Abstract
For better or worse, Barbie (2023) was part of a summer blockbuster phenonemon. Much of the fanfare around the film included conersations about feminism, ‘girlhood’ and whether or not the film was reductive in terms of upholding an iconic yet often criticised doll. This article attempts to wade through that noise by focusing on my own experience of the film as a genderqueer feminist academic. Blending personal reflection with queer theory and feminist critique, I unpack the use of the gender binary in Barbie Land and the implications, if any, for viewers and the overall ‘feminist’ positioning of the film (and whether or not that matters). In particular, I focus on Jack Halberstam's concept of gender failure and what that failure looks like in the idyllic world of Barbie. Following my own feminist epistemological commitments, this article makes use of academic as well as non-academic texts, in addition to blogs and other pop culture sources. Ultimately, this article considers the role of whiteness in the acceptance of the non-normative characters in Barbie – particulalry Weird Barbie – and why it is essential for white queers to remember that their experiences are not the queer experience.
Who was I now—woman or man?
That question could never be answered as long as
those were the only choices;
it could never be answered if it had to be asked.
- Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (1993)
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine, yeah.
- Indigo Girls, ‘Closer to Fine’ (1989)
Jack Halberstam opens The Queer Art of Failure with a question: ‘what is the alternative to cynical resignation on the one hand and naïve optimism on the other?’ (2011: 1). These two options – cynicism or optimism – were the prevailing feminist responses to Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023). For some cultural writers and audiences, it was an achievement; whilst for others, it was a letdown. This question also mimics the themes of Barbie itself, as Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) grapples with the complexity of the Real World, on the one hand, and the bubbly, perfect world of Barbie Land, on the other. One of the criticisms (and ironically, one of the praise points) around the film has been the involvement of Mattel. On the one hand, how could this movie be feminist in any way when one of the main producers is the corporation responsible for monetising and marketing Barbie, a doll whose impact has been heavily criticised for harming young girls’ self-esteem and upholding Western beauty standards? On the other, it is remarkable that Gerwig (writer/director) and Robbie (producer) were able to get this film made, and have Mattel on board, when the film contains criticisms of the doll, as well as Mattel executives, who are played for a laugh. But who cares about being the butt of the joke if your film grosses US$1 billion at the box office?
In response to the online Barbie Discourse, Searles penned a poignant review: ‘[t]o expect [Gerwig's] work, or any work for that matter, to capture the totality of what it means to be a woman in the world today seems unreasonable’ (2023: para. 7). It is true that the bar is higher for any film made by/about anybody outside of the cis-het white man framework. The expectations that films cover every possible facet of every single experience is unreasonable. Conversely, others did view the film as a feminist achievement and as a representation of the nuances of ‘womanhood’. Emma Cosman writes that ‘not only did the film dive into a variety of topics surrounding feminism, but it also debated topics such as the patriarchal roles of power, the cruel world of capitalism, the role of gender and society's expectations for men and women, and even what one's purpose in life is’ (2023: para. 6). Cosman calls it ‘an essential film for all those who believe in the empowerment of women, social equality for all’ (2023: para. 8). On the other hand, Searles writes ‘this isn’t just a story of Barbie finding herself, it's about her seeing the world as it really is for the first time. And who would be more in need of a reality check than a thin, blonde white woman?’ (2023: para. 8). As reported by Savannah Walsh for Vanity Fair, in response to being told that an executive producer of Mattel films, Robbie Brenner, said that Barbie ‘is not a feminist movie’, Robbie replied ‘It's not that it is or it isn’t. It's a movie. It's a movie that's got so much in it’ (2023: para. 4). Robbie also said: ‘we’re in on the joke. This isn’t a Barbie puff piece’ (2023: para. 4). I am not particularly interested in whether or not the film was feminist enough per se, but I am fascinated by the ways that such a Feminist World was built and what its limitations are.
