'Does it pass the Bechdel test' is on tap in my household for everything starting with the books my boys read in elementary school. My oldest would get so damn offended when I noted that GenericHeroStory treated women like furniture. It sent him on a lifelong quest to prove to me that it is Not True that the medieval hero genre cannot pass the Bechdel test.
At 18... he recently came to me and told me I was right.
So... this one question drove him to read book after book after book... all in a quest to prove me wrong and he couldn't and now won't even read fanfic that doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
Thank you for this. As a woman born in 1957 I have been so steeped in the patriarchy that I can barely perceive up from down. The constant mind bending that we have had to do all these years has been so exhausting and has caused me so much anxiety. Thanks for letting me know I am not crazy.
I stopped being steeped in the patriarchy when I was 9 years old. I protested my elementary school's dress code that said girls in the winter had to be fully dressed in outdoor clothes before they could go outside for recess. This was in 1966. Outdoor clothes for girls meant coat, hat, mittens, leggings, and boots. Boys grabbed their coats, jumped into their boots if they had them, and ran. By 1968 girls at my school could wear trousers (not jeans) to class year round, and we always managed to get outside for recess. Thus the start of the slippery slope to what passes for a dress code in schools around the world these days.
"Barbie is the highest grossing film of the year, Warner Brothers’ highest grossing movie of all time and the highest grossing movie ever by a female director. Its insightful portraiture of our patriarchal society is sure to be studied and discussed for decades to come.
Oppenheimer is a war movie that depicts women as plastic dolls with boobies."
Oppenheimer was a movie about the development of the atomic bomb and its consequences. If you think it was a fictional war movie, I'm wondering if you went to high school.
Nobody categorized Oppenheimer (or patriarchy itself!) as fictional.
But since this is clearly just a direct quote from the very article upon which you just so confidently commented, I'm wondering if you bothered to read it before implying someone you don't know is the ignorant one here.
I also commented on this essay itself. I thought it was weird, as if Celeste didn't know that Oppenheimer was a real person or that he lived in a time in which most women were relegated to secondary roles.
What's the point of being rude with the "went to high school comment"? Mean and irrelevant. Do you feel better about yourself by putting people down? It's pretty ugly.
Interesting take on the corrupt process on devising the next military-industrial triumph, possibly one you would agree with: it’s as natural as inventing apple pie to want the biggest and baddest weapon to end a war against you. What’s unnatural is unnecessarily killing a couple hundred thousand people in seconds to demonstrate how badass you are. Only the long 5000-year process of silently dehumanizing half the human population under patriarchy can produce such a distortion in the human soul. The bomb was a way to prolong the dominance of Indo-European white power, which itself was introduced at the same time as patriarchy was, by the same war-enthused people, who also created/invented trophy wives to collaborate with them.
Just as the original commenter has never mentioned anything about the movie being fictional 😂 As a side note, a movie depicting real events doesn't automatically become good or better than a fictional story if it's written poorly or boring.
And let's not forget how the Academy Awards lived out the film. Greta Gerwig was NOT EVEN NOMINATED for Best Director, and the only award "Barbie" ended up winning was for Ken's song.
Excellent analysis--one of the best I've seen of mainstream culture. What you say here is REALLY important: "The most fascinating part about the reaction to the Barbie movie is how quickly and vehemently many people interpret women occupying the center of the story as outright hostility towards men. Barbie was not hostile towards Ken, but her not orbiting and centering him was interpreted as hatred of him. A movie that centered women was widely interpreted as an attack on men."
Thank you so much for this article. I am a married man and I’ve shared your post and others with my wife and four daughters, who now follow you too. I try to be an ally for women but it’s easy to forget how privileged I am as a white male so reading your articles really helps to keep me grounded.
Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro could not be more ridiculous. Shapiro actually lit barbie dolls on fire?!? And he thinks the 'Barbie' movie makes men look bad? Somebody get this man a mirror.
I saw the 'Barbie' movie twice. Loved it. It was hilarious. It was visually striking and yes it rightfully and playfully torched (figuratively, not literally) men for behaviour of which we should already be ashamed.
This whole backlash that has sent men crying into the arms of the small minded, women hating souless idiots of the "manosphere" can't end soon enough.
This idea of labelling 'Barbie' "man-hating" is all too obvious, dumb and seems reserved for those men with major insecurity issues and zero imagination.
Instead, they should look to movies like "Dr. Strangelove", Stanley Kubrick's universally celebrated anti-war classic. Most of the men in the film are either not too bright, clearly insane, mentally weak, paranoid, childish or just plain dangerous. Yet, men love this movie! I, myself, am a fan of it!
I bet it has never even occured to the far-right manly men that "Dr. Strangelove" is a brutally hilarious critique of manhood run amok. And, please, it's far more anti-male than 'Barbie', which, by comparison, looks like a glorious celebration of dudes.
Of course, "Dr. Strangelove" is rightfully critical of men with too much power and too little regard for the rest of humanity.
And, yes, 'Barbie' is rightfully critical of manly men and their whole mentally midget-sized, woman-hating world.
