SELF, MIRROR, SELF:WHY WE NEED TO TAKE BARBIE'S UNDERSTANDING OF BEAUTY SERIOUSLY

By Ahona

I have a theory about first dates. Wait, no, it's not a proven theory. Let me rephrase: I have a hypothesis about first dates. I think the need to make a good first impression is not merely a romantic necessity. Even if you were not that impressed yourself with the person you were going out with, even if you did not really want a romantic future with them - you would want them to like you. That is kind of a design feature in human beings, this unrelenting, merciless needs to be liked. Greta Gerwig's Barbie dolls mirror that need. The mirror's an important thing here. In one of the introductory scenes of the film, just as Gerwig familiarises you with the flawless, pink paradise of this world, pink sands and blue waves, candies and pastels and perfection all around there appears a small, but not inconsequential scene with a mirrorless frame that Barbie looks at like it has a mirror. "If that was actually a mirror", the song in this moment says, "you would see a perfect smile". But Barbie doesn't need to perceive herself in an external object to see her own perfection. She knows it. Perfection is the condition and fact of her existence. Perfection, or the diminishing of it, is also what effects the central turn of the story. Upon realising that her feet are no longer perfectly arched, heel-in-the-air and world-beneath-her-toes, Barbie makes her way to the first "not-perfect" entity in Barbieland. She goes to meet Weird Barbie, played by a wise, eccentric Kate McKinnon (who is exactly that wizard in fairytales who guides and encourages the hero to begin their journey). Weird Barbie points out the other imperfection she is developing Barbie now has cellulite. Thus begins Barbie's journey into the real world. So, like in the real world, a woman has to move worlds to hide that one human feature that she is conditioned to perceive as a flaw. In these transitions, Greta Gerwig and the team unleash a madcap game with film-form. Barbie travels through colour palettes, filming patterns, two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds and gender dynamics. In the human world, the more her beauty is perceived, the more she is looked at, the more uncomfortable she gets. The male gaze fractures her self-perception, her unwavering knowledge of her beauty. The doll experiences womanhood. It is possible that this film would be read as Gerwig's least subtle film. In my reading, it is deceptively subtle. Ken, when he is perceived and looked at, notices the admiration in the gaze. He is not uncomfortable like Barbie is this sequence. But despite what he might realise, the journey of his discomfort, the crisis of his masculinity, the discovery of his self - all of it is related to the way he is looked at. There is a distance between the way we want to be looked at and the way we are actually looked at. Beauty, power, love and respect reside in that distance. Ken feels the constant need to be liked so strongly that his existence becomes relational. That's what happens to most of us, I suppose. The constant urge to be looked at as beautiful, worthwhile and human,flawed-but-in-a-lovable-way, makes you feel like you cannot exist at all if you are not liked. It alienates yourself from yourself. It forces you to forget that you exist beyond another person's perception of you. In Barbie, the irrepressible thoughts of death, the cellulite and the flat feet bring the perfect doll closer to being human. The need to be liked shows you that she has become one. This is what Barbie's thesis of beauty is, I suppose. Beauty would have been an exercise in self-confidence if it was only about the way we perceive ourselves. If it was a mirrorless, non-societal standard by which we understood ourselves, all of us would have emerged as the self- assured protagonist at the end of Disney-Pixar film. What would it matter then, if you accidentally spilled some sauce on yourself on the first date? You would know that you are bigger than how your date might look at that one act of human clumsiness.

You must understand here, this is not merely a philosophical statement about beauty that this film is hinged upon. This is our lived experience. The idea that being perfect and beautiful guarantees being loved wounds us in ways we cannot imagine. As scary as it is, the film reminds you you would often be more human than you set out to be, you might not be loved the way you wanted to be loved, and this is neither your fault nor that of the other person's. The moment you recognise this, you come to respect your own self. You come to accept your humanity as your identity. This is not some grand encouragement to exist as a lone wolf. The opposite actually - this is an encouragement to seek love because of who you are, not despite of it. The need to be liked, when it is not associated with a self-hating quest to fit a societal standard of beauty, is what gives us the basis of our existence - connection to others like us. The knowledge of our own flaws coupled with this human instinct to find friends and companions makes us kind, patient, compassionate. In one stunning sequence in Barbie, which is the heart of the film's opinion on beauty (in my opinion), Barbie sees human beings in their loneliness and brokenness, but also in their joy and sense of togetherness. It is like the film whispers to you in a moment of calm, poignant stillness - "The world can be loved when it bares itself in honesty, in its willingness to work upon itself. So can you." In one of my favourite articles of all time, Tim Kreider wrote a line that appropriately concludes this article. "If we want the rewards of being loved," he wrote, "we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known."