Put another way, I am interested in how, even within the fantastical feminist utopia, gender is strictly defined. 1 Even where gender in Barbie Land is outside of the Barbie/Ken binary, it is a normative representation of the non-normative. Using Halberstam's (2011) concept of queer failure, I demonstrate how Weird Barbie, by transitioning from a traditional Barbie to a so-called ‘weirdo’, challenges the rigidity of Barbie's gender. Weird Barbie is a sort of Non-Binary Barbie™ or Queer Femme Barbie™; she is normative enough to maintain Barbie status while still being an outsider in other ways. Halberstam's discussion of collage provides a lens through which to queer Weird Barbie's appearance. Part of what Halberstam describes as ‘a radical passivity which allows for the inhabiting of femininity with difference’ (2011: 144), Weird Barbie becomes and un-becomes. I discuss how, despite the possibility to queer Weird Barbie, she is played by a straight-sized, cisgender, white actor whose model of queer presentation is unobtainable by most Queer people. I conclude with a brief discussion of the ways that the 1990s hit ‘Closer to Fine’ by lesbian soft-rock band Indigo Girls reflects the trajectory of the film and can be applied to Weird Barbie's gender and the lessons therein.
I write this article from my own perspective as a Queer/genderqueer trans person. 2 To borrow from Katariina Kyrölä (2014), ‘I use autobiographical accounts of my own viewing and analyzing experiences—in other words, a strategic “I”—as a resource for grounding the analysis at the intersection of the cultural and the personal’ (5). At the time of my first viewing of Barbie, I was waiting to hear about insurance approval for gender-affirming top surgery. When I began this article I was a few weeks away from my surgery date, and as I revised it I was four months post op. Gender is always on my mind and the ways in which genderqueer people seek to affirm our bodies and ourselves is particularly tangible at this point in my life. It is from this experience that I write this article about Barbie. My relationship to Barbie (the doll) and Barbie (the film) is impacted by my position as being Queer/trans and being socialised as a young white girl who played with dolls. It is not my intention to undermine the positive feelings that other people may have had with Barbie and the representation on screen. Following Halberstam's idea of ‘low theory’, I am interested in locating knowledge ‘in the realm of popular culture and in relation to queer lives, gender, and sexuality’ (2011: 19). Low theory is both ‘a mode of accessibility’ as well as a theoretical model that seeks non-dominant forms of theorising in spaces that do not ‘maintain the high in high theory’ (Halberstam, 2011: 16). Like Stacy Gillis (2024), it is my endeavour to always find theory in the every day, including the popular, the unpopular, the unserious, the silly, the irreverent and the queer(ed).
In Barbie's Queer Accessories, Erica Rand writes that ‘Mattel [suggests that they are] looking out for Barbie's “continued success” more than [their] own and that the ability to change with the times is somehow located within Barbie herself. Mattel is simply the supportive parent or spouse who encourages her to actualize her potential’ (1995: 24). Rand's point is still salient, nearly three decades on. It makes sense for Mattel to produce and take part in a film that positions Barbie as something feminist and dynamic, something that transcends the stereotypical Barbie that has been associated with the brand for decades. In a period in which abortion rights are being overturned in the United States, Queer and Trans rights are being stripped away 3 and feminist issues are continually dismissed by patriarchal governments, it makes sense for Mattel to align itself with a pink, marketable, idyllic form of feminism. To get a film about patriarchy made in a time characterised by the above is, in a sense, a victory. This does not mean that this is all that we should expect – the bar is so low that even this seems revolutionary to some. But the fact is that a movie produced by Mattel was never going to be more than what it is. As Searles writes, ‘Barbie is a fantasy comedy, which is a genre that holds up a funhouse mirror to our own world while playfully engaging in concepts and images that are familiar to us’ (2023: para. 9). Like Searles, I did not expect it to have a profound message or revolutionary feminist thesis (maybe this is why I had fun at the movies). What it did have, however, was plenty of binaries: cynicism or optimism, Real World or Barbie Land, Birkenstocks or heels and, of course, Barbie or Ken.
