Men Must See Barbie; A Deeper Look into “Gloria’s” Monologue

By Arielle Karni ‘26
Within the first few days after the Barbie movie dropped this summer, it became a huge hit, shocking the world with its deep meaning and compelling storyline. 

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The movie impressively set many records, including being the largest opening for a female director in history and breaking 17 individual box office records, domestically grossing higher than any other Warner Bros. movie ever. 
It even created an international shortage of pink paint around the United States. 
Many women worldwide agree that America Ferrera’s performance as “Gloria” boldly encapsulates the perpetual struggle of women burdened by unrealistic and unattainable standards forced upon them by society.
Gloria opens her standout monologue with the simple theme, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” She continues to give one example after another that nearly every woman can relate to, as evidenced by the number of long-haired heads I witnessed shaking in agreement in the silent darkness of the theater. 
Gloria laments, “You have to be thin, but not too thin. And then you can never say you want to be thin.” 
In a society where the tide seems to be shifting to be more accepting of plus sizes and influential body-positive activists abound on social media, The Economist concludes that “It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin” in its December 2022 edition, noting that “Discrimination against fat women has not diminished as their numbers have risen.”
She continues, “You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean.” 
Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University,  agreed in the April 30, 2013 edition of Harvard Business Review, summarizing that “high-achieving women experience social backlash because their very success – and specifically the behaviors that created that success – violates our expectations about how women are supposed to behave. Women are expected to be nice, warm, friendly, and nurturing.”     
When Gloria bewails, “You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining," I can’t help but think of the treatment of female sexual assault victims. 
Women are commonly asked if they provoked their assaulters with what they wore, what they drank or where they went instead of male aggressors being held accountable for their actions. In the face of the gender wage gap, women are encouraged to negotiate more effectively, know their worth and, in the words of Sheryl Sandberg, former Meta and Facebook COO, “lean in.” I venture to guess that Gloria might inquire whether women should change their behaviors or whether men should change theirs.
     The monologue concludes, “And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.” This sentence is a commentary on the weight of criticism that Barbie dolls have borne on their tiny little shoulders over the past 64 years. 
Barbie, in one of her most brilliant statements of all time, responded to Gloria: “By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman of the patriarch, you robbed it of its power… We have to stop the Kens.”
 Perhaps this article is my way of giving voice to such cognitive dissonance. But rather than attempt to stop the Kens, shouldn’t we include them in our feminist fight? While we women can appreciate the pink, glitter and feminist jokes brilliantly embedded throughout the film while also discerning between the tongue-in-cheek wit and the blunt irony of much of the dialogue throughout Barbie (after all, we are the gender with superior multitasking abilities), it is not “kenough” that males simply go see the Barbie movie. 
Rather, I urge all men to see Barbie immediately with the laser focus and attention span usually dedicated to fantasy football, particularly during Gloria’s masterful monologue which boldly and unequivocally states the main theme of the movie stripped of all hidden meaning. 

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