#the Barbie movie inspired me

[sunflxwer101]

I like both versions colors sm i can't choose HELP-

[mountainshroom]

i know i’m like. two weeks late to the party BUT they meant everything to me this eurovision so :’)

[insertdisc5]

arrested for time loop crimes

[little-devil-art]

[Hey Barbie!]🩷

Only my MC Alice and Lucifer in the skater outfits featured in the latest Barbie Movie!! I just HAD to draw them in any of the fancy outfits!! 👀🩷❤️‍🔥

[nhlportraits]

Has this been done yet? (x)

[ct-multifandom]

I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.

It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.

By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.

Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.

[maxgicalgirl]

All I could think for the entire Barbie movie was how killer Cecil would look in Barbie’s whole wardrobe

[spicysucculentz]

[nono-bunny]

For most of my life the phrase "the gay barbie movie" was simple. No ambiguity. Just The Diamond Castle, cottagecore lesbian girlfriends

But as I've embarked on my journey to watch every piece of Barbie media, I'm getting to know a lot of them I missed out on because I ages out of it and. Truly, I swear to god, Barbie movies get gayer and gayer with time

Fairy Secret? Gay. Mariposa? Gay. Starlight Adventure? Gay. Big City Big Dreams? Gay. Just... so many of the newer ones are gay and it's genuinely so great to have more than the one gay Barbie movie, even if Diamond Castle will probably forever remain the gayest (unless and until a time comes where there's a canon gay couple)

[starlene]

Layers of symbolism in Barbie (2023)

I’ve seen Barbie twice now, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the symbolism in the story. It’s a lot!

So, I wrote a breakdown.

Barbie (the character)’s story

In Barbie’s story…

👠 Barbieland symbolizes girlhood, childhood, innocence, immaturity, and naivety.

👟 The Real World symbolizes womanhood, adulthood, growing older and more mature, and becoming a fully realized human. It also symbolizes accepting the inevitability of change, aging, and death.

🏢 Mattel symbolizes society in general, and men in particular, telling women how to live their lives.

✂ Weird Barbie is an example of a woman who does not look and do as she is told. For that, other Barbies have punished her by calling her names and pushing her aside – so at first, Barbie is terrified of becoming like her. At the same time, Weird Barbie is a wise female mentor who helps Barbie along on her journey.

→ For Barbie, moving to The Real World means she is free of the expectations Mattel, and people in general, put on Barbie dolls: she doesn’t have to be perfect or only dress in pink and pastels anymore. No one can put her into a box anymore.

→ At the same time, Barbie leaving her hyper-feminine aesthetic behind when she leaves Barbieland for good symbolically connects that aesthetic with childhood and immaturity. In turn, her more subdued costume in the last scene of the movie symbolically connects that aesthetic to adulthood and maturity.

→ Moving to The Real World is a positive change for Barbie: she becomes more mature and learns to appreciate the beauty in aging. However, I think it’s noteworthy how the movie mostly shows The Real World in a negative light: while in The Real World, Barbie gets disappointed, harassed, and chased down, and all of this makes her experience anxiety for the first time.

→ In the end, Barbie can’t stay in Barbieland because she’s grown too mature for it, showing that it’s impossible to escape growing up – even when the world of grown-ups seems very chaotic and unfair. Becoming a woman means you have to encounter, and learn to deal with, toxic masculinity and the patriarchy.

Ken (the character)’s story

In Ken’s story…

🕺 Ken himself symbolizes a young, immature man who hasn’t found his place within society and who has a very low self-confidence. Instead of placing value on himself and his inherent qualities, he has tied his whole sense of self-worth to Barbie’s approval. As a group, Kens are oppressed within Barbieland.

💃 Barbie symbolizes an idealized image of a perfect girlfriend. At the same time, she is someone who inadvertently hurts Ken because she doesn’t understand her own privileged position within their society. As a group, Barbies are the oppressors within Barbieland.

👠 Barbieland symbolizes oppression, marginalization, and social exclusion. For Ken, it’s a society that has no place for him or people like him.

👟 The Real World symbolizes patriarchy, which Ken interprets to mean a society where things are better for Kens than they are in Barbieland. (In truth, as Ken grows to learn, it’s a system that harms all genders with its strict and oppressive gender roles.)

