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Colin: I'm-

Anthony: -in love with-

Colin: -in love with-

Anthony: -Penelope.

Colin: -Penelope.

Anthony: Good! "I'm in love with Penelope."

Colin: I would never DREAM of courting Penelope Featherington.

Anthony: ...

But they go overboard and replace a matriarchy with a patriarchy and now the same issue exists but in reverse. That’s the POINT!! THATS THE POINT!!! Barbie is not anti-men it’s pro equality PLEASE understand this

13th Aug 2023 UPDATE:

Heeeeey howdy!!

Due to the IMMENSE comments and discussion on this post (thanks ya’ll!!) I’ve decided to update my post with my recent opinions and hopefully clearer explanations!!

First, my original post only considers a very small and very vague analysis of the film!!

Since making this I've read all your comments and learned quite a bit about the matriarchy as it appears in human civilisation. Originally, I was pitting the patriarchy and the matriarchy against each other as though the results of their implementation were equal in the film.

They were not!! Below is the definition of matriarchy I’ll be working off of.

Matriarchy Simple Definition;

Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege and control of property.

There's a lot to talk about in the Barbie film that would fit better in an essay, so I'll try and condense it into this;

To me, Barbie (2023) is a film about the female experience and the shared connection between women that persists through childhood and adulthood, support and harassment, suffering and joy, mother and daughter.

It uses Barbie as its figurehead because of the immense societal and political impact the doll has had on women, both good and bad (as explained in the film).

The male experience as seen in Barbie (2023) is not the sole focus of the film- rather, it's an accessory (as the Kens are) to Barbie's story, and a necessary aspect of exploration to truly highlight the importance of individualism and healthy personal exploration.

I want to make clear that I in no way think the treatment of the Kens was just as bad as the treatment of the Barbies. I also still agree that the matriarchy fostered by the Barbies wasn’t good for the Kens.

Additionally, I’m aware that this take on Barbie (2023) works strictly within the assumed heteronormative boundaries of gender. There is a lot of nuance in the Barbie film and I don’t think everything can be covered or explained in on Tumblr post— but I hope this clarification helps!!

I hope you're all coming to your own conclusions and analysis of the film in a way that makes sense to you. And for those of you engaging in online conversations and discourse about it, I hope you're keeping yourself and others happy and safe!!!

And personally? To be in the tickets booth, and see young girls, teenagers, adult women, coming in to see Barbie,

the most highlighter pink outfits, some of them coming in with the dolls they’re dressed as, laughing to each other, cheering for each other,

to see the men they’re coming to see it with, dressed in pink, cheering them on, taking their pictures with smiles and cheers in the lobby at the photo op

touches something so deep in me

Beatrice: *Screams louder to assert dominance*

Leonato: Should we do something?!

The great problem with Friar Lawrence is that he’s genre-savvy up until that moment. He thinks he’s the benevolently machiavellian friar in a romantic comedy, so his schemes will definitely work however desperate things get, and up until that point he was right. He perhaps rather likes the idea of punishing the Capulet parents for how they’ve treated Juliet, knowing that eventually all will turn out well. It’s exactly the same trick that Friar Francis would later use in Much Ado About Nothing and it works great (you know, for a given value of “great” that still involves Hero marrying Claudio…).

But Friar Francis really is in a romantic comedy. Friar Lawrence was, but he isn’t any more.

So basically Romeo and Juliet is the play that goes wrong, and I love it so so much for that and every time I watch it it breaks me. <3

When I watch Macbeth I viscerally know the ending that will come. Hamlet, Lear, Julius Caesar… same. When I watch R&J some part of me is still expecting that THIS TIME it’s going to get the romantic comedy ending after all. Fucking devastating. Well-played, Will, you sadistic git. Well played.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

Like...if I wanted to be sad I’d watch a drama on Netflix in the “based on a true story” section

Enemies to lovers is about:

The drama

The angst

The extremely complex layers of human nature

The yearning

The realisation

The first ever kiss

The exhilaration that comes afterwards

The “youre not alone” cmon guys this is textbook by now

The hasty kisses afterwards