Letters from the Other Side

19. Appendix A: Barbie vs. Poor Things

Why one movie is a true feminist manifesto and the other isn't (and why Hollywood got it all wrong, again)

 The Academy Awards this year puzzled and surprised me. I expected "Barbie" to win more Oscars for its art production and design and I expected "Poor Things" to win less. But ah, once again the gap between the elites and the ordinary, average man is wide and insurmountable.

The enchanting set of "Barbie" was an astonishing feat of invention and I was convinced "Barbie" would at the very least win for its art production and set design (not to mention the smash hit, phenomenon "I'm Just Ken"). The Barbie house and Barbie car were exact, life-size replicas of the play versions. Everything was like reliving a nostalgic, childhood dream or revisiting a happy place.

Don't get me wrong, Emma Stone duly deserved her Oscar! My goodness, that woman is a wizard! She gave such an mind-blowing performance. She perfectly captured the unsteadiness of a one-year-old who is still learning to balance properly as they give their newly-discovered-lease-on-life, careening-out-of-control, tottering steps. The unfiltered truth that children can spout without batting an eyelid. The innocence to not realize it should feel ashamed.

But boy, was I disappointed when the movie started taking a turn for the worse. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I really dislike it when art is just an excuse for soft porn. And half of the movie is about Bella's so-called sexual evolution which is being portrayed as her liberation. Exasperating!

How naïve! There isn't a little girl on planet earth who sits on her mother's lap and says: "Mommy, one day I want to be a prostitute". Yet, this film is lauded for its heroine's lack of inhibition and breaking cultural norms. My goodness, it's not a cultural norm, it's the very essence of femininity you are attacking. Women have value, as the movie Barbie unapologetically touts, for being women, not sex objects, whether they choose to be President Barbie, Princess Barbie, Astronaut Barbie or Stay-At-Home-Mom Barbie.

It seems to me this is a man's idea of a woman's sexuality. We women know what we want and it's not being a courtesan! That is not glamorous at all. Talk to any woman coming out of the torturous hell of sexual exploitation, prostitution and human trafficking and there is no doubt that there is nothing freeing about the core message that being a nymphomaniac is somehow going to help you become your truest self or is the deepest expression of your womanhood. Sex is not just a physical act, either. It's deeply spiritual and bonds people.

The Barbie movie, on the other hand, got it so right! No wonder it became a worldwide sensation! No surprise there, the director and writer, Greta Gerwig, is a woman. Who better to talk, right? Greta is a wonder as a director. My hat off to her.

The monologue in "Barbie", poignantly rendered by America Ferrera, about how difficult it is to be a woman nowadays, encapsulates the very essence of the fine line women have to tip-toe on in today's world.

I know that the feminists of the 1960s boycotted the Barbie doll for trying to stereotype women and set impossibly high and unattainable standards for the female body, but that battle has been won when new versions of Barbies were manufactured. The movie shows us all the different types of Barbies of every variety in all the different eras. The Barbie of the 2020s is all-inclusive. The old argument is obsolete.