I’ll preface this rant (I mean, review) by saying that I haven’t seen the film and have no intention of monetarily supporting what amounts to feminist propaganda. I’ve seen more than enough trailers, reviews, and film breakdowns to know exactly what’s in the movie and what it’s about. Besides, this post is less about Barbie specifically and more about the feminist wave we continue to see flooding the western world.

From the first trailer, it was obvious the primary message of the Barbie film was going to be feminism. Take that Space Odyssey spoof: we see a group of little girls playing with baby dolls…that is until Barbie shows up. She’s oh so shiny and new, the monolithic embodiment of materialism and vapid self-absorption. Go ahead and smash those babies, girls. Who wants to be a mother when you can wear unstained pink, live in a dream house, and pursue an endless string of career options? In this, Gerwig is merely following the Barbie legacy.

From the beginning, Barbie was modeled as a feminist icon. Helen Mirren, while narrating a scene in the film, rightly claims that before Barbie little girls were playing with baby dolls, pretending to be mothers as they played at nurturing their “children”. Not so with Barbie. Barbie has always been about encouraging women to see themselves in careers outside the home, careers that prioritize self-fulfillment over family. Barbie has never been about marriage and children. She’s more concerned with girl bossing, palling around with her similarly superficial friends, and casually dating boy toy Ken. Barbie’s official slogan is “You can be anything.” (Just so long as that anything doesn’t involve being self-sacrificial.) Modern women may despise Barbie her thin frame and the impossible beauty standards she imposes, but they have all too willingly glommed onto the larger feminist message Barbie has been hyping for decades: men are disposable, motherhood is a waste of your time, and the only thing that matters is cruising around in that hot pink Jeep with your girlfriends. If you live in the 21st century western world, it’s all so boring and predictable.

“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls…The girls who played with them could only ever play at being mothers. Which can be fun, at least for a while anyway. Ask your mother.”

-Helen Mirren’s voiceover, ‘Barbie’

I could turn this into another post solely about the importance of motherhood (believe me I’m tempted), but instead I’d like us to turn our attention to the patriarchy since it was the true boogeyman of the film. Trust me, it all ties together. As a Christian, I believe the Bible wholly supports a patriarchal framework and I believe that framework has direct implications for women. Women are the ones who are the most damaged and abused in societies that deviate from a biblical model of the patriarchy. By biblical patriarchy, I mean that men were designed by God to be the leaders within the home, the church, and society at large. They weren’t designed to be the heads of the Kendom or whatever silly misinterpretation of the patriarchy feminists like Gerwig can think up in their self-induced fever dreams.

Men and women were created and designed for specific roles and functions. Designed, not assigned, is an important distinction because it’s vital we recognize that the roles we have as either male or female have a direct connection to our design. They are not arbitrary and they are not interchangeable. And no, I’m not just talking about design in terms of male or female “plumbing”. We can and should take cues from our bodies as to what roles God has designed for us. For example, a woman’s body has been specifically designed to create and nurture life. Apart from secondary means (e.g., pumping, formula), a breastfeeding mother must by necessity be present with her newborn in order for that child to receive nourishment. What should this tell us of the importance for women to be the ones to care for their babies? Absent firearms, a man, given his strength, stamina, and stature, is the clear choice to confront an home invader. Technology may have muddied our understanding of the obvious differences between the sexes, but we must recognize that, as wholistic persons, the entirety of our being has been designed as either male or female–body, mind, and spirit. It’s all connected. None of this a little from column A, a little from column B silliness. We are indivisible beings. Then the ultimate question is not: can a woman do x, y, or z? The question is should she? With this in mind, there is and should be a fittingness between one’s design and one’s function/role. I believe it was Doug Wilson who said something along the lines of, “I could use a screwdriver to stir my coffee, but that’s not what a screwdriver was made for.”

In Barbieland, one of the ways in which the patriarchy manifests itself is with a group of barely-covered Barbies serving beer to the Kens. The irony is that this type of immorality and female sexual subservience to the male population at large is a direct result of the type of feminism Gerwig and others would likely support. Ever heard of OnlyFans? In a societal system where women are encouraged to leave the protection of their fathers (if they ever had it to begin with) and eschew marriage and family (and thus the protection of their husbands), is it any wonder you end up with a generation of women using their bodies as commodities? The result is that many men don’t see any reason to marry; they’re getting all the free sex they want. Enter truly toxic masculinity. This has had serious ramifications for both men and women and clearly the family structure at large, but you need to retake a course in biology if you don’t believe this system negatively impacts women more than men.

