Ryan Gosling has been nominated for Best Leading Actor for his role as Ken in the Barbie movie. Margot Robbie, who played the titular role of Barbie, has not been nominated for Best Leading Actress. The movie’s director, Greta Gerwig, did not receive a nomination for Best Director.
Also, abortion rights are on the ballot for the 2024 election season, a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that could directly harm transgender people if passed is currently being considered in multiple states, women’s rights in Afghanistan are at risk of deteriorating even further if the Taliban becomes formally recognized, and women in Gaza have been forced to use tent scraps in place of menstrual products as a consequence of the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.
And yet, it was after Robbie’s and Gerwig’s snubs that the Internet — and my social media feed — exploded with outrage. MSNBC host Jennifer Palmieri said that the snubs were symptomatic of Hollywood’s ability to “overlook and discount artistic contributions of women,” and others have pointed out that they ironically reflect the same patriarchy that the film itself critiques. Ryan Gosling released a statement condemning the snubs of his co-star and director, and even Hillary Clinton put out this Tweet in support of the backlash.
Listen. I don’t hate Barbie. I actually loved it a lot — there are so few films that manage to capture the reality of being a woman with such honesty, such genuinity, and although it was by no means a perfect movie, I do believe that it was, and is, an incredibly important one. It meant the world to be able to sit in a theater and see the breadth of beauty that being a woman encompasses — the pain, the struggles, the frustrations, the deep, abiding love — up on the big screen. I am beyond grateful for the fact that children have been given access to a fun, colorful piece of art that is deeply-rooted in feminism. Barbie is meaningful, groundbreaking, and inspiring, and it matters. It matters very much.
Still, I can’t quite explain the disappointment I’ve felt in the wake of the backlash to Robbie’s and Gerwig’s snubs. To a certain extent, I agree with it: If Gosling was nominated for Best Leading Actor, then it feels strange that Robbie and Gerwig weren’t. But it’s the ferocity and scope of the backlash that I can’t quite wrap my head around: Not when we’re living in a post-Roe v. Wade America, not when women around the world are living with the threat of having their rights stripped from them, and not when true gender equality has so far to go before it’s finally reached.
As I write this article, UN experts are calling for investigations into Israel’s treatment of Palestinian women and girls after receiving reports that they have been “killed while fleeing” and “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault” in Israeli detention centers. UN News has stated that these actions constitute “grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international law.” According to Al Jazeera, Palestinian women and girls have also been denied access to menstrual products, medicine, and food.
Palestinian children are being sexually assaulted in detention centers. Palestinian women are being beaten to death. Palestinian people are being denied food, medical supplies, and reproductive products. They are being slaughtered. This is happening now. Right now, right before our eyes. But when I scroll through social media, when I search for women’s rights in Gaza, I see no one speaking out. I see no one’s fury. Certainly, people are talking about it — but not loudly enough. Not with the same disappointment and anger with which they talked about Gerwig’s and Robbie’s Oscars snubs. Why? Do Palestinian women and girls not deserve to be seen?
No. It is up to us. We must look. We must not turn away.
Even here, closer to home, women’s rights are under attack. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, abortion rights have been placed under scrutiny by state governments — some, like Colorado, have enshrined abortion access for people with uteruses, while others have continued to try to undermine the legality of abortions. In Texas, the state Supreme Court is deliberating on a decision in the Zurawski v. State of Texas case, a “legal challenge brought forward last year by 20 women who say that they were denied abortion access in the face of severe and dangerous pregnancy complications.”
These issues go beyond women. At a certain point, they simply become humanitarian: How many people will we allow to die because they had a pregnancy complication and no legal way to access an abortion? Because they were violently targeted for being transgender? Because they were condemned to inhumane, torturous conditions, without food, without medical treatment, without protection from assault? How many will we allow to die at the hands of our silence?
Greta Gerwig receiving a nomination for Best Director would have been wonderful. I do believe she deserved it, since the movie was nominated for various other accolades, and especially considering Barbie was the first solely woman-directed movie to break $1 billion at the box office.
But her and Robbie’s Oscar snubs should not be prioritized over the women’s rights violations that are being cruelly, brutally inflicted by various governments around the globe as we speak. All of these injustices must be discussed, and critiqued, and called out. If Ryan Gosling deserves an Oscar nomination, Margot Robbie does as well. If women in Australia deserve access to legal abortions, women in America do as well. And if women in America deserve to receive justice when they are sexually assaulted, women in Palestine do as well. There is no “us” versus “them”. There is no world where we achieve gender equality without unity.
If Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig deserve your protective outrage, women everywhere deserve it as well.
We all do. For you, for me, for those people halfway around the world that we may never meet. For a better today, and a brighter future — one where we do not pick and choose who we save, because I believe that we can save everyone, if we just try. If we see their lives — their pain, their struggles, their frustrations, their deep, abiding love — up on the big screen, and if we do not look away.
Come on, Barbie. Let’s go do it together.