Meeting Weird Barbie
Outside these binaries was Weird Barbie (and elsewhere, only one Allan
4
– a cheerleader for both all the Kens and all the Barbies, but particularly for Ryan Gosling's Beach Ken). As fun and idyllic as Barbie Land is, I am compelled to think about the ways that the gender binary still played a part. Although the argument could be made that the screenwriters were working with existing material (the film is considered an adapted screenplay by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences), they were able to invent the universe of the film as they desired. Barbie is a fantasy world, as put succinctly by Searles: Barbieland [sic] is a little girl's idea of a feminist paradise, or more accurately, what the people making Barbies believe little girls want. Yes, it's limited, but that's the point of the fantasy. In a real world where a female president and an all-female Supreme Court seem impossible, Barbieland [sic] is a simple dream of how things could be. The catharsis lies in the exaggeration. We know in real life that an all-woman run government wouldn’t solve all the world's problems because patriarchy isn’t just carried out by hypermasculine men. We also know that there are more than two genders and that gender identity is more expansive than what we are shown onscreen. We know that a Black woman wouldn’t so easily be elected president. We know the truth about the world, so why do we want so desperately for even our silliest comedies to reflect that back to us? (2023: para. 9)
In Barbie Land there are Barbies and Kens: the Barbies are in charge and the Kens … well … they are also there. It makes sense. Ken was made after Barbie as, essentially, an accessory that would legitimise Barbie's heteronormativity. Ken ‘gave Barbie a personality’ by allowing her unlimited potential for adventures now that she had an escort (Rand, 1995: 420). Although Barbie had other Barbie friends, the creation of Ken legitimised her explorations under a heteronormative framework. Within the context of Barbie (2023), however, this is flipped in the sense that Ken is dependent on Barbie's attention to legitimise his personality and subjectivity. Elsewhere in Barbie Land is Weird Barbie. Weird Barbie exists in her Weird House outside of the main part of Barbie Land where all the other Barbies live in their Dreamhouses. The other Barbies do not like to go and talk to her because she is weird. I recognise that while Weird Barbie is not explicitly queer (although she is played by out lesbian actor Kate McKinnon), the film itself has queer undertones – there are numerous LGBTQ actors in the cast; there are queer musicians on the soundtrack; there are allusions to iconic musicals throughout the film; and production is bold and outrageous and arguably camp – and what is the fun in films if we cannot queer our way through them? As Rand argues, ‘Barbie subversion is also worth doing simply for the pleasures of recognition, self-affirmation, and transgression’ (1995: 161). Weird Barbie does not affirm my gender (although it might affirm another person's gender) or any facet of my Queerness, really, but she does stand in for something queer within the world of Barbie Land and this paper is concerned with how that subversion of Barbie is presented throughout the film.
The Barbie Land universe works like this: the Real World still exists and runs parallel to Barbie Land. Each Barbie that inhabits Barbie Land is being played with by a girl in the Real World. The worlds are connected but also separate. Since Barbie has always had many different jobs – she can be anything! – the Barbies think they have solved all the problems for women in The Real World. As the Narrator (Helen Mirren) explains: ‘Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved. At least, that's what the Barbies think’. Barbie is a hero! She can be an astronaut, and therefore girls and women in the Real World are no longer bound by the cisheteropatriarchy that requires them to only be wives and mothers. Of course, we know that this is not the case. Soon, Stereotypical Barbie begins to experience an existential crisis. Her feet turn flat, she has thoughts of death and she even develops a small patch of cellulite. After consulting with her Barbie friends, she is advised to visit Weird Barbie. She is not happy about that because Weird Barbie is weird. The Barbies explain that Weird Barbie ‘used to be the most beautiful Barbie’ and ‘now she's fated to an eternity of making other Barbies perfect while falling more and more into disrepair herself’. Strange as she may be, she has the answers to Barbie's questions. Essentially, Barbie has to go to the Real World and cheer up whoever is playing with her so that she can go back to being a perfect Barbie and ensure that the membrane between Barbie Land and the Real World is not irreparably broken. Although the film is not very clear on how or why this works (see Stuart Hall [2024] in this Special Issue for more on the twain crossing), my reading of it is that when the person playing with the doll – in the case of the film this is always girls, as I will discuss – transcends the boundaries of how girls or women should behave, it breaks down the fantasy of the Real World that Barbie Land imagines.
