Barbie lets America Ferrera play the kind of geek we never see
Every character in Greta Gerwig’s Barbieis perfectly crafted perfection. The dolls — Stereotypical Barbie, Beach Ken, and dorky Allan, among others — steal the spotlight, but Gerwig considers her human characters, the ones who give these toys ideas and conflicts, too. There’s the goofy Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) and abrasive teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt).
The one that really resonated with me was America Ferrera’s Gloria, the kind of dork we never see in movies.
[Ed. note: This post contains some slight spoilers for Barbie.]
Halfway through the movie, Gloria reveals herself as the one who played with the doll version of Margot Robbie’s Barbie — not her daughter, Sasha. And Gloria is the one with complicated feelings on womanhood, who imbued Barbie with thoughts of dying, and imagined her toys coming to terms with the complexities of life. Highlighting this facet of being a woman is already fascinating, but the facet of Gloria’s personality that really set her apart to me is that she is actually a super-duper huge geek — and isn’t ashamed of it in the slightest.
Yes, Gloria is a mother, but she’s also a Barbie nerd. She knows everything there is to know about the fashion doll and also doodles her own designs for hypothetical Barbies (which is actually how Stereotypical Barbie ends up with her existential crisis). When Gloria gets to Barbieland, she absolutely geeks out over every little detail, squealing over the discontinued dolls and pointing out the rare outfits. It’s a thoroughly refreshing portrayal of what it means to be nerdy — one that’s a long time coming.
We’ve come a long way from The Big Bang Theory, where a very common punchline would literally be “and then a girl walks into a comic book store.” But the
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