like a dam had been obliterated.
Barbie gives up
I love being a woman and I love women. I truly could not imagine my life any other way, and I am grateful every day that the gender I was assigned at birth is the one that I feel with every fiber of my being. My wife is transgender, and listening to her talk about the ways womanhood makes her happy to be alive ranks as some of my favorite moments in our marriage. I perpetually exist in a state of the Soarse Ronan "Women —" meme from Gerwig's "Little Women," but being a woman is hard.
It's exhausting. It's painful. We have to navigate a minefield of constantly contradicting standards and expectations that suck so badly that it's amazing any of us make it through the day at all. So when Barbie finally feels like she's been defeated by the newly emboldened Kens and gives up, I felt it in my bones.
Barbie has been an important presence in my life for as long as I can remember, but I don't know if I had ever sat down and wondered how Barbie feels about all of this. Yes, of course, she's a toy, but she's also one of the most important women in my life. Seeing Barbie break down and cry about how the weight of the patriarchy is just too much to handle and that she feels guilty that her mere existence might have made things worse for other women gave me the space to feel those feelings for myself.
Barbie has always been an extension of those who play with her, whether it be our fictional imaginations or a vehicle for our own feelings. Experiencing it the other way around for the first time in my life was something I was not prepared for, and had me covering my mouth so as to not disturb the rest of the theater with my heaving sobs.
America Ferrera's Monologue
Just as Barbie giving up made me cry, America Ferrera's Gloria validating her feelings and motivating her not to let the world get her down made me cry even harder. Honestly, there was probably a solid 15 minutes of this film's runtime where I just wanted to Barbie flop on the floor and cry until there was nothing left in me. Horror movies are typically the genre I fall into when I'm looking for a good, cathartic release, but "Barbie" is certainly getting added to that rotation once it's available on a physical release. Just as I thought the existential crisis "Barbie" had thrown me into was finally subsiding, Gloria finally speaks up and delivers a phenomenal monologue spelling out all of Barbie's conflicting emotions and letting her know that she's not alone in feeling them.
The thing is, the sentiment Gloria is expressing is nothing new. Feminist waves have been yelling about our mistreatment for decades, and breaking down gender theory isn't revolutionary. What is revolutionary, is hearing these words in what is looking like will be one of the most profitable films of the year. Gloria represents that awful coming-of-age transition into adulthood, while Barbie represents the growing pains of puberty. Her words are a reminder that we are not alone in having to grieve the dreams the world stomps out of us. That the loneliness we feel is shared by our sisters, and it's okay not to be okay. This cry was one of relief and based on the feeling I had once I finally got it together, one that was apparently long overdue.
Barbie becomes human
Barbie was my first best friend. Barbie was my first girlfriend (My Size Bride Barbie, call me). Barbie was my dreams. Barbie was my imagination. Barbie was everything to me ... until the world told me she shouldn't be. My Barbies were donated. My Dreamhouse sold at a garage sale. My mini-Barbie Christmas tree was gifted to a girl's club. My sparkly pink Barbie jacket was traded in for a black leather one covered in studs and buttons. Barbie is something for childhood, I was told. Barbie is something you abandon and replace with the pursuit of male attention, I believed. But I didn't understand it. Why? Why did I have to get rid of Barbie? Why couldn't I take her along with me? She'd been there for me through some of the toughest times of my childhood, why do I have to let all of that go?
The ending of "Barbie" sees the titular doll walking hand in hand with Ruth Handler's ghost, deciding that she doesn't want to be an idea anymore, she wants to be a real person. Magically, Barbie transforms into Barbara and becomes a mortal being that needs to do things like own a good pair of sensible shoes and go to the gynecologist. "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they have come," Handler tells Barbie before letting her go off to live her own life for the very first time. It's the full circle moment from the beginning of the film, where Helen Mirren's voice narrates a line of Barbie dolls and says, "Barbie is all these women, and all these women are Barbie." I may no longer have a plastic tub filled with assorted Barbies and outgrew my hand-me-down Barbie Corvette, but Barbie becoming human made me realize that I never actually let her go, because it's impossible to have done so.
Barbie is me, and I am Barbie.