Despite being the one with these answers, Weird Barbie is rejected in Barbie Land. The Barbies do not want to have to engage with her, and they call her weird ‘both behind her back and also to her face’. Throughout the course of the film, we see discontinued Barbies (and Kens), yet these Barbies have not ‘failed’ in the same way that Weird Barbie has, nor are they ignored the way Weird Barbie is. They have failed in the capitalistic sense: duds that did not sell or were just not easy to market. Some of them are acknowledged by the Narrator as the audience is introduced to Barbie Land. Midge, for example, is greeted by Barbie in passing and they exchange waves. Later, some defunct Barbies and Kens are introduced at Weird Barbie's house, which felt more like a commercial than the introduction of actual characters. Later, when Beach Ken takes over Barbie's house and throws her clothes out the window, there is a freeze frame so their proper product name can display on screen. These other dolls were similarly introduced: in passing as products. The Barbies know that their treatment of Weird Barbie is unfair, yet they persist because Weird Barbie is strange, unusual and, by their metrics, ugly. However, as the film tells us, any one of them could become Weird Barbie. The Barbies explain to Barbie that Weird Barbie used to be the most beautiful Barbie, a position which is now seemingly occupied by Stereotypical Barbie. Weird Barbie was played with too hard, which resulted in her being Weird; a weirdness that separates her from the type of womanhood presented by all the other Barbies. She has strange markings on her face, an uneven haircut, an outfit that fits the aesthetic of the film but is not fashionable by the standards of the Barbies.
In The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam writes about ‘failure as unbeing and unbecoming which propose a different relation to knowledge’ (2011: 23), and we see that Weird Barbie has a relationship to knowledge that is different from the other Barbies. Although they are all intelligent and accomplished, Weird Barbie seems to transcend what they know, possessing a kind of omniscient knowledge. Perhaps this was acquired by virtue of being isolated, or by virtue of her becoming Weird Barbie, thereby unbecoming Perfect Barbie. Weird Barbie even has a diorama-style map of Barbie Land which she built herself, something that the other Barbies marvel at when the time comes to deprogramme Patriarchy out of Barbie Land. The knowledge that Weird Barbie possesses – by virtue of her Weirdness – makes her an integral part of defeating patriarchy; it is this same Weirdness that is then morphed into something more aesthetically palatable by the end of the film. It is also worth mentioning the ways in which, as I quoted earlier, Weird Barbie is ‘fated to an eternity of making other Barbies perfect’. In some ways, this seems to be a role that she embraces, particularly when it comes to helping the Barbies return to a land without patriarchy. Perhaps she does not (cannot) make them ‘perfect’ but she functions as the person who can always help to ensure that the dolls do not fall into disrepair in the event of a crack in the Real World / Barbie Land membrane. She is a permanent foil for them. Do queer people exist along similar lines under cisheteropartiarchy? Is that how cishetero folks view us? Forever so queer (as in strange) that they will always be, in contrast, normal?
