Irony and a False Choice: Gloria’s Speech in "Barbie"

 The Irony

One of the high points of the Barbie movie is Gloria’s monologue. In it, she expresses her frustration and anger over the contradictions in our cultural ideal of womanhood that – she believes - make it impossible for anyone to be a woman successfully. The speech has been widely reviewed and hailed as a strong expression of feminism. However, I think that the speech is deeply ironic and that in the end, it presents a false and harmful choice to women and ultimately to men as well.

The irony of the speech appears in its opening sentence, which says “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” The line is ironic because the actress delivering the speech is America Ferrara, who is herself a successful woman. She does not have the culturally ideal body type, and she is a Latina. These things have undoubtedly created obstacles for her, but she has overcome them.  She has found a way to be a woman in our society.

That is not all. The speech appears in a film created by a whole team of successful women. It was written and directed by Greta Gerwig and produced by Margot Robbie, who also starred in it. The cast includes Kate McKinnon and Rhea Perlman along with America Ferrara.  All of these women have figured out – each in her own way - how to be successful as women in our society. Probably, none of them can measure up to the cultural ideal described in Gloria’s speech, but that has not prevented them from being successful as women. How then can we see the speech as anything but ironic?

The False Choice

The irony of a having a successful woman proclaim that no one can be a woman successfully would be funny if the speech did not present a false choice that sets women up for failure. If we say that the only way to be a woman is to live up to an impossible and contradictory ideal, then clearly no one can succeed, but we do not need to think that way. In fact, there are many, different ways to be a woman, and the real problem that every woman faces is to find a path that is right for her. Instead of measuring herself against an impossible standard, she needs to figure out who she really is or wants to be.

The problem is no different for men. For example, I am not a warrior-poet; I do not rescue damsels in distress with my expertise in karate; I am not an entrepreneurial billionaire or a high-level executive; I do not work at a manly occupation like that of a fireman or a cowboy; and I don’t have bulging muscles or washboard abs. Yet I have managed to lead a happy and successful life as a man in our society, just as many women live happy and successful lives as women. We do it by refusing to be bound by impossible ideals.

None of us can ever be happy or successful if we always measure ourselves against impossible ideals. We will always feel frustrated and angry at our failure. Gloria’s speech insists wrongly that we have no alternative to failure. The speech insists that we cannot reject the impossible ideals and that therefore, we must always fail. We know that is not true.