Abstract
This article interprets Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in the context of mainstream commentary surrounding the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Despite popular opinion that Barbie advances feminism, the movie illuminates the conditions that constrain women presidential candidates’ electability. Transcoding the field of politics into entertainment, Barbie softens feminist critiques of cultural misogyny in the Trump era while portraying gendered double binds as the inevitable byproduct of an ongoing battle of the sexes in which one side is destined to lose. Barbie’s double bind rhetoric reflects and reproduces the social conditions that pressure women presidential candidates into running cautious campaigns with moderate policy platforms.
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