Weird Barbie as collage
When Barbie goes to visit Weird Barbie for advice, there is a moment where the latter is holding a snow globe in front of her face, warning Barbie that if she does not fix things, ‘what's ugly will become uglier and what's weird will become weirder, and then you’ll look like me’. She moves the snow globe away from her face and Barbie screams. It is a moment where the audience laughs or is intended to laugh; it is funny how Weird Barbie looks so unappealing that the mere idea of being like her would scare Barbie. Weird Barbie even says ‘I understand. I set myself up for that’; a sort of apology for how she looks. Yet how she looks is part of what made her Weird and therefore knowledgeable, indicative of what Halberstam describes as a failing of womanhood. Perhaps the player – the girl in the Real World – fails girlhood at the same time. Failure, as theorised through queer by Halberstam, is a refusal of dominant narratives and hegemonic powers. It ‘recognizes that alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never total or consistent’ (Halberstam, 2011: 88). Such structures are not inevitable, even in Barbie Land, and the queer act of failure allows for ways of knowing outside of dominant forces of power. Weird Barbie's position of weird, having failed womanhood as Barbiehood, allows her to reject the systems of power in Barbie Land that determine a world of Barbies and Kens (… and, elsewhere, Allan). Her position as outside of or anti-social reaffirms this; as Halberstam writes, ‘the antisocial dictates an unbecoming’ (2011: 144). This act of unbecoming allows Weird Barbie to exist outside of Barbie Land's dominant ways of being and knowing.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of my Barbies were Weird Barbies – I took scissors and knives to their hair and limbs, I scribbled on them with marker – I turned them into something unique, something that was not Stereotypical Barbie, and honestly, something grotesque. I made my Weird Barbies reflect myself – short-haired, messy, not quite the right type of girl. This is the beauty of Weird Barbie, a build-your-own creation that transcends what Barbies should be. This is what genderqueer people do, too. We transcend what gender should be as prescribed by cisheteropatriarchy (i.e. a gender binary deemed ontological). This meant, for me, failing girlhood and womanhood. Halberstam writes that ‘not succeeding at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures’ (2011: 4). When you fail womanhood in Barbie Land, the results seem … well … kind of fun! Weird Barbie has a comfort with her sexuality (whatever that may be) that the other Barbies do not. When Stereotypical Barbie shows up to Weird Barbie's house, Weird Barbie's first words are ‘Hey, what's cookin’ good lookin’?’. Soon after, she remarks: ‘that Ken of yours – he is one nice lookin’ little protein pot. I’d like to see what kind of nude blob he's packing under those jeans’. At the same time, she seems to have a live-in Barbie with her in the Weird House. No other dolls make suggestive comments about Kens or Barbies (or Allan). 5 Weird Barbie has failed what womanhood looks like in Barbie Land, but by doing so she generates a self-assuredness that presents differently from the other Barbies. While the other Barbies speak in a way that is slightly more formal, bubbly and even a tad breathy, Weird Barbie says things like ‘what can I do ya for?’ and ‘baby girl’. The other Barbies have more of an upbeat cadence to their speech and a higher pitch. They do not use terms of endearment with one another. Weird Barbie, however, peppers her sentences with ‘babe’, she is sarcastic, she hisses (literally) and she is self-aware. This confidence is played for laughs because of how she looks, but how she looks is another source of queer joy; she is constructed through deconstruction, a sort of collage.
In describing collage, Halberstam posits that it ‘precisely references the spaces in between and refuses to respect the boundaries that usually delineate self from other, art object from museum, and the copy from the original’ (2011: 136). Weird Barbie, like all the other Barbies, can be understood as an object (especially when you consider that Mattel decided to release a Weird Barbie™ doll). Yet she is a version of that object that deviates from the original, both literally and figuratively within the film. Weird Barbie used to be the most perfect and now she is the most (and only) strange. Her becoming as weird is due to the use of other mediums – marker, flame and scissors – to alter her original form. Halberstam discusses the ways that violence can play a part in collage, how collage art – both performance and installation – has used cutting as a vehicle to discuss experiences of power, unbecoming, self-shattering and, indeed, violence. In the flashback scene where we see Weird Barbie's construction, violence plays a part in the collage. We see the young girl who is playing with Weird Barbie cut her hair with scissors, take a marker to her face and then take a lighter to her hair before kicking her across the room. There is also something queer to this process of playing too hard. Often queer people are deemed ‘too much’. Even as a child I was called too loud, too tall, too outspoken, too boyish, too much. When you do not fit, especially as a child, you try as hard as you can to do so. At the same time, there is something about this ‘playing with’ that is normative within the film. The only children seen playing with dolls are girls. 6
Perhaps this is part of what allows Weird Barbie to still be Barbie-adjacent. She is being played with by the ‘right’ type of person which allows her to be both an insider and an outsider. The collage is imposed but the way that she leans into it is self-determined. Perhaps an overreaching analogy: she did not choose to be queer(ed) but, as I have discussed, she chooses to perform her queerness in specific ways. The result of this collage, mixing marker with cutting and flame, is Weird Barbie; she has unbecome Barbie and become Weird Barbie. By removing Barbie from her factory settings, Weird Barbie is created and, in that creation, something new emerges: a Barbie that has failed at being a woman but, as Weird Barbie's confidence shows, thrives at being herself. Moreover, how she looks is what signals familiarity to Gloria (America Ferrara) – the woman who was playing with Barbie in the Real World and came back to Barbie Land, along with her daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Gloria immediately understands who Weird Barbie is. She looks at her with awe and nostalgia, exclaiming ‘I had a Weird Barbie!’, to which Weird Barbie confidently quips ‘yeah ya did!’. At this point in the film, Weird Barbie's appearance is different from at the start of the film, so Gloria is not meeting the same Weird Barbie that the audience did earlier. Despite this, Weird Barbie's failing womanhood is clear to Gloria even when her face is wiped clean. No matter what the combination of collage materials, Weird Barbie stands out.