🐎 Horses symbolize all the positive, joyous, healthy, harmless, non-toxic parts of masculinity.

→ In short, Ken’s story is about a young man falling into the manosphere, and how good self-confidence and supportive connections with other men can help battle toxic masculinity.

→ Just like Barbie, Ken too matures during the course of his character arc: he acknowledges that he’s been wrong about the patriarchy, he starts to feel a sense of self-worth that’s not tied to Barbie, and he learns to lean on other Kens for support.

→ Unlike Barbie, though, Ken remains in Barbieland at the end of the movie, and presumably starts working together with other Kens and Barbies to shape it into a more equal society. This is because to Ken, Barbieland does not symbolize childhood like it does to Barbie, so he doesn’t have to leave it behind when he grows up.

→ When you think about Barbie as a part of Ken’s story, it feels disappointing that when they arrive in The Real World and Barbie experiences the way real women are mistreated, she doesn’t seem to make much of a connection to the way Barbies mistreat Kens in Barbieland. This is, again, because The Real World symbolizes different things to Barbie and Ken.

→ Unfortunately, all too often, the joyous parts of masculinity become tied together with sexism and toxic ideas. The way horses are often seen as a girly thing in our modern-day culture underlines how ridiculous this is: Ken assumes horses and the patriarchy go together and gets into both, though actually, they have nothing to do with each other. In reality, Ken just wants to enjoy the majesty of horses – that is, the positive parts of his own masculinity.

Barbie <3 Ken

👫 The relationship between Barbie and Ken symbolizes heteronormativity and amatonormativity, and the way those concepts are forced down all our throats practically from toddlerhood.

→ Barbie and Ken are not in a real relationship with each other. At the start of the movie, they’re both too immature to understand what being in a relationship means – let alone if they really want that for themselves and each other.

→ Ken is in love with an idealized image of Barbie he has created in his mind. He tries to play the part of a perfect boyfriend, though he doesn’t really know or understand what being a boyfriend entails.

→ Barbie, in turn, is not romantically interested in Ken at all.

→ Despite all this, people (and even Barbie and Ken themselves) expect Barbie and Ken to be together. Notably, the Mattel CEO thinks that Barbie’s ending is that she is in love with Ken, even though there has been literally no evidence in the entire movie that this is the case.

From a female point of view

To the human characters Gloria and Sasha, and also to many real women watching the movie…

👭 Barbies symbolize idealized, stereotypical, perfect femininity.

👠 Barbieland symbolizes girlhood, childhood, imagination, and fun. It’s a thought experiment; a safe haven reminiscent of the innocence of childhood; a place where women can be whatever they want while looking and acting unashamedly feminine.

👟 The Real World is a place where the idealized femininity of Barbies and Barbieland is unobtainable. For many women, instead of being a source of inspiration, idealized depictions of womanhood turn into a burden, something that restricts and disheartens women instead of uplifting them.

Barbieland

👠 Apart from its role in the arcs of individual characters, Barbieland is an exaggerated mirror image of the real world we live in. It’s a joke that criticizes the gender inequality of our world – and as such, it acknowledges that one gender holding power over others is not a good thing.

→ Somewhat confusingly, it’s treated as a victory when Barbies take Barbieland back from Kens – even though that means returning to the unequal matriarchy, not becoming a truly equal society.

→ This is because in Barbie (the character)’s story and to Gloria and Sasha, instead of being a symbol of an unequal society, Barbieland symbolizes girlhood innocence and unabashed femininity. The Barbies, Gloria and Sasha take the joy they feel in their girlhood and femininity back from the patriarchy, which is certainly a feat worth celebrating!

Mattel (the fictional version of the company)

Finally, from the fictional Mattel board of directors’ point of view…

👠 Barbieland is a reflection of their Barbie brand and products, though it’s also shaped by the people who buy Barbies and play with them.

👭 Barbies are a way of making money. Because of that, the executives think they have to be perfectly beautiful and, thus, marketable. Notably, the Mattel CEO doesn’t like Gloria’s idea of a Normal Barbie – until he’s shown evidence that it will make Mattel loads of money, which causes him to immediately change his mind.

