I Saw The TV Glow is this years version of men misinterpreting Barbie, except this time it's cishet people unable to grasp how fucking gut wrenching any of what they just witnessed was.

Favorite ship dynamic

If you need a reason to watch Barbie, Barbie is to feminism what The Good Place is to ethics

excellent work 🤷

this is fucking amazing and really makes the tories look like shit. Honestly I am impressed

Barbie movie be like: you’ve seen and felt the pain that patriarchy will inflict on you,do you still choose this?you choose to be a woman,be yourself,endure this pain?do you choose girlhood,despite everything you will lose?and the answer is yes.

The Barbie movie was absolutely incredible and I adored how it was funny, satirical, genuinely meaningful and so aesthetically pleasing but one thing that got me, spoilers ahead, was how they had a genuinely pleasing plot twist within the movie.

I, like many people, assumed that the movie would be Barbie goes to the real world and shenanigans ensue and there’s some beautiful meaning of life, but I never thought about the impact going to the real world would have on Barbieland, so it was a genuinely fun and well done surprise when Ken brings back the patriarchy to Barbieland and they have to find a way to defeat it. I didn’t see it coming but it makes perfect sense and foreshadows it beautifully.

Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him, his entire life is built around Barbie’s acknowledgement, and the other Ken’s are competition for Barbie’s acknowledgement, Barbie doesn’t even know where he sleeps, so of course going to the Real World where he’s treated where he has actual capabilities and can do something, it becomes incredibly warped for him in how he perceives it and how he brings it back to Barbieland. I thought Ken would just be Barbie’s token boyfriend, but really it’s just as much about Ken learning how to exist outside of Barbie and being enough just as himself in a healthy, mature manner.

Additionally it was so refreshing how Barbie cares about Ken, but there are little details, where she just smiles as he kisses her and even looks a little uncomfortable, how she doesn’t even want to consider the prospect of him staying the night or being a part of her Dreamhouse, and doesn’t really communicate with Ken that show the cracks in their relationships from the beginning, and how Barbie doesn’t want the relationship that Ken wants, and that’s not the fault of either party, and she doesn’t have to be with him and he doesn’t have to be with her just because that’s the way things are and in the end it’s healthier for both of them when they finally communicate their wants and needs, and walk away from the idea of a romantic relationship between the two of them.

Its how codependency and defining yourself by your partner are unhealthy and can’t have a sustainable relationship because it’s fundamentally unfulfilling for both parties. It’s how compulsory heterosexuality (AroAce Barbie my beloved) creates uncomfortable standards and pressure to be in a relationship in particular way that leaves both members unsatisfied in different ways. It’s about toxic masculinity and how the patriarchy hurts every person involved and is fundamentally unsustainable for every person involved.

Barbie was such a witty, fun but also really meaningful movie and genuinely good.

It was so important to have Barbie look at that woman in the bus stop and tell her she's beautiful. Cause, like Barbie herself says, she (as an idea) doesn't have an end. As Stereotypical Barbie, she's meant to be pretty and fun and that's it.

But she shows that beauty doesn't end when you get old. Aging isn't the end of your story, just another phase of it. That old woman is beautiful, and it's good that she knows it.

That's why Barbie ultimately chooses to become human. She wants to experience that new and different kind of beauty; not just her physical appearance, but that of a life well lived. She wants scars and wrinkles and cellulite. Barbie's end is that she lives as a whole narrative rather than some eternal object of visual pleasure.

And also the way Barbie and Ken are role playing heterosexuality without any inherent sexuality of their own, without any understanding of what it means, or even any genitals at all! Just pretty-girl + handsome-guy = obviously a couple. And the way it fucks them both up! Because they’re both stereotypes, neither of them is a specialist version, no brain surgery or pilots license or Nobel prize for either of them. They’re just assigned the roles of Every Man and Every Woman. And Ken ends up doing Way Too Much because he’s hanging his entire self-worth on being important to Barbie. And Barbie just isn’t interested in him, she was assigned a boyfriend she didn’t ask for and doesn’t want and doesn’t know what to do with, just because that’s what society expects of men and women, that they will necessarily couple up and fall in love because… that’s what they do. Regardless of any personal quality of either party.

It’s about heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the unrealistic expectations society sets boys and girls up for from infancy. Barbie and Ken are every pair of toddlers sharing a sandbox while the adults around them call them each other’s little “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” even though neither party understands or is capable of understanding the implied meaning of that. Or wants to.

It’s a literal funhouse mirror of that weird pressure put on kids to perform heterosexuality from an early age. It examines how that leaves us unprepared for the complicated reality of actual relationships even if it turns out that you are heterosexual and do want sex and romance. Boys and girls aren’t really allowed to be just kids on the same team, so they grow up into men and women who generally want very different things from each other and are trained to look for it in everybody because anybody is better than nobody, and try to force it to work.

Barbie and Ken letting each other go in the end was perfect. Barbie the Every Woman realizing that she doesn’t have to be special, she just has to be, and Ken the Every Man realizing he has to seek validation elsewhere and lean on his fellow Kens for emotional support, WHICH THEY GIVE.

Truly a movie of all time.

