My best friend was playing “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa with the windows down, raving about the glamorous set designs and about how beautiful Margot Robbie is, and I was just crying – incessantly, for thirty minutes. I remember him asking me, “you can’t seriously still be crying, can you? You have to be playing it up or something. There’s no way Barbie did that to you.”
But no, Barbie really did that to me. I have never seen such a well-done depiction of female kinship in a movie before. Not to mention the fact that the themes surrounding motherhood and patriarchy were executed perfectly. Greta Gerwig wasn’t trying to do too much, but at the same time, she wasn’t walking on eggshells when addressing serious topics. The movie was just that good, so of course I spent the rest of my night wallowing while listening to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”
What really hit me the hardest is the commentary on ageism.
I am only 19, but I am terrified of aging. I feed into ridiculous TikTok trends that encourage us to buy a new product every month to prevent wrinkles, and the thought of my physical appearance changing with age is a petrifying one. For men, aging conveys wisdom, but for women, it’s so painfully different – we feel like an emblem of deterioration. We aren’t as wanted. That’s what scares me the most.
As we live in fear of aging, a series of complex barriers form amongst different generations of women: daughters resenting how similar they grow to their mothers, younger generations patronizing older women, and technology dividing us all. It is difficult for women to reach each other and connect in this day and age. Consequently, intergenerational kinship isn’t depicted much in modern media, let alone in real life. We as women are divided.
However, there is one constant in our lives as women: Barbie. Little girls could do anything with Barbie that they wanted since Barbie was invented – it’s what she was made for. She could be a stewardess, an astronaut, a party girl, a mermaid… My childhood was defined by playing Barbies every single weekend in my basement with my cousin, and you wouldn’t believe how many cinematic masterpieces we made: full, emotional, wildly-creative stories with a rising action, climax, and a tear-jerking resolution. Barbie defined my childhood.
Barbie also provided the older generations with an outlet for their creativity. Instead of being conditioned to become caregivers by toying with the simple functions of a baby doll or a kitchen playset, they could make Barbie do whatever they wanted her to do. She encouraged little girls to be imaginative, to create a scene with nothing but a plastic doll and a living room floor to play on.
The movie Barbie brought three generations of women together to enthuse about similar childhood experiences. After the movie, I saw teenage girls and older women alike talking about which dolls were their favorites, if they made a “weird Barbie” of their own, and, most-notably, complimenting each others’ pink outfits.
It made me think about that scene on the bench. Barbie, who was new to the “real world”, sits down on a bench next to an elderly woman. Barbie is crying, and when she looks up at the woman, her face softens and she exclaims, “you’re beautiful.” The elderly woman smiles and responds with, “I know.” In the movie, Barbie doesn’t experience the ageist elements of a patriarchal society that we grow up in because she lives in the female-dominated world of “Barbieland”. So, when she enters the real world, she doesn’t associate wrinkles or gray hair with the same negative connotation as everyone else – she just sees a beautiful woman.
The next week, I was working at my job waiting tables. I served three elderly women who were chatting up a storm about everything under the sun, gossiping about their lives and the news and anything else they felt like. I thought to myself, “I want to be just like them when I’m 80.” They reminded me of my two best friends and I, how we’d debrief at Dunkin after a night out.
I experienced a real wake-up call: aging is such a privilege. Why fear something unavoidable? Wrinkles are signs that you’ve lived, you’ve laughed, and you’ve accomplished. We do not become defunct when we lose our youth. We instead get the privilege to pass down our stories, our best recipes, our favorite articles of clothing, and every valuable lesson we learned growing up. We form indomitable bonds with the women around us who are experiencing the same trials and tribulations, forming soul ties that never dissipate. We are wanted.
Girlhood is not a period of time, but it is an element of our spirit. We have so many more similarities than we even realize with the women who came before us, and when we connect, we learn so much about each other. So, why should I fear aging when instead I could look forward to being a grandmother, a teacher, a mentor, and, most importantly, someone who has lived?
This realization did not diminish my disdain for developing wrinkles as I age, but it made me think critically about gendered ageism here in America. It made me think about how much time we’re spending fearing the features that are often possessed by the most powerful, caring, influential women in our lives. It showcased the value the power our common interests and experiences can have in fostering intergenerational kinship. And now, when I worry about getting older, I think about how beautiful my mother is.
So thank you, Barbie.