the thing that gets me about about barbie is that barbie land wasn’t even purposefully a matriarchy, barbie land came about because of the way little girls were playing with their barbies, it wasn’t created by mattel it was created by the people using the toys, so the fact that the barbies ignored the ken’s and had girls night every night wasn’t because they had some bias against him, it was just an accurate depiction of how kids play with barbies. I had some ken dolls as a child and they were essential to the plot in the sense that of course my barbie has a boyfriend because that represented the world i saw around me, but also he didn’t have any purpose in my dream world because i was only interested in what the girls were doing because they represented me and how i wanted to be, I wanted girls night every night I wanted the girls to be president and austronauts and not because of some inherent feminist idea but because I was a girl and I wasn’t thinking about boys, ken was an accessory. this movie wasn’t made to change the world but it showed a different perspective than what we usually see which I thought was fun. Men don’t have to be the centre of all our stories and its not even because we hate them, sometimes we’re just not thinking about them
I think the most magical part of the Barbie movie for me was when I was taking the train home afterwards. I of course had my full pink outfit on and the whole time this little girl kept peaking around her mom trying to look at me. She had the biggest look of awe and she shyly hid behind her mom a couple times when we made eye contact but eventually I got her to wave at me. And ngl before that I felt a little shy on the train. My friends had gotten off already and the car was otherwise filled with people dressed in ordinary clothes so I stuck out like a sore thumb. But any self consciousness vanished when she finally waved, because I realized why should I ever deny myself the indulgence of enjoying the magic of girlhood?
