The Barbie Existential Crisis

Barbie absolutely wrecked me, so lets talk about why...

Last Friday, Barbie was released to audiences worldwide, and as I sat there in the cinema that evening, surrounded by a sea of pink as the lights dimmed and the film began, I watched with anticipation. Greta Gerwig’s filmography so far has always had a tendency to make me fall into a million pieces and question my entire existence, so I was nervous to see whether or not this film about a child’s toy was about to do the same? The short answer to this? Yes. Yes it would.

Having already heard Billie Eilish’s song ‘What Was I Made For?’ for the movies soundtrack prior to the film's release, I had a prediction of what the films undertones and story may be. What I didn’t predict however, was for the song to completely annihilate me in the context of the film. As the song began to play while Barbie is told to “close your eyes, now feel”, and I was drowned in this montage of the human experience with the lyrics, “I used to float, now I just fall down. I used to know, but I’m not sure now. What was I made for?” washing over me, I felt this ball inside of me. This swelling of grief and understanding, of pain and of relief, as I saw myself, my feelings and my experiences reflected in this doll…

The weekend has since passed and having watched the film again, and again, and having the opportunity to really sit with the messages I took from it, I feel a deep desire to write about what this film has done to me. My own experience with the ‘Barbie Existential Crisis’.

As a child I participated a lot in theatre and loved it. I could stand on a stage, hold people’s attention, and be something important. When you act in a play with others, you’re integral and you serve a purpose. So when you aren’t there, when you aren’t being a cog in the performance machine, the whole production stops working.

But when I chose to stop being that cog, I stopped being integral.

I did this for a lot of my life, doing something I loved just to eventually stop. Jumping from dream to dream as the path I would make for myself and my future constantly restructured and redesigned itself. But in the last year I found hope that my path may actually stay intact, as creating this blog gave me an outlet to find what I really enjoyed. But, while I had found something I love to do, it also brought with it these deep feelings of discomfort, as I’m constantly made to fight the thought that maybe, I’m not good enough. So as I watched Barbie sit on the floor with pain in her eyes and tears on her face say the words “I’m not smart enough to be interesting. I can’t do brain surgery, I can’t fly a plane. I’m not the President. No one on the Supreme Court is me. I’m not good enough for anything.” I felt every feeling of self-doubt and every anguished struggle to discover what my purpose is, all come crashing down inside of me. I understood Barbie’s pain, because I feel it too.

As this line and the film establishes, ‘Stereotypical Barbie’ (Margot Robbie) isn’t the President, she isn’t a doctor, or construction worker, or writer, she was made as a picture to be looked at with no purpose except that. She spends her life in the gaze of others and that’s the role she plays in Barbie World. Once she becomes acutely aware of this lack of responsibility, the existentialism settles in.

Walking through life purposeless sucks. Like Barbie, I don’t have this skill that I’m great at that gives me an end goal for which I’ll lay out the rest of my life to reach. I’m not a future doctor, or a future lawyer, or anything impressive like that. I’m not really great, I’m just good. So I don’t plan for anything… I just exist in a moment, until the next. And this weight of the unknown presses down on me, pushes me into the ground, and flattens me. But I’m supposed to keep going, so I do, and eventually hope that like Barbie this changes and my purpose is found.

In her case, this is the decision to take her power and become the maker, not the made.

This decision of hers would give me mine and Barbies second similarity, our transness!

Of course Barbie isn’t actually trans in the film, but as many have pointed out, whether consciously or unconsciously, the movie has a lot of trans subtext included in it. The key example of course being her ‘transition’ from Barbie to Barbra. From doll to human. Even going as far as to literally get a vagina by the end of the film! Watching Barbie and this journey she takes meant a lot to me as someone non-binary. When Barbie said to Ruth Handler at the end of the film, “Maybe I’m not Barbie anymore”, I knew what she meant all too well. I knew, because I too have spent many years in the same state of confusion Barbie is in, questioning who you are, what the labels you’re given mean and whether or not you’re allowed to choose your own.

I feel as though this ‘trans experience’ goes hand-in-hand with the existential feelings both Barbie and I have endured regarding our roles in society. When you realise that the person you are isn’t the person you’re asked and expected to be, you’re forced to struggle with that fact and question the reasons behind it. “What was I made for?” is a direct reflection of the question, “Why am I like this?”, something asked by millions of people around the world, particularly queer people. So watching Barbie, something often regarded as a reflection of heterocentrist ideas and beliefs, experience a journey many queer people like me have to face, was beautiful.

I think the stage of life I am at, being nineteen, is confusing. You struggle with your place in the world, being somewhere between teen and adult. You struggle with your purpose and what exactly you’re meant to be doing. And you struggle with your sense of self, being pushed to reckon with the fact that you don’t have everything, including who you are, figured out. So when you take said nineteen year old to the Barbie movie, they’re forced to undergo the painful experience of realising and accepting that. Trying to understand that it’s okay to not know what you want to do, it’s okay to doubt yourself, and it’s okay to take time to learn who you are, can be tough. But by doing that you allow yourself to be free of your own burden, and that’s how you start to find peace. Knowing exactly what you are made for must be easy, but taking the time to try and figure that out isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world.

So Barbie, I thank you. Sorry if I rambled…