Jessica Alexander

Sexualized Barbies

I recently watched the Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig, and it stayed with me far longer than I expected. Barbie has long been a cultural symbol that represents unrealistic beauty standards and heavily sexualized ideals of womanhood. For decades, she has been portrayed as the image of who women are supposed to be. The ideal woman we blindly allow kids to play with and look up to as role models, the representation of a “perfect women”. I have never agreed with the Barbie standards, and avoided the movie refusing to promote a movie that continued to encourage these ideals. I finally gave in, and to my surprise this movie completely destabilized pre-dispositioned views and standards of what the Mattell company has always promoted. What surprised me about this film was how intentionally it challenged and reversed that image. Instead of reinforcing traditional expectations, the movie reconstructs Barbie as a way to explore the emotional, social, and psychological struggles women face, while also acknowledging the pressures placed on men.