Barbie is a Drag Queen

The medium not does not match the message

I have spent an inordinate amount of time this week thinking about the Barbie movie trying to figure out what was wrong with it since it was such a hit, and the only critiques I found said it was “muddled” which I agreed with, I needed to know what the hell was the problem.  Why did the medium clash with the message?

Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed the hell out of it.   I loved Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the visuals, the clothes, the sets, the musical numbers.   But like many other critics I hated the woke speechifying.   I certainly didn’t cry and can’t imagine why anyone would at the excessive earnestness.   

Maybe there’s something wrong with me—maybe I’m not feminist enough. 

Fuck that.

 I have serious feminist bona fides.  I was in a consciousness raising group in the 60s and wrote about fat fashion for the Village Voice long before body positivity was a thing.  I burned my bra and covered the Big Beautiful Woman Beauty Contest.

 Even then feminism lacked a sense of humor, and it’s only gotten glummer since.  I’ve been almost beaten to death online for having the temerity to joke about female celebrities getting face lifts.

Greta Gerwig is a second wave feminist-- which was the problem with her Barbie.  Her generation is so fucking earnest, they may appreciate camp but they just don’t get it.   She got the look of Barbie, the fun of Barbie, the exaggerated pinkness, the fantasyland of Barbie-dom.    So what didn’t she get?

She didn’t get that BARBIE IS A DRAG QUEEN-- not some repository of feminist yearnings. We love her looks and her clothes because—well—they’re campy.  Little girls know no one looks like that, and so do drag queens.  But drag queens and little girls love to dress up.  Boys and men do not.  Little girls wear their mom’s clothes and heels and put on makeup—and pretend to be glamorous women.  Gay boys do the same thing.     I was a fat girl and I played with Barbies, though I had no desire to be her.

I always admired drag queens, long before they became trendy. Unlike many ultra-serious feminists of my generation I was also a fan-and friend--of real drag queens before it was even legal to cross dress.  I was in awe of those women for having the temerity to be themselves despite their outcast status.  I went to John Waters movies and cheered Divine—who was competing for the crown of filthiest woman alive (300 pound drag queen pooping on your lawn anyone?)

Of course the drag community loves Barbie, and is now holding Barbie themed drag brunches across the country.  The Polygon website reported that Barbie and drag queens share the same dream “ Barbie has directly inspired some of the most famous drag queens in America — with Trixie Mattel (pictured above) as one of the most prominent examples. In an essay for Vogue, Mattel, who appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race… spoke about the influence that Barbie had on her drag, including not only in what she has worn and how she has painted, but in her business acumen.”

Unless there’s a woke Barbie (there is—she wears Birkenstocks) real Barbie would never lecture you about how hard It is to be a woman like America Ferrera did in the movie.   Just to remind you, this is the same America Ferrara who was one of my icons as Ugly Betty—she of the gloriously clashing colors and weird outfits and chubby body.  She’s now skinny, beige,  politically correct and boring, giving speeches about how hard it is to be a woman.   Of course it’s hard.  But it sure helps if you dare to be someone like Ugly Betty, who barged right in where she wasn’t wanted and took over.  She sure knew how to rock those clashing colors.  

Barbie the movie is a mess of contradictions.   Much though I love Greta Gerwig and her other movies-- and I did love Little Women, 20^th Century Women, Isle of Dogs and Ladybird and I’m thrilled that a woman director is sweeping the box office-- the Barbie movie would have benefited from the camp sensibility of John Waters  or Harvey Fierstein or another gay guy.  Except now that Waters and Fierstein are old there are no gay directors to replace them—that I can think of.   Weird Barbie is played by openly gay Kate McKinnon, who, weirdly,  isn’t particularly funny or weird in the role. 

And instead of the drab Ruth Handler character who invented Barbie,  played by Rhea Perlman, why not have an actual older Barbie, such as Jennifer Coolidge.    She’s got it all—the look, the attitude, the outrageousness and the mileage.   Now there’s a Barbie I can relate to.

Maybe Lena Dunham who is directing the forthcoming Polly Pocket movie will get it right.  She’s fearless.    I bet there won’t be any feminist lectures in it and hopefully it will offend practically everyone, which is Dunham’s superpower.  She never lets her subversive sense of humor be subsumed by  preachiness.