Oh Barbie

I told myself I wouldn’t do it. I told everyone who asked that I wasn’t going to do it.

Last night, I did it.

I saw “Barbie.”

The hype, the raves, the memes, the trending, the product-placement, the social media tsunami had been more than enough to keep me away. But really what kept me away was this: I did not need uber-attractive, star-power actors to walk through a plot and say lines that presumed to explain my lived experience. I did not need a big-budget, industry-backed Hollywood movie to mansplain the failures of feminism to me and to pinpoint the persistence of patriarchy.

 These were my fine moral, ethical, and cultural objections. The line I drew. And then, yesterday, at 6 pm it was 102 degrees, the air thick with wildfire smoke, the EPA air quality meter hovering between “unhealthy” and “hazardous,” and I thought: A MOVIE! Sitting in an airconditioned, air filtered space! Popcorn. I chose “Barbie” because it was playing at my favorite movie theater, and the movie started in 30 minutes.

I will tell you when I fell for the movie: It was when Barbie, pretend-driving her pretend-car in her pretend-world, started to sing “Closer I am to Fine.” I am betting that Margot Robbie has never been to an Indigo Girls concert. I have been to more than a few. At some of the lowest and some of the highest moments of my life, I have belted out this song, alone, driving in the car. There’s that. And there’s the fact that Amy and Emily agreed to have their song used. Not just once, but twice.

I forgave the movie. I allowed myself to be entertained by the barely exaggerated depiction of male privilege. I let myself love America Ferrera’s impassioned speech, while acknowledging that Betty Friedan. Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Audre Lorde, Susan Brownmiller, Kate Millet, Germaine Greer, Shirley Chisholm (to name just a few) said/wrote all this two generations ago. And just as articulately. I permitted myself to be charmed by the (sentimentalized) (predictable) mother-daughter rapprochement. I tolerated the borderline-preachy Rhea Perlman-Ruth Handler scene because 1) it was educational to many and 2) the writers knew to include the mastectomy reference.

 And so, grudgingly, by the final scene—and oh the cleverness of that scene!—I was (gulp) a fan.