This act of becoming through unbecoming reminds me of my own journey with top surgery. I am, in a sense, altering my factory settings – cutting (or rather, having somebody else cut) my skin with scalpels and sew me back up. I wish to unbecome woman as I had lived it (which is not to say that having breasts inherently makes a woman) so that I can become something else. Just like there is not one singular way to make Weird Barbie, there are many ways to be genderqueer. Other genderqueer people experience their gender and their embodiment very differently. Some, like me, have people cut and slice at their skin, add or remove appendages, have others draw on them with ink, cut their hair or add hair. But some do not. This is also the pleasure of Weird Barbie. Each Barbie in Barbie Land is portrayed as having agency, despite the fact that they are all being played with, and this includes Weird Barbie. At the same time, in the film's Real World (as in ours) Weird Barbie is made by the person playing with her. That is why any Barbie could become Weird Barbie. She is made through the creation and destruction of collage. Each Weird Barbie is made through the act of unbecoming and seeking to know the world differently. This is why producing a specific Weird Barbie doll misses the mark.
Following the success of Barbie, Mattel released a limited run of Weird Barbies™. This is consistent with a corporation that will capitalise on anything it thinks audiences like (as parodied in the film itself) and wants to be seen as keeping up with the times. But the fun of constructing Weird Barbie was undoing Barbie yourself; finding out what was underneath, cutting and drawing and exposing a new Barbie, one from only your imagination: ‘[Ruth Handler's] original idea about how to make Barbie serve fantasy was to avoid giving Barbie any physical or biographical details that would limit the owner's imagination [...] The face was deliberately designed to be blank, without a personality, so that the projection of the child's dream could be on Barbie's face’ (Rand, 1995: 40). Of course, this logic is flawed – or rather, steeped in heteronormativity – as Barbie is thin, white and blonde with blue eyes. She is not just a blank slate. Decades later, this is still true. Although Barbie featured a diverse cast, not all of those movie Barbies are real dolls in the real Real World. For example, Mattel has yet to make a truly fat Barbie, instead offering ‘curvy’ Barbies. Even Weird Barbie, both as a pre-constructed doll and within the film, still fits within this narrow description of a so-called blank slate. She is thin, white and blonde; she is able to fail womanhood in Barbie Land because ultimately she is still a Barbie. Played by a cisgender, white, straight-sized actor, Weird Barbie is acceptable as Weird because she is the exact type of character that is permitted to be weird; much like certain queer people are permitted to ‘look’ queer. The characters permitted to ‘look queer’ are ones that are not visually marked by queer failure. Weird Barbie is allowed to look unusual because McKinnon (the actor) looks so … usual.
