This summer, I took a humanities course where we had to create a graphic about women in society using an artistic reference, one similar to those created by the Guerrilla Girls. If you are not familiar with the Guerrilla Girls, they are a group of women artists who use their craft to address the misogyny present in both the art world and society as a whole, starting in 1985.
The one idea I kept coming back to involved the Barbie movie, particularly America Ferrera’s speech. This was not an original idea; I had written about the same speech in my high school assignments and newspaper, and women around the world had discussed it since the movie’s release. However, it was all I felt truly passionate about, and after creating the graphic, writing about it (again), and then reflecting on it months later, I’ve figured out why.
Inspired by the Guerrilla Girls’ poster, “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist,” and Ferrera’s character, Gloria, my project highlighted the double standards that women are expected to navigate gracefully.
In the movie, when Barbie feels like everything is falling apart, Gloria senses her frustration and gives a speech about the many double standards and expectations that women face from society. As a woman, this speech resonated with me, especially as I discover what I want to do with my life and how to achieve my goals. After the movie’s release, this speech in particular sparked a lot of debate on whether it adequately addresses feminism, supporting an idea in the speech itself: “Not only are [women] doing everything wrong, but also everything is [their] fault.”
The movie also takes a spin on the character Ken, portraying him as someone who lives in the shadow of Barbie, only to realize he has power over her. As Ken comes to this realization, he expresses his own frustrations regarding his role in the song “I’m Just Ken.”
That, along with the Guerrilla Girls’ poster and their use of mimicry and strategic juxtaposition, inspired me to write a male version of Gloria’s speech that is suited for Ken, pointing out the irony of his and many men’s “struggles” that only seem to be spoken about after women succeed or address their own.
For example, during her monologue, Gloria says, “You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.” My version of Ken might then say, “You have to be fit, but you can also have a dad bod. And you can say you want to have a dad bod. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you can have a dad bod.”
Similarly, when Gloria says, “You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas,” in my project, Ken might say, “You have to be a boss, but you can be mean. You have to lead, but you can squash other people’s ideas.”
According to the paper “The Guerrilla Girls’ Comic Politics of Subversion,” by an assistant professor in communication studies at Vanderbilt University, Anne Teresa Demo, the Guerrilla Girls’ version of mimicry focuses on “self-consciously adopting an exaggerated version of traditional femininity” that “convert[s] a form of subordination into an affirmation, and thus begin to thwart it,” which “demonstrat[es] the impropriety of ‘a masculine logic that defines women in univocal terms.”
By continuing to use the same punctuation and a similar manner of speaking, the overall tone of frustration for my version of Ken’s monologue is comparable to Ferrera’s feminine one. Addressing the same issues Ferrera brings up and contradicting them with a male version of those issues allows viewers to become aware of the double standards themselves, without directly pointing them out.
For example, as Gloria gets further into her speech, she says, “But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.” Here, my version of Ken might say, “But you don’t need to stand out or be grateful. And never forget that the system is rigged, but not for you, so it’s not really rigged. So you don’t need to find a way to acknowledge that.”
Finally, my graphic put extra emphasis on the satire by including the line, “POV: It’s hard to be a woman… but it’s ever harder to be a man,” illustrating that the struggles faced by both groups are not the same, or as Demo says: “expos[ing] the incongruity of a normative standard without being ‘reduced to it.’”
The paper also defines strategic juxtaposition as “a mainstay of both Burke’s comic corrective and feminist rhetoric” that is “characterized as a strategy for social change.” The Guerrilla Girls use strategic juxtaposition in numerous ways, but the method most similar to my use “juxtaposes quotations from individuals and institutions with ironic headers that underscore the incongruity of conservative positions on rape, abortion, as well as gay and lesbian rights.”
My banner does not quote any significant non-fiction people, nor do I talk about sexual violence, reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ rights. However, I do quote Gloria and use an ironic footer (the POV line) to illustrate the societal expectations and double standards placed on women. My footer does not poke fun at the original quote by Gloria, as the Guerrilla Girls’ headers often do, but it does work with the initial quote to emphasize the sarcasm in my version of Ken’s quote.
While the Guerrilla Girls juxtapose “images with rhetorical questions,” I use both Gloria’s picture and quote to juxtapose Ken’s. The side-by-side of Gloria’s image and quote next to Ken’s accomplishes two things.
First, it juxtaposes the frustrations of women with the “frustrations” of men, conveying how men’s experiences are not remotely the same as women’s. Second, Gloria’s image and quote illustrate her mix of frustration and defeat more subtly. On the other hand, Ken’s more animated image creates a stronger picture of these emotions.
Next to each other, the more obvious emotions in Ken’s not only make his grievances more humorous, but they also demonstrate another societal expectation: women are supposed to be in complete control of their bodies and emotions, regardless of the circumstances, whereas it’s more socially acceptable for men to express themselves freely.
Now, my version of Ken’s speech is intended to be a satirical commentary on the double standards and societal expectations that women face compared to men; it does not, however, address the very real expectations that men face from society as well. It emphasizes that while both men and women face societal expectations—the very expectations that, historically speaking, men themselves created—those expectations are not the same, and in most cases, it seems that men have a little more leniency.
In life, we all face our own unique challenges, each one different from the next. However, when these circumstances are created by society, which has primarily been dominated by men, the conversation is different. Generally speaking, that same society tends to give men more time to succeed and praises them for facing the double standards they have created themselves.
However, society expects women to do everything gracefully and without complaint. Society seems to think that a woman should know her duties without needing praise, because that is just what is expected of her. It also seems as though people believe that when women are unable to do everything to the best of their ability, it only proves that women are inferior.
Both of these scenarios led to a frustration that is entirely different from typical challenges or those of men, yet it is rarely seen and even more rarely heard. In fact, Barbie is the only movie that I can recall that directly addresses these double standards.
So until these double standards are addressed by society, until the frustration of every woman who faces them is not just heard but listened to, I won’t forget the Barbie movie, and I especially won’t forget Ferrera’s speech.