So. Barbie. Yeah.

I spent a half an hour arguing feminist theory with my 19 yr old the day after I saw the Barbie movie, and I’ve got to say, it was delightful. I may be the only person in my immediate and extended family who identifies as something like a feminist. I hate to use the term, however, because it just doesn’t mean anything anymore. Real feminists will say I’m too conservative-leaning to use the term, and anti-feminists basically spit in my direction if I do. But you know what? Fuck all of you.

At 19, I got a job in the library of my community college and there I discovered Camille Paglia. The first “feminist” tome I read was Sexual Personae, after which came Orlando. Self-education is always a bit risky, but I’m an intelligent person. I’m a seeker, if you want to be a bit dramatic, which of course I do. Having friends who spent their college years mired in gender and women’s studies courses, I think I’m better off, thankyouverymuch.

(I have no interest in third wave feminism, because I’ve spent my life not wallowing in my victimhood, so we’ll just stop at Paglia.)

Anyway, I think of myself as an egalitarian — everyone should be treated equally but fairly, and while there’s no denying the inherent physiological differences in the biological genders, if you want a go at something, knock yourself out. Generalities work great on paper, but rarely translate to the real world. You can argue aggregates all you want; I’m going to pick at them until your argument falls apart.

But I digress.

I was excited about Barbie because 1) I love Margot Robbie as much as most dudes. I think she’s gorgeous and talented and willing to make a fool of herself, and somehow she’s always charming. Plus, she’s an Aussie, and Aussies and I get along very well. 2) I’m not ashamed to admit that I had a veritable army of Barbies. Of course, I shaved their heads and gave them tattoos when I was an adolescent, but I loved dressing them up and doing their hair when I was younger. I love clothes. I love makeup. I love styling hair. I love pink. 3) I figured that with Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach at the helm, a movie about Barbie would be at least interesting.

My trust was not misplaced.

The movie is chaotic, but Gerwig and Baumbach convinced me that they knew what they were doing. By now you’ve heard much about the various themes shotgunned at the viewers faces throughout the film, but after taking a couple days to think about it, I’ve decided that the most important element was the questions the screenwriters/director was asking: How do we reconcile the promises made by postmodern feminism with the reality of our lives? And how do we fix what we’ve done to Ken?

Ken is a mirror. A reversal of sorts. What women used to be — an extension of “our men” (ew, I want to wash my mouth out with soap when I say that phrase), an accessory, a trophy. He lives for Barbie’s gaze. He’s also a surprisingly honest representation of the longing many men have to be seen. Many of my guy friends have told me that they just want to be complimented — something I’d never even thought of before. Women spend a lot of time warding off unsolicited compliments, (yesyesyes thank you, I know I have a pretty face *eyeroll*) but I guess men don’t have to worry about that.

(That makes me kind of sad, but not sad enough to make you a sandwich. Fuck you, and make your own damn sandwich. I’m not going to compensate for the cheap consumerist notion of feminism by throwing myself into some idealized 1950s LARP of femininity. I will continue to treat each human I encounter as an individual, regardless of gender, and woe betide the jackass who tried to mansplain shit to me.)

((I’m doing a terrible job staying focused, but I’m not very good at that anyway.))

Fight Club asked very important questions about masculinity, and Barbie at least acknowledges them. Our ideas of gender roles are phenomenally fucked up, as are our ideas of motherhood. I’ve heard Barbie described as Fight Club for Girls, (mostly by men), which is just stupid. There is no Fight Club for girls because we don’t need one. We need to question the cheap, watered down version of feminism that’s been fed to us since the ‘90s. Girl power is for children. Life is far more complicated than that.

(If you think Barbie is Fight Club for Girls, I’m dismissing you out of hand for being an absolute moron. Fight Club is hands-down my favorite film/book, so don’t come at me with that nonsense. That just tells me you didn’t understand it and deserve to be shunned.)

Ultimately, what has feminism™️ given us? Mixed messages and more pressure to be everything, all at once, all the time. More benchmarks to which we can never truly live up. The idea that we should have it all, be it all, and never let anything fall through the cracks — and the bogeyman of the patriarchy to blame, when we realize, too late, that we are simply human.

I chose to stay home with my kids, and now, I’m kind of flailing. But I have years of memories — first steps, first teeth, first swear words — and I wouldn’t trade that. But the thing is, it is a trade off. We sacrifice some things for what’s important to us. Life is messy. Being human is messy. And it’s glorious and disappointing and exhilarating and beautiful and chaotic and sad and joyful all at once.

That’s what I believe this movie was trying to convey. All of this iNdOcTriNaTiOn bullshit is reductive and exposes the inability of some to accept that life is fucking messy. (Don’t even get me started on the rejection of critical thinking on the modern right. I just make people so angry.) There are no answers. We’ve got to figure it out ourselves, and the only way to do that is to live it — not as the extension of someone else, or our chosen political tribe, but as an individual.

Stop beating the drum for someone else, and live your fucking life.