What ‘Barbie’ Critics Are Getting Wrong About Its Big Monologue

No one can beat Greta Gerwig at the tricky game of writing a memorable monologue.

Barbie only proves this further. Gerwig has already given us great speeches with Saoirse Ronan, who was responsible for both Lady Bird’s “Did you feel emotional the first time you drove in Sacramento” speech and “Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as hearts” line from Little Women. In Barbie, Gerwig trades her mainstay for America Ferrera. Starring as Gloria, a tired Mattel assistant and an even more exhausted mom, Ferrera delivers an emphatic, inspirational monologue heading into the third act of the film. It’s the film’s most powerful moment, but not every viewer understands why the speech is so poignant.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Barbie.

After a visit to the real world, a disgruntled Ken (Ryan Gosling) brings back all of Los Angeles’ misguided values to Barbieland: Men should rule the world under a “patriarchy.” (Second to men in the world-ruling category are horses.) Women should be men’s servants, not Pulitzer Prize winners, let alone presidents. Seeing Barbieland destroyed by the patriarchy and the Barbies brainwashed into thinking they’re objects for the Kens, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) falls into a funk. She’s not beautiful, she can’t do anything, she’s worthless; the poor girl can’t escape this existential crisis.

Luckily, Barbie has some pals from the real world visiting Barbieland. Gloria and her teen daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) make the trek to the fantastical destination after an encounter with Barbie in Los Angeles—Gloria is Barbie’s real-world owner, and she’s the reason why Barbie has started “glitching” (her feet are flat and she *gasp* thinks about death). Gloria, too, has been thinking existentially—and is also sad because she misses spending quality time with her now-teenage daughter.

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Even though Gloria is having her own personal crises about death, motherhood, and cellulite, that doesn’t stop the wannabe Mattel exec from smacking some sense into Barbie. Though Barbie may feel down, unloved, and ugly—can Margot Robbie ever be “ugly”?—that’s just a side effect of being a woman.

“Somehow we’re always doing it wrong,” Gloria begins. She continues: “You have to want to be thin, but not too thin. And you can’t say you want to be thin—you have to say you want to be ‘healthy,’ but also you have to be thin.”

Gloria then launches into a powerful rant about how all of the qualifications for womanhood are paradoxical and so, so unattainable: Women must dedicate themselves to motherhood, but motherhood mustn’t be their entire life. They should work hard to earn leadership positions, but not be too aggressive at work.

Then, Gloria concludes, “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so people will like us. If all of that is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don’t even know.”

It’s a speech that probably (and sadly) will resonate with most women who watch Barbie. It certainly did with me, a young professional who has faced her fair share of sexism in the workplace. Fans of the film have already rallied around the brilliance of Gerwig’s writing—she co-wrote the film with her own Ken, Noah Baumbach—who have praised the moving monologue, along with Ferrera’s reading of the speech.

Other viewers, however, say they aren’t sold on the monologue. While there aren’t too many naysayers pushing back against the wave of overwhelmingly positive reactions, the pushback is still noteworthy: The feminism is basic, some argue, and it’s has already been said before. While others have compared it to the “cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl, I find this comparison unfair too. The “cool girl” speech is another original, woman-penned monologue that is specifically about fitting into the image men have created. Barbie’s monologue, on the other hand, is about simply existing as a woman in a patriarchal society. Just because both speeches are from female characters talking about the struggles women face does not mean they are connected. Plus, the audience is entirely different for each speech; Gone Girl is an R-rated thriller, while Barbie is a PG-13 romp.

Is the monologue an example of basic feminism, as some critics suggest? Is it a simplistic view of the problems women face? Is it original enough to be noteworthy? No, no, and yes.

Consider the context of who Gloria is giving this speech to in the film. Her explanation of the difficulties of womanhood isn’t spoken to a room full of women who, let’s be honest, already know all of this to be true. Gloria is teaching this to both the Barbies, who have no idea about the pressures of the real world, and her daughter, Sasha—who applauds her mother as soon as she’s done speaking. Seeing as Sasha is nothing other than bratty up to this point in the film, the support she shows her mother might be more touching than the speech itself.

But let’s not diminish the power of this monologue itself, which is not just about womanhood in general. Rather, Gloria is unpacking the struggles in between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood for girls. Girls grow up with Barbies, who have perfect figures and whatever job title they want, and do it all with a smile plastered on their face. In the real world, though, keeping that perfect figure, that smile, and those jobs can be way harder than what the Barbies are used to.

Mothers (and any women role models, for that matter) have to juggle inspiring their girls to be their truest selves while also being honest about the way the world is set up to be sexist. Life isn’t always Barbie-style perfect—and yet, without Barbies to help show girls that they can be astronauts, writers, teachers, they may grow up believing in society’s insistence that they can’t be independent. How do you tell a girl that, yes, she can be president—but also that there has never been a woman president?

How Boundary-Pushing and Feminist Will ‘Barbie’ Actually Be?

Gloria’s monologue isn’t just for women who are struggling with the day-to-day of their jobs and personal lives. It’s for girls migrating from being free-willed youngsters into the tricky days of junior high, where boys will harangue them, hormones will rage inside of their sweet little bodies, school will demand more attention, and they will become unsure of themselves. Every girl faces this as she’s growing up.

Consider, too, the fact that Gerwig has stated the arc of Barbie is partially based on Reviving Ophelia, a 1994 non-fiction bestseller written by psychologist Mary Pipher. The book—which, having read it before watching the film, definitely added to my Barbie experience—is about the struggles (like body issues, arguments with their mothers, sexual violence, drugs and alcohol) girls face in their teenage years.

“They’re funny and brash and confident, and then they just—stop,” Gerwig told Vogue ahead of the Barbie release. The arc that Barbie has in the movie is an awful lot like the transition a young woman undergoes between childhood and adulthood. “How is this journey the same thing that a teenage girl feels? All of a sudden, she thinks, Oh, I’m not good enough.”

There’s just one fair critique to be made about this monologue: It takes place in a PG-13 movie, which means younger girls may not have the opportunity to watch it before they enter some of the most important, frightening, yet exciting years of their lives. I needed this monologue when I was an 11-year-old girl, terrified to enter junior high and nervous about getting bad grades (but also anxious that my grades would be too good, and I’d be bullied for being a brainiac).

Although it might feel like a one-note rant about feminism to some, Barbie’s big monologue is an amazingly complex ode to growing up, motherhood, and becoming an adult woman. It’s tough out there—even for Barbie.

Read more of our Barbie coverage HERE.

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