Just when you thought your daughter was done playing with Barbie, the voluptuous doll is back on the scene in a big way—this time with clever writing, dazzling costume and set design, and an unabashedly feminist agenda, all of which have young women turning out to theaters in droves. Whether your teenager, boy or girl, sees the Barbie film or not, Greta Gerwig’s message reflects Gen Z’s thinking du jour and develops it in some shocking ways. As parents and youth ministers, we are wise to recognize the way these messages are catechizing the teenagers we love (both girls and boys) so we can point them to the true Story in which they find themselves.
What follows here is a conversation among four writers who saw the Barbie movie – one in her twenties, one in her thirties, one in her fifties, and one in her sixties. We offer insights rather than answers, but we hope our thoughts will be valuable as you talk Barbie and Ken with your teenagers. (If you haven’t seen the film, you’ll find a few spoilers ahead.)
Rebecca:
As a young millennial on the cusp of Gen Z and a former youth pastor with a heart for teenage girls, I have thought a lot about how the film’s message resonates with adolescent women.
When we first meet Barbie, she is living the dream in her “own pink world.” Women rule Barbieland, breakfast is never burnt, and there is no such thing as cellulite. Then, Barbie’s perfectly-arched feet go flat, sending her on a quest to the real world to right what has gone wrong. In the real world, Barbie learns the sobering truth that things don’t always work the way they should. She receives objectifying stares from men. She isn’t the heroic feminine icon to young women she thought she was. She realizes that women aren’t always supported and respected in positions of authority.
Perhaps most poignantly, Barbie learns what women have known for centuries: it’s hard to be a fallen creature in a fallen world. More specifically, it’s hard to be a woman in a world of impossible double standards. Though adolescent girls don’t need the Barbie movie to remind them of the intense pressure that comes with being a female, the film does a beautiful job of exposing some of the cultural lies that women—both old and young—face daily.
You’d be hard pressed to find a better diagnosis of what it’s like to be a woman in 21st century America than in Barbie’s new friend Gloria’s (America Ferrera) epic monologue towards the end of the movie. In it, Gloria chronicles all the standards the world imposes on women: they need to be thin, but not too thin. They need to make money, but not be too ambitious, they need to be a “boss” without being mean. (You can read the full monologue here).
Unfortunately, Gloria is right on the money. The world is constantly telling women, especially teenagers, that they need to perfectly uphold every cultural standard presented to them. It’s no wonder so may have become anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, or even suicidal.
While Gloria’s monologue, and the rest of the movie, attempts to offer women a way out of these standards through fighting back against “the patriarchy,” we know that there is a better and more satisfying way offered to young women in Jesus Christ. Through faith in Christ, young women find rest from a noisy world of impossible standards. When they accept Christ’s righteousness on their behalf, they are freed to rest in who they are in Christ, not in what the world tells them to be. A young woman who is hidden in Christ can face the tyranny of a world that tells her she is not enough because she knows that Christ’s righteousness has given her all the “enoughness” she needs.
As Barbie learns, it’s a tough world out there. Women must daily battle the cultural norms that yell at them to be more, do more, and look better while doing it. It may be that the bar only continues to rise for women in this world. Instead of entering the rat race, women can rest in who they are in Christ and receive his perfect righteousness, won for them on the cross.
Anna:
As a mother who’s raised three sons to adulthood, I was particularly interested in Ken’s trajectory. My primary emotion leaving the theater was dismay.
The battle of the sexes depicted in the film (and discussed below) represents a loss for Barbies and Kens. But much like the Velveteen Rabbit, Barbie is offered the option to become “real,” while Ken languishes in Barbieland with the vague encouragement to “figure out who he is apart from Barbie.” The last time we see Ken, he is wearing a colorful sweatshirt announcing “I am Kenough.”
I appreciate a clever pun as much as anyone; still, I can’t help but feel sad that this “I am enough” narrative is the best we have to offer Ken, or anyone for that matter. Part of the pain of the teen years lies in the gradual discovery of all the ways in which we all fall short of whatever our desired “enoughness” might be. Teenagers are further disillusioned by the realization that all the adults they relied upon and admired as children aren’t “enough” either. “I am enough” is cold comfort indeed.