Pink Birks and platform boots
There is a moment where Barbie says that she is not beautiful and the Narrator says that, if you want to make this point, you should not have Margot Robbie saying it. But who would be acceptable to say these words? Before this scene, Barbie has a meltdown when she realises that the Kens are attempting to take over Barbie Land. She lays down on the ground and proclaims to Weird Barbie, ‘I’m like you now, ugly and unwanted’. This, like the moment that follows it, is funny because Robbie is beautiful. And yet, McKinnon is also beautiful. In fact, both actors are relatively similar in appearance: thin, white, blonde, with blue and green eyes. It is funny that McKinnon is Weird Barbie because she is beautiful, just like it is funny for them to point out how beautiful Robbie is. My question is: who is allowed to be ugly? Who is not? In Barbie Land, it seems that Weird Barbie can be ‘ugly’ because the actor (by normative metrics) is not. Which also means, of course, she is not really Ugly at all. 7 In the wake of the Kens’ installation of patriarchy, the Barbies and Kens are transformed. The Barbies suddenly cater to the Kens – serving them beer, rubbing their feet, cheering for them while they play volleyball. The Kens are no longer affable himbos 8 but brash, condescending and decked out in more accessories than ever. Weird Barbie, however, is only changed in appearance. It is this appearance that Gloria still recognises, even though the collage is mostly undone. Weird Barbie has a side shave and bouffant, but her face is clean of marker and her outfit is no longer a puffy dress and heeled, thigh-high boots but a pseudo-military ensemble with slightly platform combat boots and tin-foil armour.
It is possible that Weird Barbie is now meant to appear as a (stereotypical) militant feminist, or perhaps this is an allusion to lesbian fashion. It is not the only reference to lesbian fashion in the film. When Weird Barbie presents Barbie with the answer to her questions (which is to say, the way to find answers), she offers her two shoes: one a pink high-heeled pump and the other a brown leather Birkenstock sandal. Many people laughed in the theatre – myself included. Birkenstocks = lesbian has been a stereotype since the early 1990s and its roots are perhaps older than that. Rachel Lubitz (2017) discusses this stereotype, writing about women who encountered the chunky sandal during the Women's Movement. She chronicles how the shoe was utilitarian and comfortable, but also served to reject beauty standards for women by eschewing aesthetics for walkability. The use of the high heel in one hand and the Birkenstock in the other is almost too on the nose – Barbie inevitably chooses the heel, to which Weird Barbie responds: ‘I’m bummed. You’re a bummer. That's a bummer’, then, waving the sandal in Barbie's face, says ‘you’re doing this one!’. The Birkenstock – and the Barbie wielding it – are a harbinger of the Real World, a world with cellulite and complicated feelings. 9 The only person who could deliver this message is Weird Barbie because she is the only one who has failed womanhood in a way that grants her access to other ways of knowing. The other Barbies, although helpful in Barbie's journey, do not have the depth of knowledge accrued from being outsider/outcast.
Although Weird Barbie is the strange one in Barbie Land, McKinnon and her appearance are not. Carmen H. Logie and Marie-Jolie Rwigema write that ‘the normative idea of queer is a white person’ (2014: 181). This normativity is produced and reproduced through media representations, most of which are ‘a stereotypical androgynous presentation’ (Simmons, 2018: para. 2). Weird Barbie can be read through this lens, particularly when theorising her gender failure. As Treavian Simmons writes, it is important to understand that non-binary is not synonymous with androgyny: Non-binary identities are separate from androgyny in that a non-binary individual defines what their identity means to them; there is no one way to visually present the body in such a way that it can be clearly read as non-binary without explicit proclamation of being so. This means that a non-binary person can express themselves through androgyny, femininity, masculinity, and any variety of combinations of traditional or nontraditional gender presentations. They can also reject these categories altogether. (2018: para. 4)