I mean, my mom just talked to me a lot as a small child about Barbie presenting an unrealistic body image.

The OP does make valid points that it's fucked up that she didn't have access to dolls who looked like her as a kid, but that's not really a Barbie-specific thing as much as it's a "literally all of US society and the toy industry" thing, and Barbie's more of a reflection of that and benchmark of that than the driving force.

The first Black dolls in the Barbie line were "Colored Francie" in 1967 (who collectors usually refer to a "Black Francie"), and Barbie's friend Christie in 1968, but there wasn't an actual black version of Barbie herself until 1980. Also, because it was the 60s, a lot of parents flipped out because Francie was sold as "Barbie's MODern Cousin", and came in white and black versions, but Barbie herself was only sold as a white doll, so CLEARLY that meant Mattel had a nefarious agenda and supported interracial marriage.

I BELIEVE - and it's been about 15 years since I wrote the paper - that the first Latina Barbies were California Dream Teresa in 1988 and Dolls of the World Mexico Barbie in 1989.

There were some not-great, honestly-kind-of-fetishizing Hawaiian Barbies in 1975-ish, as well as *sigh* "Oriental Barbie" in 1981, marking the first Asian Barbie doll.

Barbie and the Rockers also had Black and Asian characters in 1986, and the 90s were a bit better.

At the same time, like. My Little Pony (produced by Hasbro, one of Mattel's biggest competitors) had two fairly racist ponies in the 80s - "Gypsy" in 1984 and "Wigwam" in 1987. So it's clearly not just a problem with Barbie or Mattel.

The toy industry has problems because our society has problems - and even moreso 30-40 years ago.

Barbie also released three new body types - Tall, Petite, and Curvy - in 2016:

Nowadays Barbie looks like this:

I mean, like Barbie, don't like Barbie, see the movie, don't see the movie, do what you want.

But when you're talking about a toy line that's been around for 64 years - Barbie will be a senior citizen next year! There are grandparents alive today who've never lived in a world where Barbie didn't exist - I'm just not really sure how useful it is to be like "Well they were shitty about representation 40 years ago" when the entire toy industry was, too, at that time. And I think it's a little silly to act like Barbie is the CAUSE of this rather than just being a product of the society we live in.

Like, as a Trans dude I have a fair lot of complicated feelings around things like Barbie but I ABSOLUTELY went out and bought this Barbie when she was released because that is trans Barbie and I love her.

My children each have a Gender Neutral doll, who comes with a wig and with multiple gender presentation options for their clothes.

I think, strictly speaking, these dolls are not in the Barbie line, but from its sibling line Creatable World. They're on the right scale for a Barbie Dream House, though, so I'm not gonna be too picky about it.

Saw this tweet and had to collect Ryan Gosling’s best PR quotes for Barbie

Ah, yes, the three tumblr genders

the absolute funniest thing abt there being a 13th doctor barbie is that dhawan!master is having a breakdown in canon, basically, because he’s Ken and just realised it. 

Stop everything the full barbie move trailer just dropped

the what

*coughs* Friendly doll person here.

So Mattel came out with different Barbie body types a couple years ago, right? There’s your normal body, but there’s also Curvy, Petite, and Tall now.

Around the same time, they came out with the Made to Move body, which has a ton more articulation than your normal Barbie.

Customizers love the Made to Move body, because hey, a lot more fun positions to put a doll in for photographing. But now Mattel has started making the Made to Move dolls with the additional body types from above. We’ve gotten a Curvy Made to Move doll so far, afaik.

This Queen Elizabeth doll, though? Is the first time there’s been a Petite Made to Move body released by Mattel. So customizers were buying it up not out of any care about Queen Elizabeth — but they were buying it to pop her head right off and use the new body for other dolls!

The thing i like the most about tumblr is learning tiny details about communities i would otherwise not even be aware of. thank you for this info

I love that there is an entire fandom that has dedicated itself to beheading little effigies of the Queen and making something better out of them.

Hi I learned Barbie cosplayed Glados

So I stumbled through the Barbie aisle at Walmart the other day…

…and y'all, I almost cried. Just look at these. LOOK AT THEM.

So many skin tones!

PLUS SIZED BODY TYPES!

NATURAL HAIR STYLES!!! MULTIPLE SHADES OF DARK SKIN!!!

A WOMAN AS A DOCTOR!!!!!

I’M NOT DONE, THERE IS A PHOTO LIMIT!

LOOK AT THIS PROFESSIONAL LADY!

SO MANY SKIN TONES AND BODY TYPES AND LOOK AT THAT MERMAN!!!

FRECKLES!!!

Y'all, I’m just…so so happy.

I’m 35 years old and I’ve never seen a Barbie that looked like me, and then there I am as a Barbie in a purple sweater with thick thighs and evenly proportioned boobs and pink hair and a cat.

I can only imagine how other girls must feel.

Nicely done, Mattel. Nicely done!

Mattel also just announced some new Barbie dolls who have wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs!!!

Like screw anything calling this “politically correct,” this is what the real world literally is.  And the world’s population of children is just as diverse as its adults.  Kids deserve to see themselves represented.  As a disabled person myself, I can’t tell you how much this would have meant to me as a little girl.

This is awesome!!!