While Barbie is allowed to choose life and death, with all its pain and beauty, Ken will not grow. Ken will remain desperate and sad—but handsome!—because he receives no vision of purpose or meaning. As long as his identity rests in his own (in)sufficiency, his only course of action is to continue to strive to prove himself, which is precisely the tragically inadequate course of action our culture offers men today.
I want better for our boys and men. Our good God makes known to us the path of life in Christ (Ps. 16:11). Hidden in Christ, believers receive his “enoughness” (Col. 2:10, Eph. 1:3), for “our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5). (For a rich and thoughtful discussion of contemporary manhood, please listen to Anthony Bradley’s 2022 talk “The Boy Crisis: How To Retain and Deepen the Faith of High School Boys.”)
Carolyn:
As a mother with grown sons and a daughter, the movie brought to mind Genesis 3: 16 – 19, where God describes the ways in which sin will damage and even destroy the beautiful intimacy that Adam and Eve enjoyed before the Fall.
The Barbies and the Kens in Gerwig’s movie parody the very real polarization between women and men, which began in the garden after Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and that we see manifested in our world right now. The movie, maybe unintentionally, invites us to turn to the gospel to speak directly to this polarization. And thanks be to God, the gospel answers with grace and re-unification. We don’t actually see that realized in the conclusion of the movie, but the gospel is indeed the good news for both the matriarchal Barbieland and the patriarchal Kendom. Like us, our Barbie and Ken heroes are seeking that good news.
The movie begins in Barbieland where the females rule. Every important position, responsibility, and decision is handled by a Barbie. The Kens are accessories, just like the Barbies’ outfits. Their purpose is to answer the Barbies’ biddings, but never do the Barbies emotionally connect with their male counterparts. For us real females watching Gerwig’s Barbieland, it feels like a perfect retribution for centuries of male domination. Barbieland is utopia because finally the superior sex rules. “Who needs men?” is our cultural question of the day, and Barbie answers, “no one.”
Then both Barbie and Ken get a firsthand taste of the real world, and Ken experiences the validation of being a man (as Ken puts it, “the patriarchy”). He gets back to Barbieland first and re-orders it and calls it Kendom. By the time Barbie returns, her Barbie friends are the accessories in a world ruled by the Kens. The cycle of brokenness and alienation continues as the Barbies and the Kens fight for domination, and in the movie’s conclusion, Barbie chooses to live a real life in the real world as a real woman, and Ken is left to explore his Kenoughness in Barbieland. Barbie and Ken seek their purposes in life separately. The polarization between the sexes, while peaceful, is confirmed.
Sound familiar? This is our fall, our life east of Eden, and only the gospel can redeem it.
Genesis 3 teaches us that through sin men and women are alienated from one another. Their sinful desire is to have dominion over the other, to be separate from one another. This is what Barbieland pictures so painfully well.
But Genesis 2:18 shows us that in God’s perfect creation, it was not good for man to be alone. So God fashioned Adam and Eve, literally, to be made more real and more completed by each other. Not just as spouses or romantic pursuits necessarily, although these relationships are deemed loving and good by our good God. Men and women fundamentally need each other as brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, friends, colleagues, ministry partners, and fellow artists.
Men and women share bones from the same dust. We share the same flesh. Men and women are better together, and we are made lesser when alienated from one another. We are each other’s helpmates and we both are God’s image bearers. Our teenagers need the good news that just as the body of Christ needs both hands and feet, it needs men and women cooperating in a shared life together.
Chelsea:
As a longtime youth pastor and now a mom of two young boys, Genesis 2 came to mind for me as well. But I also saw an alarming cultural narrative that parents and youth ministers must prepare to address.
Gerwig’s Mattel-sponsored flick wins an audience with the young women of Gen Z by calling out Barbie’s contribution to negative body image ideals. As viewers, we’re supposed to cheer when the film’s Barbie-hating teenage heroine shames Barbie for setting impossible standards for women. Meanwhile, we’re also meant to welcome Barbie’s new (supposedly upgraded) 2023 vibe, which includes a potent feminist narrative. The film demonstrates that teenagers are still inheriting a world filled with damaging messages about femininity and masculinity, about what it means to be human.