This is emblematic of what Simmons calls ‘a neutral point between men and women’, referring to the image of androgyny-as-non-binary that mainstream media have accepted, one in which androgyny-as-queer includes ‘short, “boyish” haircuts’ (2018: para. 3). Chronicling the history of lesbian fashions, Eleanor Medhurst writes, referring to the norms of the early 1990s, that ‘while short hair was a lesbian marker to the wider world, the opposite was also true. In order to keep lesbian spaces secure, those who styled themselves differently to the white, dyke norm could face ostracisation in their own community’ (2020: para. 12). The prevailing white image of queerness in any form has not changed much, as Simmons describes that the qualifications for androgyny-as-queerness also include ‘a lean, angular body, the ability to “pull off” makeup despite one's actual gender’ and ‘nondescript but fashion-forward clothing’ (2018: para. 3). Weird Barbie has to be fashionable enough to fit the film's aesthetic and for Mattel to market her as a doll. The marker is removed from her face, leaving only dark eyeshadow and faint no-makeup-makeup. Failing womanhood – failing Barbiehood – does not entirely remove Weird Barbie from the clutches of heteronormativity. While she may have knowledge that the other Barbies lack, as well as what appears to be a live-in companion, not to mention the ability to remain immune to Ken's patriarchy and to orchestrate the deprogramming of the other Barbies, Weird Barbie is ultimately a manifestation of acceptable, mainstream, normative queerness. The acceptability of her Weirdness does, however, alter the perception of gender rigidity in Barbie Land, leaving the Kens and Barbies with something less fixed than Kens and Barbies. Weird Barbie gets to be part of the Barbies’ government (she asks for a job in the sanitation department, a final nod to her strangeness), and the Kens can accessorise and exist outside of the pre-determined romantic relationships with the Barbies, who are now interested in sharing some of their power with the Kens, seeing them as whole people and maybe even caring where they sleep at night. Allan is still there, too.
Conclusion: closer to fine (less definitive)
Barbie concludes with the Barbies successfully preventing the Kens from permanently implementing patriarchy. It also reimagines the future of Barbie Land into one where the Kens can be (slightly) involved in decision-making. All the Barbies (and Kens) are deprogrammed, and the resolution is that perhaps things should not go back to exactly the way they were before, i.e. only Barbies in power with Kens on the sidelines (and somewhere, Allan). Not only that, but the Kens’ relationships to one another and to the Barbies changes, with Artist Ken (Ncuti Gatwa) saying ‘I just want my friend Barbie!’, to which his friend Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey) responds ‘I’m right here!’. The Kens rejoice: ‘we can do our hair however we want’ and ‘I can wear hats’. The Kens’ performance and appearance relies upon the Barbies to regulate it. When that is removed, they too are able to alter themselves. Both the Barbies and the Kens benefit from a structure wherein they are all allowed to feel a range of emotions, express their desires and dislikes and form real bonds with each other. The Barbies’ relationship to Weird Barbie is modified as well. Weird Barbie's personality remains unchanged; the only difference is how the Barbies respond to her and her altered (and more acceptable) appearance.
The film's resolution is mirrored by the continued use of ‘Closer to Fine’ by the Indigo Girls, which plays four times throughout Barbie's journey to the Real World and back. It is also covered on the official soundtrack by Brandi Carlile and her wife Catherine. The lyrics tell the story of going on a great journey to find answers, ultimately concluding that maybe it is okay not to know insofar as knowing demands concrete answers: ‘it's only life after all’. This is what happens in Barbie. The less the Barbies (and Kens) seek their source ‘for some definitive’, the closer they are to happiness. The person who was always happy, though, who knew not to take life so seriously, was Weird Barbie. She did not need to go on the same journey as Barbie because she already possessed a different knowledge about herself and the world (both Real and Barbie Land). When Barbie decides to become human, we see her emerge from Gloria's vehicle in the Real World wearing shiny pink Birkenstock sandals, symbolic of a space where Barbie can be something other than Stereotypical or Weird. The gender binary is a trap in the Real World and the same is true for the Barbie/Ken binary in Barbie Land; it was always doomed to fail, whether it was the Barbies in charge or the Kens. Weird Barbie might be something less definitive than Barbie or Ken, but she is still a manifestation of one experience of girlhood, Barbies, and what it means to sit outside the binary. Perhaps other white q/Queers could learn this lesson – that to transgress, to be non-normative, does not inherently remove you from power and privilege. We must be able to contend with all of these contradictions and follow the Indigo Girls’ ‘crooked lines’.
