WHAT IF THE PATRIARCHY DIDN'T EXIST

In 1963, three (male) anthropologists, unearthed the remains of a woman nearly 10,000 years old. They found that she had been buried with a projectile point that the men declared to be a '“scraping tool”. The male-centric consensus was that women were/are gathers while men are always the hunters. It took fifty five years and the discovery of a 9,000 year old woman buried with a hunting kit, for this narrative to change. Since then it has been concluded that hunting was/is a gender neutral activity.

This is a prime example of how men have been shaping the history of women and their roles in society for hundreds and thousands of years. I don’t even remember what started the conversation, but recently the Cabbage mentioned an old book of fiction written by some male author telling a woman’s story. I said that I “prefer to no longer read women’s stories written by male authors.” The Cabbage then replied “But what if they do it well?” My response was “Good for them, but men have been writing the story of women and thus defining the idea of what a woman should be for so long that I no longer have the energy to waste on yet another male perspective of a female story.”

This ended our conversation.

I was not completely enthralled with Barbieland. It sounds great. All woman government. A Supreme Court of only women. Women scientists. Women doctors. Women Nobel Prize winners. Every woman in Barbieland is extraordinary in some way. Extra. It is so extra that even Stereotypical Barbie questions her ‘enoughness’. This is where my thoughts get real complicated. In fact it sent me into a tailspin of research. Did you know that the original Barbie was inspired by a German doll that was based on a comic book character named Bilde Lilli, a voluptuous pin-up that was sold as a sexy trinket for World War II soldiers? Ruth Handler may have made some very slight changes, mostly in marketing and she probably did have good intentions in introducing a doll that she said was to be “aspirational”, but this “aspirational” doll’s narrative began as male driven story. Barbie was introduced as a fashion doll for dress-up play in 1961. It took several years for those dress-up clothes to resemble astronauts and doctors. Which left years of little girls aspiring to be pretty and the type of woman their daddies would like.

It is literally impossible to be a woman…

Gloria in Barbie, played by America Ferrera

This is the start of Gloria’s (played by America Ferrera) monolog on the expectations of women and all the contradictions in how we should conduct ourselves. Having to be a perfect Barbie in a perfect Barbie world is exhausting. How many times do we hear Margo Robbie’s character say “I’m just Stereotypical Barbie.”? Even this Barbie thinks she should be more. This group of male executives dreamed up a place where every woman is extraordinary. Barbieland is an expectation to be more not an aspiration for more. Expectations and aspirations do not have the same definitions. Barbieland is a product of the patriarchy. There has been criticism of Barbie’s easy forgiveness of Ken’s actions in this movie. I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that Barbie had maybe two days of Ken’s bullshit introduction of the patriarchy. Ladies, we’ve had years of this bullshit.

This may sound like I did not like the movie. That’s not true. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I’m a huge fan of Greta Gerwig, the writer/director and I believe she found a fun and entertaining way to tell a story about women. Go see it. The music and dance scenes are spectacular. Just be prepared to have some thoughts.

Did you know that women have thoughts?