Women can't catch a break 177 years later
January 15, 2024
Point of view: It’s 2024; 177 years since the first women’s rights movement. Women have become strong enough to act out, brave enough to tell their stories and vocal enough to allow everyone in on the struggles of being a female. 177 years later and one of the most-watched television awards show annually hosts a man with the audacity to say the words: “The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite and flat feet. Or what casting directors call… ‘character actor’.”
Barbie was released in 2023 with the powerful message of showing what a day in the life of a woman feels like. The movie portrays the “dream” woman characteristics of a Barbie doll that every little girl has grown up loving and admiring and wishing they could be.
As the movie progresses, Barbie starts to show her emotions about the life she is living and how perfect is not perfect at all. The first time Barbie reveals the emotions of a real woman is when she suddenly asks the questions “does anyone ever think about death?” The group looks at her as if she ruined the party because she finally spoke up about something she was dealing with internally. She then says “nevermind,” and the party goes on with no hesitation.
This is the reality of every woman. There is a stigma around women speaking freely about their mental health due to the fact it could make them look “too sensitive,” or “too girly” for showing their emotions. Why, though, has society normalized “too girly” as being an insult? This is something Barbie tackles head-on.
She has the chance to be brought into the real world, feel real emotions and speak to a woman who has experienced the hardships in a harsh reality that we call life.
The movie, in full, aims to show the power that every woman has when they stand together and show their strength as a unit rather than being pitted against one another. The movie represents that for all of time women have been compared to each other for their looks, their profession, their education and any other area that could possibly be compared. For so long there was no way to win the battle that society had involuntarily placed on women.
Now, in the 21st century, a movie has been brought to the big screens to represent how women and men can live together equally.
The women realized if they share confidence and raise each other up instead of putting each other down, the world would be a kinder place.
They needed feminism.
So what if you have cellulite? Flat feet? Or gray hair? Women are taught a false narrative that being beautiful means you have to look a certain way. A standard that was started by corporate companies to force women to buy their products.
One of the closing scenes of Barbie goes through a monologue in which America Ferrera lists the reasons women will never feel good enough about themselves, and inevitably those feelings track back to the unrealistic standards that society has placed upon them at every waking moment.
After watching the host claim that Barbie’s body transformation was “the key moment in Barbie,” it is evident that he did not grasp that he is part of the problem. He is actively part of the reason a film so heavy-hearted was necessary to broadcast to the world.
After critics negatively claimed that the movie “simplified feminism,” it is evident that the “simple” concept is still not reaching certain men in the world.
As a 21-year-old female college student, I am disgusted and disappointed. Growing up, it truly is a battle in this world. I am a blond-haired, blue-eyed female that grew up being directly compared to a Barbie doll. This may seem like a compliment, but the anxiety that comes with that comparison and trying to keep up an appearance that is comparable to someone unachievable is unhealthy and deteriorates your mental and physical health.
Ferrera states: “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.”
Every woman has felt these feelings.
This is something I have battled since I was in middle school. If it meant giving away my lunch every day to lose a few pounds, I did it. If it meant throwing up before I went to dance class so that my stomach was flatter in my leotard, I did it. If I decided to indulge in ice cream after dance, that automatically meant an extra 30-minute workout before I went to bed. Rather than growing up as a normal kid and getting the “privilege” parents always refer to as a child to “eat whatever you want,” most little girls and women in this century cannot relate to that anymore.
13-year-olds on Tik Tok are showing off their workout routines and their newest makeup purchases, trying to look like adults before they are old enough to drive a car. There is no childhood for women anymore and we have societal norms to blame for this.
Because of these standards, the world we live in causes women to create music, art and podcasts about the pain they have gone through, and men around the world sing the lyrics, stare at the art and listen to the podcasts because to them it is temporary entertainment that boosts their serotonin.
For women, it’s permanent scars that boost their anxiety levels.
Nessa Barrett, a 17-year-old girl created a song called “Dying on the Inside,” a personal story of her journey through an eating disorder.
‘The dinner conversation no one talks about…
Don’t know how much longer I can keep this down.
Beauty is a knife I've been holding by the blade
Swallowing my pride so I won't eat anything
It's all a lie, honestly, it's eating me alive
They're all like
"Did you change your hair?"
"Did you lose a little weight?"
"You should keep it up 'cause it really looks great"
I hate that I always look my best
When I'm dying on the inside.’
In just the chorus of this song, the feelings she states are, according to Child Mind Institute, what over 20% of women in college are feeling. These are just the reported numbers.
In the podcasting world, Drama Queens, a podcast created by the three main women of the television series, One Tree Hill, use their platform to highlight the pain they went through that was caused by the male producers on the show.
They speak about the constant sexualizing of each of their characters at such a young age and how they had to use their voices every day on set with the hopes of there being any change at all.
Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz created a platform to empower women to speak up for themselves in the workplace because no woman in any industry should have to feel the way each of them did at some point on set.
So, welcome to 2024, a year that began less than a month ago and women are still fighting to be seen as equal to male counterparts. Women are still dehumanized for their bodies and harshly criticized for simply living.
Women like Taylor Swift, one of the most successful women in the world, are still ridiculed for simply supporting their boyfriends and “ruining” the NFL by attending games, while her boyfriend is praised for supporting her career at each performance he has attended.
The same host of the Golden Globes also called her out saying, “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.”
Swift was then seen giving him a sharp stare, showing that she was not happy about his comment.
Again, here is another example of a man putting down a woman for simply supporting her boyfriend. It is not her fault that the NFL camera men like to cut to her reactions and ironically the Golden Globes cut to her reaction, capturing her unhappy and disinterested face.
There are men who are exceptions, but for the men, like Jo Koy, who still cannot wrap their misogynistic heads around the concept of equality, take one hour and 54 minutes out of your day to watch the Barbie movie. Take one hour and 54 minutes to listen to America Ferrera explain to you why the Barbie movie means more than “...a plastic doll with big boobies."
Take a moment to realize that the women of this century are not going to sit back and take the ridicule that is thrown at them, but rather will act on it and grow from it.
Women are a force to be reckoned with in every area of life. We are ready to work hard, we are ready to wipe the phrase “the man” from society's vocabulary, we are ready to take lead in the workforce and we are certainly ready to be seen as equal. The color of our hair, our sexuality, our body type and our clothing do not determine what we have to offer the world. Take that one hour and 54 minutes to get educated, it is far overdue.