The number one movie of the summer this year is about a doll. Worldwide, Barbie[i] has made over a billion dollars and counting. That much despite the film being banned in Algeria, Kuwait, and Lebanon for encouraging “damaging morals.” And we’re talking about a doll here.

But Barbie was never intended to be a kids’ movie. Its co-writer and director, Greta Gerwig, wanted to make a film about women’s roles in our society. And perhaps the role of men as well. The film starts by turning patriarchy on its head. In Barbie’s world, men are almost an afterthought. It’s always Barbie … and Ken. Ken has nearly no existence without Barbie. Or, as the tagline for the film says, “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.” When asked what message she wanted Barbie to leave its audiences, Gerwig said she intended a negotiation of what a woman should be. In Barbie’s world, “You can be anything,” but reality leaves most women realizing that, unlike Barbie, they could never be perfect enough.

That negotiation of what a woman could (should?) be is best described in this monologue from Gloria (played by America Ferrera):

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we’re always doing it wrong.

“You have to be thin but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that, but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

If you are one of the few people who have not seen the movie yet, here is its trailer:

At the end of the film, the creator of Barbie the doll tells Barbie, “We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far we’ve come.”

How far have women come? Growing up, society taught me that fathers were to preside in the home. Mothers were to conceive, bear, nourish, love, and train their children. Women who enjoy good health were to have children early and never curtail the number of children for personal or selfish reasons. Too many mothers worked away from home to furnish sweaters, music lessons, trips, and fun for their children. Too many women spent their time socializing, politicking, and in public service when they should be home to teach and train their children. And God never intended that married women should compete with men in employment. Some argued that numerous divorces could be traced directly back to when the wife left the home and went out into the world of employment.

I honor women who have chosen to be stay-at-home mothers, and no work is more challenging and more critical. But I also believe what Barbie has tried to teach us: a woman can be anything—and society should allow her to follow her dreams. And men should help them by handling their fair share of raising children and doing housework. Or, as one wise woman once said, “Don’t marry a man who doesn’t vacuum.”[ii]

The film Charming the Hearts of Men,[iii] inspired by actual events, tells the story of Grace Gordon (played by Anna Friel), a single woman who returns to the South in 1964 but finds her options are limited because of discrimination against women. She can’t get credit in her own name or find a job since a woman’s place was in the home. But she inspired a Congressman to make a small change in the Civil Rights Act that changed everything for women. The original drafters of the Civil Rights Act did not want to include women in the legislation, as that would be too much to pass Congress. But at the last minute, Congress added the “sex” amendment. It prohibited employers from discriminating based on sex, along with “race, color, religion or national origin.” Although events surrounding the amendment didn’t happen exactly as portrayed in the film, the rest, as they say, is history. Here is the trailer for the film (currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video):

Since the prohibition against discrimination based on sex, progress has been slow but steady. The film Being Mary Tyler Moore[iv] (currently streaming on Max), although a documentary about the life of Ms. Moore, traces advancements in women’s rights. Here is the trailer for the movie:

In response to some of the teachings I received in childhood, Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystic, said:

“I think there’s a terrible contempt for women still in our society, implicit in this glorified image of women only as sex objects. Implicit in this glorified insistence that women’s fulfillment is motherhood and only motherhood. Cows can have babies, but women have minds as well as breasts, as well as sexual organs. And women are made to feel guilty if they really use their minds. We don’t know, we don’t know, you know. We really don’t know what women can do, what women can be.”

In the movie, Mary Tyler Moore (quoting Betty Friedan) said in an interview with David Susskind in 1966: “Women are, or should be, human beings first, women second, wives and mothers third. It should fall in that order.”

Although not her first job in the entertainment business, Mary became well known for playing Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show. But she wanted her character to be a real woman, not the perfect woman generally portrayed in other TV shows of the day. She was the first TV wife and mother to wear pants. More importantly, Laura Petrie was perhaps the television’s first “real” woman. In the words of Mary Tyler Moore, “She broke down and cried; she used ploys to get her way. She was nasty and short-tempered. And she was also sweet and soft.” And when it came to the comedy, she was on equal footing with her husband, Rob Petrie.

But that was just the start. In 1970, Mary revolutionized TV women as Mary Richards in the Mary Tyler Moore Show. And it didn’t go unnoticed. Gloria Steinem said this in 1975:

“Just consider what visitors from outer space might think if they were confronted with the last twenty years of television and films as the only evidence of what American women were like. It would be quite clear we slept with false eyelashes and full make-up and indeed spend all of our lives with such ornamentation on us. Some of us would be taken to be sex-crazed; others, totally puritanical. Most of us would be man junkies, very strange creatures who were thought to need men for our identities. If we lived alone, we would almost have to be widows, at least until recently on television. That’s begun to change.”

That change began five years earlier when the lead character in The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a single woman. It had been done once before in Marlo Thomas’s That Girl, but the theme was when would Thomas’s character find her man. Mary Richards was different. She was an independent woman who respected men but didn’t need one to validate her self-worth. 

As the creator of Barbie encouraged, we look back at how far women have come but wonder why it has taken us so long and why we still have such a long way to go. And about Ken? By the end of Barbie, he realizes that he is a person of worth, too. Or, as his t-shirt explains, “I am Ken-ough!” even without Barbie.

This is a timely message for all of us.

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[i] Barbie:

• Production Companies: Warner Bros, Heyday Films, and LuckyChap Entertainment
• Director: Greta Gerwig
• Screenwriters: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach
• Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and Issa Rae
• Release date: July 21, 2023

[ii] Jessica Valenti in “Don’t Marry a Man Who Doesn’t Vacuum,” published in Medium (February 13, 2020).

[iii] Charming the Hearts of Men:

• Production Companies: High Hopes Productions and Talent One
• Director: S.E. DeRose
• Screenwriter: S.E. DeRose
• Starring: Anna Friel, Kelsey Grammer, and Starletta DePois
• Release date: August 13, 2021

[iv] Being Mary Tyler Moore:

• Production Companies: Fifth Season, Good Trouble Studios, HBO Documentary Films
• Director: James Adolphus
• Screenwriters: James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Susan Silver
• Starring: Mary Tyler Moore, James L. Brooks, and Rob Reiner
• Release date: May 26, 2023