Therapist Reacts to BARBIE

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I love that Barbie's clothes get less pink and more grounded the more time she spends in the real world, culminating in her wearing a yellow dress when she decides to become human. Also, Sasha starts out in all black, but ends up wearing more pink as the film progresses.

What I love about the "I'm not pretty" line is that she has never seen herself in a functioning mirror. Mirrors in Barbieland don't have glass (as we see in the opening). When another Barbie calls her beautiful, she responds with "I feel beautiful." In this later moment, she know longer feels beautiful, even though her physical features haven't changed.

The scene of Barbie crying because she "isn't pretty" is something every single girl has said to them time and time again since they were pre-teens. There is SO much pressure on us to be beautiful, and when we don't meet the internalized expectations, we feel so revolting inside and out that it is crushing. It seems to superficial, but its so deep.

I love that allan is such a low key guy in a world of kens and hes like 'oh ok...murdering has to be done' and does not even hesitate. I love the little nod to quietly confident people getting it done when needed. He's just this gorgeous little introvert in a group of extroverts.

i think the misdirect of barbie having to meet gloria instead of sasha was very impactful because even us daughters forget that our moms were also young girls who had to go through what we are going through if not worse.

As a young man, my two chief takeaways from Barbie were “I should make my Mom feel loved more” and “I am Kenough”.

“Talk to a woman and ask her if it spoke to her and why. And just listen, just listen and learn.” The way Jono said that gave me literal chills.

The scenes in the park bench where Barbie observes people just existing in all of their aspects (joy, pain, young, old) and the scene where Ruth shows her the montage of life as a human hit me HARD. I have struggled with suicidal ideation in the past and seeing the joy Barbie gets from seeing life just happening around her really makes me realize I'm here and alive because life is messy and painful and complicated but still so much better than just not being.

I actually loved that this movie has Margot Robbie as Barbie saying and feeling that she wasn't beautiful enough. That feeling of inadequacy isn't limited to only certain women, it is pretty universal. It's like learning that a young Julie Andrews didn't think she'd have a career because she didn't have the talent (true story). It helped me to realize that if people who I think are obviously beautiful and obviously wonderfully talented don't feel like they're enough, then maybe my feelings of inadequacy and insecurity are absolutely unwarranted too.

Gloria's speech to Barbie "You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough." is literally verbatim what my mother said to me when I had my first bout of depression (unknowing at the time) of my place in the world. Hearing it on the big screen- FROM AMERICA FERRERA- reduced me to tears, suddenly thrown back to that moment of Not Good Enough, realizing how universal it was. My mother not remembering saying it to me but resonating with the speech, from Barbie's perspective, when I told her after... The world needs more hugs and this movie is step in that direction

Speaking as a man, what I loved most about Barbie and incidentally what I also love about feminism is how compassionate and caring they are toward men. There's this huge misconception that if something is pro-women then it's anti-men, like it's some kind of zero sum game. At the same time it bothers me that men's issues and men's mental health so often rely on women to talk about them and that women take on that burden when most men are either unwilling or just incapable. I've seen so many women in my life carry the burden of not only having to have their own life figured out and their own sense of stability, but they also get left with the burden of carrying the emotional load of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons because so much of the "culture" of masculinity actively discourages self-reflection and self-actualization. It may get depicted in a mostly silly and lighthearted way, but there's A LOT of understanding and compassion for men in this film. The line Hellen Mirren says near the beginning "Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him", while played as a joke, speaks deeply to a lot of the gendered standards men hold themselves to and the pain it causes them, especially in how much value is placed on men for being desirable to women and how much shame comes with not being desirable to women (this is the entire foundation of incel and nice guy psychology). If you identified with the male characters in Barbie, I highly highly recommend the book "For the Love of Men" by Liz Plank. I agree with Alan's challenge, sit back and listen to the women in your life who resonated with this film, and get even further ahead of the curve by dissecting and understanding your own masculinity and how it affects you and the people around you. Even if you feel "enlightened" as a man, I promise you that Patriarchy and toxic masculinity are so deeply baked into the fabric of our society that they affect you in ways you never realized.

Interestingly one thing I took away from this movie that isn't really talked about that much is Ken learning how to love himself without Barbie. The whole thing about "Kenough" is that no one NEEDS to be in a relationship to be fulfilled as a person. Each and every person is capable of doing great on their own, and a relationship should be something you want to have in your life without needing it to feel complete.

I did the whole Barbenheimer thing alone. I saw Barbie 2nd because I knew it would be a nice come down after Oppenheimer, but I was amazed at just how good Barbie was. As a 40 year old man, I have never experienced the things discussed in the movie but I was reduced to tears multiple times. Greta Gerwing, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling made something special. I'm just sad that a section of people refused to watch it and instead made up lies to push their agendas.

I went to the cinema alone to watch Barbie and I was so close to crying during the scene where Barbie hears the speech about being a woman. As a young, barely adult man, I’ve been learning more and more about the struggles that women go through in our society, and that was the speech that single handedly opened my eyes to the pain, confusion, and utter bs that women have to go through everyday. I won’t claim to understand it all, but what I will do is be more understanding when a woman tells me she’s having a hard time, and I will do my best to help, especially if it’s a close friend, or family member.

As member of IATSE I had the privilege of attending a screening of Barbie where the post-production did a Q&A. Someone asked where that montage of women from the end came from. They said the videos came from the post team and other members of the crew! They're the actual home videos of the women in their lives. It's so personal and beautiful I tear up thinking about it!

As a man, I loved Ken's breakdown not just because of how funny it is, but for what it tells us. "You're not your girlfriend. You're not your house. You're not your mink. You're not even your job (beach!)." It perfectly mirrored the whole speech about expectations placed on women, and placed it at men's feet as well. It shows that, while the specific challenges differ, we're all just people trying to become our best selves despite what society tells us to be. As pointed out in the video, it's something Barbie realized about herself as she said it. It resonated with me so much because of something I've personally experienced. When I made the decision to go into teaching after my physics degree, I got all sorts of passive aggressive comments - mainly from other physics guys - about how it doesn't pay much and it's a dead end job and it's a waste of my degree and whatever, even one about how teaching is a "woman's job"... It really wore me down and made me doubt myself and my decision. Still sticking with it and almost a fully licensed teacher now.

America Ferrera's speech really struck me very hard as a guy because it is a lot of the things my mom has admitted to dealing with all the time. She's a very well-accomplished diplomat, has been able to work to a high position, travelled across the world, dealt with a lot of ego's which always show up with diplomats and ambassadors. And all this while she was dealing with a husband who was very narcissistic, abusive, insecure, and needed to feel in-power at home, even though he depended on my mom for the money and doing everything. All the plate-spinning she had to do, appearances she had to keep up. I mean when she had children immediately people began questioning her for working rather than being at home with them. The amount of guys who hated this film, who sat through this whole movie and couldn't even fathom being even slightly sympathetic to it and just claimed it was woke bullshit is insane, but predictable. Idk its weird to imagine how those guys have sisters and mothers yet can't muster up any empathy watching the movie. I mean I hear a lot of women saying this movie didn't even go that far, and was actually quite socially conservative.

I love the timing of the "Now feel" line. Because they then play a song and show clips that make the vast majority of the audience cry every time. Greta is such a good director that she can time the moment you're going to feel something that well.

I started sobbing during the Supreme Court scene where one of the Barbies says she can have a valid argument while holding space for her emotions. Did not stop crying until the credits rolled around. It was a very healing experience, even though my mother was looking at me like I was an insane person during most of it.