God created humanity in God’s own image,
        in the divine image God created them,
            male and female God created them.

Genesis 1:27 (Common English Bible)

I wasn’t planning to see the Barbie movie. I’ve never in my life been a fan of Barbie and I’ve never felt pulled into her orbit. I didn’t play with Barbies as a child, except for maybe a few occasions when friends insisted that I play with their Barbies. I don’t remember having one of my own, or even asking for one. Barbie always seemed so strange, so thin, so plastic, so stiff, and those feet that always required shoes to look right. I couldn’t ever envision myself looking like her in any way, especially when it came to those strange, super-unnatural, feet.

During a recent visit with my children in Philadelphia, we found ourselves trying to figure out how to entertain ourselves on a cloudy and muggy Tuesday afternoon when most of the city’s museums were closed. My daughter had seen Barbie already, as part of a “Barbenheimer” extravaganza with her friends. But, she was eager to see it again, especially with her mother, it turned out. My son was less enthusiastic, but willing to go along. So, off we went to one of the city cinemas that was showing the movie.

Except for the end of the movie, which I thought was a complete train wreck, I enjoyed the movie a great deal. I laughed so hard, I thought I might damage myself.

For good and for not so good, the movie has wormed its way into my head and has got me thinking. One of the more interesting aspects of the film for me is a moment not far from the end in which it becomes obvious that Barbie doesn’t really know what to do with Ken. After a failed attempt at creating a patriarchy in Barbie Land, both Barbie and Ken find themselves in unknown territory, with Barbie not clear on whether or not she wants any relationship Ken, leaving Ken bereft of his identity, since there is no “just Ken”; there’s only Barbie and Ken. Amid the reestablishment of female empowerment, Ken, along with all of the other Kens, returns to accessory status, or maybe not even that. Barbie’s confusion felt like a reflection of a larger issue of the continuing struggles in the relationship between women and men in our society, a confusion that is further revealed in the muddled and perplexing ending.

The movie creates a starkly contrasted “Barbie Land” and the “Real World.” In Barbie Land, the Barbies— except for a very short-lived time of patriarchy— run the show. They are in charge of the government, the law, the professions, etc. The Kens are there to do things like “beach” and provide lifts during choreographed dance scenes. At one point, Barbie admits that she doesn’t even know where the Kens live. In the “Real World,” women are not empowered. They are the ones stuck in support roles and expected to exist and perform in contradictory ways. The Mattel empire, of which Barbie is a sizable part, is run completely by men and it is clearly important to those men to maintain a hard line of distinction between the two worlds, with women’s empowerment relegated to the fantasy lives of females. As an aside, I must admit that, although the men are “in charge” in the Real World, their lot doesn’t appear at all appealing. Those at the top of the Mattel ladder are portrayed as completely one-dimensional. They are all dressed in the same dark suit and are only concerned with whatever it takes to make more money for the company (I wonder how Ms. Gerwig got away with such a portrayal, given that Warner Bros and Mattel collaborated on the project).

Among the many things the movie has me thinking about (there are also the really interesting topics of death, apathy and anxiety— but those will have to wait), is this notion that women and men cannot hold equal status, cannot work together in a way that allows each to flourish, supporting and encouraging each other, with the goal of respecting the dignity of each person and each person’s gifts and talents, regardless of gender. It’s as if only one gender can be “empowered” at a time. I realize this is just a movie about a doll, and the world created by a company to sell that doll and everything that comes with it, but there’s something here that reflects an uncomfortable reality of the tension in the relationship between women and men.

As Barbie (the movie) struggles to resolve itself to an ending, it exposes a decidedly not funny dynamic that we human beings are somehow not able to live together in equality. I realize that Christianity is a significant part of the problem, with few denominations and churches emphasizing the Genesis 1 creation story in which women and men are created at the same time. For way too many Christians, the only Creation story that counts is the one in Genesis 2 and 3 in which the female is created second, as a “helper.” Despite the fact that there are all kinds of problems with usage and translation, the second story is the one that offers, I guess, the neat and tidy display of men in the dominant role and women in the accessory role.

Nearing the age of sixty, I grew up in throes of the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s. My mother was certainly not a feminist, nor were any of the women I encountered as a young child, except for one very important one. The church my family attended had on its staff a female minister of Christian Education who was an ordained clergyperson. I don’t remember her and I suspect she was never invited to preach a sermon at that church, but she’s the one who signed my third grade Bible that I received in September of 1972. I still have that Bible and whenever I look at it, I’m reminded of a hopefulness that I had as a child that I, too, could grow up to be an ordained pastor, or wherever else my gifts and talents could take me, that my status as a girl would not limit me in any way. It should not be that girls are invited to dream big, only to find that there are a whole lot of obstacles in their way. And, it should not be that men should feel there is a good reason to put up barriers, to protect their “place” at the expense of female empowerment. With such strict gender roles and expectations, we are all lessened.

As Barbie demonstrates plenty of its own confusion, it also offers a few rays of hope. As Ken bemoans the possibility that he will be left to “live and die a life of blonde fragility” as “just Ken,” he then becomes aware that’s he’s enough, “and great at doing stuff.” It’s not a great motto, or anthem, but it’s not bad— for Kens and Barbies, and all the rest of us too.