✂ Weird Barbie shows the way many children really play with Barbies. Rough play is not in line with Mattel’s pristine brand for Barbie, so Weird Barbie is pushed aside in Barbieland.

→ Barbieland is the way that it is partially because that’s how Mattel has designed it, partially because that’s how the girls who play with Barbies want it. For example, Kens are oppressed because no one likes to play with Kens as much as they like playing with Barbies, and thus, Mattel also puts less resources in designing and marketing them.

→ Somewhat confusingly, this connection goes both ways: the things that happen in Barbieland also affect the things that Mattel does. For example, when Ken redecorates Barbie’s Dreamhouse so it becomes Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House, Mattel’s factory starts producing Mojo Dojo Casa Houses in The Real World. What is that all about??

~

This is all I can think of right now. Let me know if you’ve interpreted something differently, or if you think I’ve missed something!

[ghostcond]

wowwwww

[bizarrescribblez]

drawing my aw1 + aw2 inserts looks and i love (hopefully you can tell once i post it) how becoming real/not an idea in somebodys head anymore made me be more myself/stand out 😭 LIKE IT WAS UNINTENTIONAL TO GIVE MY AW1 INSERT A DARKER COLORED CLOTHING PALETTE BUT now that i drew my aw2 one im like.. omg wait the clothes are brighter/the hair is more realistic colored (im gonna add roots in the hair) 🥺

[roszabell]

i wanted to play with pretty light brushes hehe

[memesonnets]

you guys will never believe the horrors the muses beamed into my brain last night

Stop clownin' on 'em, Ronald

And I'm fun like a bozo (bozo) I'm a clown but I still got that flow tho (flow tho) No thoughts like my brain is cement (ment) I'm a one I belong in a tent Ruff collar it's frilly (grrah) All of the bozos is silly (silly) All of the bozos is glad It clowns (it clowns) and we ain't pulling gags (grrah)

Glad (glad), but he prank me when I get bad, Greatest like Barnum and Bailey (Bailey) Drama like Cirque du Soleil leap I'm a bozo girl (girl), bozos we clean house Flower button be squirting shit got humidity like a greenhouse (woo) Feelin' out, we be dealin' out, Pick a card but don't be revealin' out, Got the trick sleeve we're concealin' out, In that little clown car we peelin' out Cannonball blow the red ceilin' out Cartwheel somersault we freewheelin' out They be reelin' feelin' and squealin' out It's bozo, bitch, if you still in doubt

And I'm fun like a bozo (bozo) I'm a clown but I still got that flow tho (flow tho) No thoughts like my brain is cement (ment) I'm a one I belong in a tent Ruff collar it's frilly (grrah) All of the bozos is silly (silly) All of the bozos is glad It clowns (it clowns) and we ain't pulling gags (grrah)

On silks I'm doing the big drop The clowns all play in the big top (big top) They can't make this gig stop (grrah) I'm washing this costume, I'm making my wig flop Like my brain is cement (grrah) All the real bozos just wanna be friends (like) Tightrope I'm followin' all 'round the bend (grrah) Look where it led, now I'ma see where it ends She a bozo bitch with a bozo clique (grrah) I keep prankin' her, so she gawk a bit (damn) And the circus tix yeah I hawking it (damn) And I got the nose so I honking it (honk) And I wear the shoes so I stomping it (like) And it's circumstance with no pomp in it (damn) Yeah, I know the trick, here's the card you picked (damn) Yeah, they know who's It, me and bozo, bitch

And I'm fun like a bozo (bozo) I'm a clown but I still got that flow tho (flow tho) No thoughts like my brain is cement (ment) I'm a one I belong in a tent Ruff collar it's frilly (grrah) All of the bozos is silly (silly) All of the bozos is glad It clowns (it clowns) and we ain't pulling gags (grrah)

*Fade out to Julius Fučík's Entrance of the Gladiators*

[pinkalluna]

raise your hand if you were the eldest sister who carried a lot of load and had only barbie to look up to and be your big sister

[fried-oignon]

Been playing TTCC with my buddy again (Neighing Ned if any of you have been around that long) and boy does it feel exactly like this