Barbie can’t tell you if you need to dump your boyfriend
Madeline Fry Schultz
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If your boyfriend doesn’t like the Barbie movie, you might need to break up with him. At least, that’s what the internet says.
Women all over the country, and the world, are putting their significant others to the “Barbie Test,” taking their boyfriends to see the movie to evaluate their responses and relative interests in discussing feminism and the patriarchy.
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“It’s like the new question on a first date or your dating profile: ‘What are your thoughts on the Barbie movie?’” said Nicole Hoefler, a woman in her 30s. “Because if a guy really doesn’t want to see it or he’s not open to talking about it or, what’s even worse yet, if he’s seen it and he thinks it’s not a good movie or he doesn’t get the point, I think it’s kind of a no-go.”
Theresa Arzate, a 27-year-old from Dallas, said she broke up with her boyfriend after watching Barbie with him.
“There were certain parts where he was like, ‘Oh, are you crying?’ in dislike and total shock, and it just really upset me,” Arzate said. “His reaction to Barbie just really took me aback. … This isn’t the kind of partner that I want to have.”
While a man’s indifference to a crying woman may be a problem of its own, the fact that women are using a movie about a children’s toy to evaluate their long-term relationships is more than a bit concerning. Especially considering that Barbie, while widely lauded as a feminist masterpiece, doesn’t even seem to know what its message is.
Author Louise Perry writes of “the many moments of incoherence in the Barbie film.” Writer Kay S. Hymowitz notes that the film’s very design is intended to ward off criticism, “outfitted with so many layers of irony” to “seduce even the most scowling Barbie-haters to the sisterhood” and, of course, sell more Barbie dolls. A New Yorker review, while describing the film’s monologues as “incisive,” also labeled them “incessant,” a sign not of profundity but of an “assertion of directorial autonomy.”
So all that the young women enticed by the “Barbie Test” will really discover is whether their boyfriends agree with a giant ad for children’s toys — and director Greta Gerwig’s particular creative narrative, which is coherent in its color if not in its message.
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If the meaning of Barbie is unclear, why should the average guy be tasked with deciphering it? In fact, Gerwig herself realizes the absurdity of obsessing over how a particular film fits the zeitgeist. In the movie, when Barbie Land is overtaken by the newly macho Kens, the Barbies find themselves becoming “really invested” in the Snyder Cut (the director’s cut of the DC superhero movie Justice League) and The Godfather, all to appease their male counterparts.
The male infatuation with these films, and the desire to force female interest in them as well, is shown as ridiculous. Why not enjoy their guy movies and leave the ladies out of it? On the flip side, fans of Barbie should ask themselves the same thing.