Thank you for your keen analysis and insights about patriarchy. It’s so embedded everywhere, I love how you keep chipping away, exposing the reality of media, film, our lived experiences.
The absolute mindfuck of reading the bare stats on how the two movies depict men and women that you’ve laid out here, remembering the widespread backlash against a movie that actually centered women… and remembering that in my own irl circle at the time (pretty much entirely queer lefty polyamorists) Barbie was *still* absolutely slated for “not being feminist enough”…
And yet every one of those people loved Oppenheimer! And when I pointed out how the film was practically anti-feminist in its depiction of women as compared to the apparently not strident enough feminism of Barbie? Absolute crickets! (And also complaints of “you should really watch the film before you criticise it tho”-no thanks, everything I’d read about it let me know it was certainly of no interest to me!) Truly women cannot fucking win!
Don’t worry, I have better friends now. And still haven’t watched Oppenheimer cs I really have better, more feminist things to do with my time.
I, as a former Barbie girl, and now adult feminist, REFUSED to watch the Barbie movie, and to make a statement, streamed Oppenheimer instead while my daughter and friends went to the movie. My daughter said I should give it a chance and watch it.
Months later, after the Oscars, I finally did, and bawled my eyes out.
There was a businessman who wrote an op-ed in the English papers some twenty years back: men like to see women's legs, therefore any woman who wears pants must be doing so because she hates men.
The comparisons between how men and women are portrayed in the two movies and the reactions to the portrayals are mind-blowing. Hollywood has always been sexist with powerful men wielding most of the power. One needs to look no further than the false portrayal that sex always results in orgasms for women. Is it any wonder many men don’t know the first thing about satisfying women sexually? I digress, though…
'Does it pass the Bechdel test' is on tap in my household for everything starting with the books my boys read in elementary school. My oldest would get so damn offended when I noted that GenericHeroStory treated women like furniture. It sent him on a lifelong quest to prove to me that it is Not True that the medieval hero genre cannot pass the Bechdel test.
At 18... he recently came to me and told me I was right.
So... this one question drove him to read book after book after book... all in a quest to prove me wrong and he couldn't and now won't even read fanfic that doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
I win.
So sweet when an adult child comes back with ‘you were right.’ Congratulations 🍾
Good one!
this is awesome to hear. furniture --> sexy lamp test.
Hell yeah, raise em right!
Thank you for this. As a woman born in 1957 I have been so steeped in the patriarchy that I can barely perceive up from down. The constant mind bending that we have had to do all these years has been so exhausting and has caused me so much anxiety. Thanks for letting me know I am not crazy.
Ditto. Also 1957. And was a professor in economics. Hmm you can imagine what that was like.
I stopped being steeped in the patriarchy when I was 9 years old. I protested my elementary school's dress code that said girls in the winter had to be fully dressed in outdoor clothes before they could go outside for recess. This was in 1966. Outdoor clothes for girls meant coat, hat, mittens, leggings, and boots. Boys grabbed their coats, jumped into their boots if they had them, and ran. By 1968 girls at my school could wear trousers (not jeans) to class year round, and we always managed to get outside for recess. Thus the start of the slippery slope to what passes for a dress code in schools around the world these days.
Ditto. 1952
Ditto 1947. Btw, I hated Oppenheimer.
"Barbie is the highest grossing film of the year, Warner Brothers’ highest grossing movie of all time and the highest grossing movie ever by a female director. Its insightful portraiture of our patriarchal society is sure to be studied and discussed for decades to come.
Oppenheimer is a war movie that depicts women as plastic dolls with boobies."
🔥👏🏻🔥🙌🏻
Oppenheimer was a movie about the development of the atomic bomb and its consequences. If you think it was a fictional war movie, I'm wondering if you went to high school.
Nobody categorized Oppenheimer (or patriarchy itself!) as fictional.
But since this is clearly just a direct quote from the very article upon which you just so confidently commented, I'm wondering if you bothered to read it before implying someone you don't know is the ignorant one here.
I also commented on this essay itself. I thought it was weird, as if Celeste didn't know that Oppenheimer was a real person or that he lived in a time in which most women were relegated to secondary roles.
Women can be relegated to a secondary role even with their clothes on.
just sayin
What's the point of being rude with the "went to high school comment"? Mean and irrelevant. Do you feel better about yourself by putting people down? It's pretty ugly.
The bomb was a way to fight the war 🤯
Interesting take on the corrupt process on devising the next military-industrial triumph, possibly one you would agree with: it’s as natural as inventing apple pie to want the biggest and baddest weapon to end a war against you. What’s unnatural is unnecessarily killing a couple hundred thousand people in seconds to demonstrate how badass you are. Only the long 5000-year process of silently dehumanizing half the human population under patriarchy can produce such a distortion in the human soul. The bomb was a way to prolong the dominance of Indo-European white power, which itself was introduced at the same time as patriarchy was, by the same war-enthused people, who also created/invented trophy wives to collaborate with them.
All I said was that it happened during the war. I think that was quite a mundane take actually.
What's your point?
A movie about important events that happened in the war is a war movie.
