Having watched Barbie, my friend remarked on Margot Robbie’s amazing ability to convey emotion, and she is right. There are a few moments in the film where she is overwhelmed, where she feels emotional complexity and anxiety, when she’s experiencing intense sadness, or intense revelation; When she looks across to the old women at the bus stop, When she runs out crying from the school having had her delusions about the role Barbie has played in society revealed. Her look of hopelessness when everything she thought to be true about how women valued themselves was undone. When she understands that her identity as ‘pretty’ is not enough, that in fact being seen to solely possess beauty is something which is used to devalue women. This is what provokes America Ferrera’s speech about the contradictions of living as a woman in modern society.

Towards the end there is a scene between Robbie’s character and the original creator of Barbie. It is the scene in which Barbie is inducted into womanhood. Robbie’s character says something along the lines of ‘are you saying that I don’t have to do anything to become a woman, I don’t even have to want to become a woman, that instead it is something I discover about myself, as a moment of realisation’. It is written in nicer language than this. I suppose one of the points the film is trying to make is that it is internal complexity, anxiety, questioning ‘thoughts of death’, striving against difficulty, empathy, that defines the female experience. It is in this respect that the ideals of Barbieworld are mistaken. The ideal that people can, without self-doubt or question, embody the identity they have, whether it is one defined as a ‘Supreme Court justice’, ‘president’, ‘construction worker’. This ideal is set against the real world in which women are forced to deal with contradictory values and expectations around a justifiable female identity. Throughout the film, it is this struggle which makes her a person, and a woman.

And then there is the points made about gender. This, for me, is the most artistically made point in the film. In the final scene Barbie approaches an appointment to the gynaecologist, presumably to transition to ‘biological’ womanhood. Then the film ends. The audience is left to confront the fact that they have been viewing a doll (who, as it is explicitly referenced throughout the film, does not have female genitalia) as a woman. And we have been doing so purely on the basis of the superficial conventions of femininity that she has been displaying. This experience (since it is impossible not to watch Robbie and not regard her as a woman) makes a mockery of many arguments against the legitimacy of trans-women, and many anti-trans rhetoric, which often resort to genitalia: ‘How can a woman have a penis?’. An example of this is contained within one of Ricky Gervais’ jokes in which he impersonates a ‘woke lefty’ demanding everyone use the correct pronouns when referring to a trans-woman’s penis. The lefty demands ‘HER PENIS’, and the audience is expected to laugh at the contradictory and delusional logic of woke ideology. In reality, of course, people make their judgement about gender based on the same constructs that the character of Barbie symbolises and displays. People, really, agree with the assertion of the trans-movement that gender is really constituted of the cultural trappings of femininity, and not the biological ‘facts’ of genitalia. I do not doubt that Gerwig’s fantasy about a life-sized, human-like Barbie made its way into society, the femininity of that being would not be challenged within every day discourse; the smooth bump that she possesses would not be used to challenge her right to be referred to as ‘she’.