Loving yourself means loving your nature
Barbie, beauty and discontent
This post is a reaction to the new ‘Barbie’ movie. It contains minor, insignificant spoilers.
The criticism of Barbie since 1959 has been its canonization of a feminine ideal. The posture, the hair, the makeup, the figure, and the arched feet of Barbie sent a message to every girl who held her. Over many decades, young girls have warred with their simultaneous love and loathing for the Barbie doll, bringing us to the 2023 Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. It’s a film jam-packed with social commentary, from its first frames depicting young girls playing with and then smashing baby dolls, to the film’s final moments of Barbie making her first visit to a gynecologist.
The movie is taking on the question of what feminine beauty really is, and how Barbie can make the most of reality. This simple narrative mission can be easily lost over 90 minutes of layered messaging on sex and gender, political power, patriarchal institutions, and why women are so awful to other women, but the heart of the ‘Barbie’ movie makes itself known in the quiet moments.
I’ll tell you what it was so that if you’ve seen or the movie or you intend to see it, you don’t miss it. Because it happens fast.
Barbie is in the real world. She’s struggling with cat-calling, objectification, and menacing looks not just from men…but women too. She is doubting herself and starting to look in the mirror with disdain, despite her physical perfection (it’s Margot Robbie, come on).
Then she sits down at a bus stop next to an old lady. Barbie stares at her, noting her natural appearance and poise in her old age. Barbie is awe-struck.
“You are so beautiful,” Barbie says to her.
The woman smiles and looks back at Barbie, “I know it!” she laughs.
And she is beautiful. The woman is real. No apparent plastic surgery, no phony bleach blonde hair dye, and no effort to look like anything other than a woman who has lived a full life. You can imagine she has seen it all and done it all.
If Barbie represents a distortion of nature, the woman at the bus stop is the definition of it. And she’s happy with it. Content.
Discontent explains everything in our culture’s moment of gender warfare and confusion. I’ll save my commentary on Gen X and their plastic surgery problem….because young people today are fighting against reality in their own uniquely harmful ways.
Discontent with our physical human condition can be devastating to the spirit.
This is the theme that I have most enjoyed in the Stoic texts, namely Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. In his journal, Aurelius is scrawling all manner of notes to himself about fear, insecurity, exhaustion, and suffering…and one of the most common themes throughout is to embrace what is natural.
Meditations: Book 5 contains many notes about loving, not resenting, what is real. Marcus wrote these presumably to deal with tragedy, personal loss, and depression, and to remind himself that his pain was not special.
Verse 1:
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too.
Verse 4:
I walk through what is natural until the time comes to sink down and rest.
…….Nothing is evil which is according to nature.
Barbie spends a lot of time in the film being upset about the onset of cellulite in her perfectly sculpted plastic legs. But every grown woman in the audience knows this is just the way it is, and they laugh in the theater at every mention.
It’s not an evil done unto them, it’s just reality.
I could go on and on about the ‘Barbie’ movie because there was so much more in it to unpack. So I’ll stop myself here and leave you with this.
Love what is natural. It’s beautiful. And you’re not alone in being uncomfortable with it all.
This is the way.
If any of you like metal music, my second favorite band…Avenged Sevenfold…has a new album out called Life Is But A Dream. The second track is titled “Mattel”…funny coincidence, as Mattel is of course the maker of Barbie. The song speaks to much of what I’ve written about here today. Check it out.
Avenged Sevenfold: Mattel
My vinyl skin provides protection
It holds in place my plastic bones
Cast button eyes reflect an image
All seems as it should
But there's nobody home
Cue the breeze that sway the painted trees
Toy yellow birds upon the rooftops sing
In chorus with the buzzing bees
Melt in sun LED beams
From the sky being held on a string
While boredom tears me apart at the seams
Now I know this might sound crazy
But I've smelled the plastic daisies
And it seems we've found ourselves
In (hell)
Round head consumed with major nothings
Ears made of wax, unfit to hear
Day after day, it all plays over
Dedicated loop
Same year after year
Please attend
All model citizens
RSVP if we can count you in
Empty as we play pretend
Send our thoughts with you and to your kin
And in case I don't see you again
Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight
Now I know this might sound crazy
But I've smelled the plastic daisies
And it seems we've found ourselves
In (hell)
Living feign in porcelain
And just smart enough to know nothing at all
Pull my string and make me cry
Advertisement, moral scrawl
A semblance of choice when there's no choice at all
Out of stock, the end is nigh
Burn
Body burn
Burn
Now I know this might sound crazy
But I've smelled the plastic daisies
And it seems we've found ourselves
In hell