Is it a requirement that women in war movies must be naked?
Of course not. The fact it had naked women and was still deathly boring just showed how bad the writing was.
I never said it wasn't a war movie. I said it wasn't fictional.
Just as the original commenter has never mentioned anything about the movie being fictional 😂 As a side note, a movie depicting real events doesn't automatically become good or better than a fictional story if it's written poorly or boring.
This was so reassuring to read, the backlash to the Barbie movie caused a lot of dissonance in my head. Thank you!
And let's not forget how the Academy Awards lived out the film. Greta Gerwig was NOT EVEN NOMINATED for Best Director, and the only award "Barbie" ended up winning was for Ken's song.
Oh wow. Really? I'm going to google that now. That's appalling.
Excellent analysis--one of the best I've seen of mainstream culture. What you say here is REALLY important: "The most fascinating part about the reaction to the Barbie movie is how quickly and vehemently many people interpret women occupying the center of the story as outright hostility towards men. Barbie was not hostile towards Ken, but her not orbiting and centering him was interpreted as hatred of him. A movie that centered women was widely interpreted as an attack on men."
Thank you so much for this article. I am a married man and I’ve shared your post and others with my wife and four daughters, who now follow you too. I try to be an ally for women but it’s easy to forget how privileged I am as a white male so reading your articles really helps to keep me grounded.
Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro could not be more ridiculous. Shapiro actually lit barbie dolls on fire?!? And he thinks the 'Barbie' movie makes men look bad? Somebody get this man a mirror.
I saw the 'Barbie' movie twice. Loved it. It was hilarious. It was visually striking and yes it rightfully and playfully torched (figuratively, not literally) men for behaviour of which we should already be ashamed.
This whole backlash that has sent men crying into the arms of the small minded, women hating souless idiots of the "manosphere" can't end soon enough.
This idea of labelling 'Barbie' "man-hating" is all too obvious, dumb and seems reserved for those men with major insecurity issues and zero imagination.
Instead, they should look to movies like "Dr. Strangelove", Stanley Kubrick's universally celebrated anti-war classic. Most of the men in the film are either not too bright, clearly insane, mentally weak, paranoid, childish or just plain dangerous. Yet, men love this movie! I, myself, am a fan of it!
I bet it has never even occured to the far-right manly men that "Dr. Strangelove" is a brutally hilarious critique of manhood run amok. And, please, it's far more anti-male than 'Barbie', which, by comparison, looks like a glorious celebration of dudes.
Of course, "Dr. Strangelove" is rightfully critical of men with too much power and too little regard for the rest of humanity.
And, yes, 'Barbie' is rightfully critical of manly men and their whole mentally midget-sized, woman-hating world.
The backlash the Barbie movie caused was the exact reason the Barbie movie needs to be shown and continued to be spoken about.
Thank you for your keen analysis and insights about patriarchy. It’s so embedded everywhere, I love how you keep chipping away, exposing the reality of media, film, our lived experiences.
The absolute mindfuck of reading the bare stats on how the two movies depict men and women that you’ve laid out here, remembering the widespread backlash against a movie that actually centered women… and remembering that in my own irl circle at the time (pretty much entirely queer lefty polyamorists) Barbie was *still* absolutely slated for “not being feminist enough”…
And yet every one of those people loved Oppenheimer! And when I pointed out how the film was practically anti-feminist in its depiction of women as compared to the apparently not strident enough feminism of Barbie? Absolute crickets! (And also complaints of “you should really watch the film before you criticise it tho”-no thanks, everything I’d read about it let me know it was certainly of no interest to me!) Truly women cannot fucking win!
Don’t worry, I have better friends now. And still haven’t watched Oppenheimer cs I really have better, more feminist things to do with my time.
This movie rocked and I now own it 🙌💯💗
I, as a former Barbie girl, and now adult feminist, REFUSED to watch the Barbie movie, and to make a statement, streamed Oppenheimer instead while my daughter and friends went to the movie. My daughter said I should give it a chance and watch it.
Months later, after the Oscars, I finally did, and bawled my eyes out.
Then I wrote an essay entitled My Dirty Little Secret. (https://cailleachanam.substack.com/p/my-dirty-little-secret?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=1jglh9&utm_medium=ios)
Oppenheimer was an education in madness. Barbie was a celebration of women. Barbie won, and I am glad.
I was going boycott it too. And at the end wondered how did it ever get financed to be made!!
There was a businessman who wrote an op-ed in the English papers some twenty years back: men like to see women's legs, therefore any woman who wears pants must be doing so because she hates men.
I’ve been enjoying re-watching the Barbie movie this week with my daughter and this really strikes home. Thank you 🙏
The comparisons between how men and women are portrayed in the two movies and the reactions to the portrayals are mind-blowing. Hollywood has always been sexist with powerful men wielding most of the power. One needs to look no further than the false portrayal that sex always results in orgasms for women. Is it any wonder many men don’t know the first thing about satisfying women sexually? I digress, though…
The male outrage reaction to the Barbie movie was exactly the movie’s point. Brilliantly done.