In contrast, patriarchy simply means rule of the father. As Christians, we believe that the leader of the household is the husband and father. The leaders of the church must be men (1 Timothy 3:1-7 gives us a list of qualifications). And, I would argue, it’s a natural progression that civil authorities should be men . After all, we do serve a loving Father.

Let’s caveat here by noting that patriarchy does not mean all women submit to all men. I am not required to submit to any man I pass in the street or even any man within my sphere of family and acquaintances. I am required to submit to my husband, to the authority of the elders of my church, and to the civil authorities God has placed over me (be they male or female). I am required to continue to honor my father (though I don’t submit to him as my head now that I’m married) just as I am to honor my mother. Kendom is hardly representative of this view.

Yet Kendom is precisely the system Feminism has created and perpetrated. Women have one of two options if they aren’t going to support a biblical patriarchal system. In the first scenario, a woman needs to act like a man in that she goes out and pursues some career where she must submit to a boss/corporation who doesn’t care about her in any meaningful way. This is done mainly out of necessity (remember there’s no loving father or husband to provide for her), but let’s have those feminists dress that job up as some ambitious dream (nothing like pimping for “the man”). In favor of this so-called dream job, she’ll be expected to give up marriage and family (or neglect them), wasting away her child-bearing years in the widget factory or neglecting the irreplaceable moments of her children’s lives. Either way, she is emotionally cutting herself off from developing meaningful lifelong connections with people who will truly love and care for her. We’ll call this the deeply unfulfilling Barbie model. (There’s a reason that plastic smile looks so fake.) The difference for a man is that he goes out with the primary goal of providing for his family (be that immediate, extended, and/or church family) and so, whatever job he has is actually serving a higher purpose. A man can work in the most unfulfilling job and yet still find fulfillment in that greater goal as it is a part of the role for which he was intended.

In the second scenario, a woman has to trade on her looks (particularly while she’s young) so as to glean any desired resources she may want–monetary, emotional, or otherwise. I don’t care if you’re giving up your body only for an emotional connection with a man… outside of marriage, any trading of your flesh in this way amounts to prostitution. God’s design is that a man and a woman are joined together as one flesh within the bounds of marriage. The reality in the feminist model is that women enter hookup culture, have sex with a slew of random men, and then wonder why they feel used. Even those who claim to feel fulfilled in these promiscuous lifestyles eventually come to a time when they are no longer as young and desirable as they once were. Again, where were the meaningful relationships they could have been growing and fostering instead of bed hopping? Perhaps they were abandoned like so much jewelry on strange nightstands? But no, no, no, it’s much better to buy the lie that self-exploitation is empowering, especially when so many men benefit. In fact, it’s downright charitable.

The goal has always been to break up the family by any means possible. Smashing babies (often not metaphorical), undermining fathers, and tearing women from their homes–these are all bullet-point agenda items in the feminist to-do list. Think I’m being dramatic? Consider an article Mallory Millet (sister to Kate Millet, the “Karl Marx of the women’s movement”) wrote on a 1969 gathering of feminists seeking to establish the National Organization for Women. She talks of a liturgical-style call and response the women chanted:

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

Don’t believe The Feminine Mystique claptrap. The real trouble women face is not the patriarchy. It’s not that their husbands are domineering or that their children are soul-devouring succubi. The real trouble is sin. It’s selfishness and greed and lust. None of these pursuits are real or meaningful. They’re as artificial as the plastic façade of Barbieland. And who better to represent this illusion than a plastic doll?

All the feminists have done is create cogs and addicts. The cogs are grinding away for some man down at the mill. The addicts are chasing some fleeting dopamine rush in the unfamiliar light of a stranger’s bedroom. The feminist message has always been: “Kill your baby. Get that dreamhouse.” Just don’t be surprised when you wake up to your own existential crisis, when you have a house but no home.

Until next time, salutations & selah.