In Gerwig’s Barbieland, as we’ve mentioned, women exclusively rule the world, winning every Nobel Prize and occupying every seat on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Ken’s sole occupation is to “beach,” used as a verb to poke fun at his inability to do anything but stand in the middle of the beach. (Lest the gender norms sound rigid for 2023, the inclusion of a transgender Doctor Barbie reminds us of the times in which our teenagers are navigating adolescence.)
The gender battle Carolyn describes above echoes the ideology of third-wave feminism and its close cousin, Marxism1, both of which are on the rise among young people. The film seems to suggest that in order for one group of people (in this case, women) to be elevated in society, another group, formerly the oppressors (i.e. men), must now be kept down. In suggesting that Barbie fight back against “the patriarchy,” the film pits women against men with the clear implication that there can be only one winner.
By contrast, the biblical story tells us that men and women together are “very good,” essential counterparts in the story of divine worship and human flourishing (Gen. 1:28). It was good, it was good, it was good…the Hebrew narrative of Genesis 1 sets us up to expect to read “it was good” in reference to the creation of Adam in Genesis 2. Instead, in this closer account of human origins, we read for the first time, it was “not good that the man should be alone.” God’s conclusion leads him to create a helper suitable for Adam.
Far from being a demeaning term in the ancient world, Eve’s position as a “helpmeet” has priestly and even military associations. She is Adam’s equal and his counterpart in every respect (Gen 1:28), commissioned to serve alongside him in the priestly vocation to “work and keep” (Gen. 2:15) the Garden (widely regarded by scholars as God’s own temple). The complementary nature of men and women as image bearers, therefore, means that both are sorely needed in the world to reflect God’s glory, to steward his creation, and to bring him worship.
Our teenagers need to hear this antidote to the deception of third-wave feminism and its narrative derived more broadly from critical theory. In a world that insists upon repaying evil for evil and trading one domination for another, the true story of the Bible presents a very different picture of the good life: men and women colaboring side-by-side, reflecting God’s glorious image and lifting one another up as we serve him together.
Along with modern feminism, the film is right to diagnose issues of oppression in our world today. Teenagers and adults alike sense innately that all is not well following our exile from the Garden. But it is the sin resident in every human heart—both male and female—that is to blame. As such, no feminist program can rescue us from our ultimate Oppressor, Satan.
Teenagers living in this Barbie world need to hear the good news that in conquering sin and death forever on the cross, Christ has purchased pardon and freedom for all who will come to him, both women and men. The answer, therefore, to breaking the sinful oppression of women is not women’s liberation to rule over men, but freedom to share in our God-given vocation with men, co-laboring for the gospel as the vice-regents of God’s kingdom.
As with all cultural artifacts, we find in Barbie some good and beautiful reflections of the world as God intended (like the lovely montage portraying the innocence of girlhood play and the strong theme of mother-daughter relationships), as well as many lies we must confront by the truth of the gospel. As adults whom God has called to care for young people, may we steward our conversations about Barbie to help teenagers exercise discernment between the two, such that they might love Jesus more dearly.
Here are a couple of other thought-provoking articles to help you think more deeply about the conversations you have with teenagers. Again, these writers don’t offer answers anymore than we have. The important thing is to talk about these issues with the kids you love.
Christians Should Welcome the Conversations ‘Barbie’ Sparks by Jen Oshman, TGC.
The Good in Barbie (And Yes, I’m a Christian) by Katie Polski, katiepolski.com.
Barbie Movie: Female Empowerment or Toxic Feminity? Alisa Childers Podcast
Join us at Rooted 2023 for more gospel-centered conversations about youth and culture.
- For a primer on talking with teenagers about feminist and Marxist ideology, consider reading the chapters on each in Mama Bear Apologetics: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies, ed. Hillary Morgan Ferrer.