07 Sep That Barbie Monologue, as Written for a Man

When Greta Gerwig’s Barbie eclipsed the $1.342 Billion global box office grossed by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 (not adjusted for inflation), it became Warner Brothers’ biggest movie ever. This punctuated the era-defining success of movie that was only expected to open at $40 million and decline steadily as most films do. What happened instead will be studied ad infinitum in hopes of repeating that profit trajectory, and Hollywood will almost assuredly get it wrong. Against almost insurmountable odds, a combination of hype and controversy made this the film to argue about; and that helped create a moment in the zeitgeist that almost single-handedly saved the American Box office of 2023.

One of the most pivotal scenes is a monologue delivered by actress America Ferrera. This two-and-a-half minute speech connected particularly, but not exclusively, with women by perfectly articulating the modern frustrations of being a woman. But one need not be female to identify with being undervalued, overlooked, or even pushed aside.

I must admit, that I hardly expected a 2023 Ryan Gosling movie about a plastic doll to be more controversial than 2007’s Lars and the Real Girl (which if you haven’t seen you absolutely should). And when I saw conservative pundits absolutely losing their minds over the supposed “wokeness” of Barbie, it was like a contrapuntal knee-jerk retread of how the left had gone completely bonkers over The Sound of Freedom. The subtext about Ken being a genital-less accessory whose very existence is one of emasculation seemed to be right on the nose as did the idea that given the opportunity to change that situation anyone would. The farce of the idealized fantasy of Barbieworld in a progressive struggle with evolving and diminishing relevance –epitomized as plastic, for-profit propaganda is also not that deep a concept. All of these pop-psyche neuroses were explored and satirized above and beyond all possible expectations of a film based on a toy.

Likewise, it is only recently that films have faced the criticism of telling one side of story. As a Gen X-er, I grew up watching Boomer-era films about World War Two, and then the contemporary and post-modern films about Vietnam. None of them showcased a point of view other than that of the propagandized American “Hero.” All enemy combatants were depicted as one-dimensional agents of evil, and never as scared kids drafted by a different government and forced to fight at threat of annihilation. If anybody ever complained about this, I was blissfully unaware. Contrarily, it would have been considered unpatriotic to suggest that the rank-and-file soldiers at war with the American military were anything other than ungodly foes deserving of eradication, even though those same human beings became allies after the war’s end. Another great shame is the one-sided narrative of the Hollywood Western which always sided with European expansion against Native American insurgency. Aside from Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack films, which addressed modern discrimination against First Nation North Americans, outrage over the prejudicial depiction of “Indians” was scarce unto the end of the last millennium.

So it seems just plain weird to me that the two most controversial pieces of media this year are a record-setting film about a toy and an Amnesty International approved film about human trafficking. Especially odd considering this year’s films include Oppenheimer, a complex biopic about the man who developed the only-thus war-deployed atomic weapons, and the nightly news broadcast congressional hearings that reportedly confirm the existence of extraterrestrials.

Barbie‘s pivotal monologue (embedded above) was inspirational to some, but it was also admonished by others. It has become a societal norm for any opinion highlighting the virtues or challenges of a subset rather than the whole as somehow a sleight to every other group. While I never interpreted that speech as being anti-male, the propensity for such an opinion to be demonized (were it put forth by a man) has led to an unlikely source of support. Enter Meghan Daum, who hosts a podcast on Substack called The Unspeakable with Meghan Daum, which is where she published the following essay.

America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie about how “it is literally impossible to be a woman” is being heralded as the most important feminist monologue of our time. Now try it this way:

It is literally impossible to be a man. You are so strong and so capable, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we always have to be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

You have to be ripped but not too ripped. And you can never say you want to be ripped. You have to say you want to be fit, but also you have to be ripped—though nothing’s more important than being tall.

You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because you shouldn’t have to ask. You should just earn it and keep earning it.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be an asshole. You have to lead, but you can’t be seen as a bully or as insensitive or old-fashioned or “just not getting it.”

You’re supposed to love being a dad, but god help you if you want to stay home with your kids, or take paternity leave.

You have to be in touch with your feminine side but also be the protector.

You have to answer for women’s bad behavior, which is insane—like sometimes literally insane—but if you point that out, you’re accused of not listening, not caring enough, of gaslighting.

You’re supposed to be good-looking for women but not so good-looking that you seem unserious or vain or like you’re overcompensating for something else.

You have to distinguish yourself without seeming like you’re trying too hard. You have to make your accomplishments known without bragging or coming across as desperate.

You have to win at the game while making sure to say that you know the system is rigged in your favor. You have to say this even if it’s not rigged anymore, or at least doesn’t feel that way. Or maybe it is rigged, which means you don’t actually deserve anything you’ve ever gotten. But you got it anyway. Or maybe you didn’t, But in either case, you have to be grateful.

You have to understand that for all this power you supposedly have, you don’t actually have much power when you’re young. You have to grow into your power, and until then, you endure years of humiliation. And still, you have to time things just right because “older” is not the same as “old.” Older can work for a while, but once you hit old, you go back to being humiliated and stay that way until the end.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never cross a boundary without permission. It’s too dangerous! It’s too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!

And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong but also everything is your fault.

(End of Speech).

I’ve yet to see conservative YouTube embrace this, but it seems inevitable. And lest you get the idea that Meghan Daum is some kind of right-wing, anti-feminist, here’s a bit of her resume:

Daum graduated from Vasser and went on to earn her MFA from Columbia. She was an Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times for more than a decade. She’s a New York Times best-selling author, and has been included in The Best American Essays and numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and Vogue. She is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and she’s on the adjunct faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Not exactly the bonafides of the John Birch Society, but (by virtue of presenting a different angle on a piece that gained a lot of traction from the mainstream, progressive media) I expect she’ll be attacked on the left for not following the prevailing party line. It would be easy to contend that she presents a very centrist argument, but she’ll likely be labeled a male apologist for this particular piece – in spite of the entirety of her prior output.

As both left and right get further from the middle, I hope that the content creators who occupy the wide, abandoned center gain more and more support. Tolerance is not defined by what it condemns, but rather by what it condones. Empowerment is not a critique of one to raise another, but an attempt at a kind of equitable equality.

Please follow Meghan Daum on
Twitter: @Meghan_Daum
Instagram: @meghan_daum
Her Website: www.meghandaum.com
Her Substack: https://meghandaum.substack.com/

Special thanks to Evan Marc Katz who referenced Meghan’s essay on his LoveU podcast