Barbie and The Bimbos: A Look at Feminist Burnout
By Jacqui Barron-Carton
Illustration by Alexandra Ohrim
The last year saw a record-breaking resurgence of cinema-going and old-fashioned spectacle with ‘Barbenheimer’, the phenomenon of both Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023) being released on the same day, the 21st of June. Internet users found it hilarious that a patron could potentially see both films in succession, given how different their vibes were. Barbie fans positioned themselves as the antithesis to the ‘cynical film bro’ Christopher Nolan fan who they believe only find value in that which is high-brow, nonfrivolous, uncamp, unpink. As a film student and former superfan of Greta Gerwig, I was genuinely excited for both as were my classmates. However, as the months ticked by and Mattel upped their marketing tactics in an endless parade of nostalgia and glitter, my hope started to fade that Gerwig was going to successfully produce something heartfelt, subtle, and important to girls as her previous works while under the strict blockbuster guidelines of a sweatshop toy company. Not to mention watching the Margot Robbie, who produced Promising Young Woman (2020) and played survivor Tonya Harding, snuggle up with (newly-outed domestic abuser) Brad Pitt. I could already hear the white feminism bells-a-ringing. In one discussion with my friends about the film, I told them I was still excited to see Barbie but that the sheer level of marketing made me queasy and wondered if they felt the same. After all how could a film so capitalist in its conception be feminist in any form? They replied, “who cares? It’s fun,” to which another added, “movies just aren’t fun anymore”. This echoed another popular online sentiment at the time, that girls just wanted to turn off their brains for a couple of hours and have fun. Not everything had to be serious to be worthy. That the Oscar nominations and wins of brutal war cinema and male-dominated stories were exhaustive. Barbie represented a glossy and overtly feminine revolution and reclamation of big-budget cinema. That film could be fun and catered to women, as if the call for silly rom-coms of our youth to return could be answered.
The ‘movies aren’t fun anymore’ movement amazed me as, at the time, I was actually on a historic run of cinema-going (my boyfriend worked the bar at his local theatre this last year and I went free to everything)! With a complimentary girlfriend cocktail or two, I was sat and attentive for the likes of Reinfield, Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse, Dungeons and Dragons: No Honour Among Thieves, all of which had the entire theatre laughing out loud. When I asked my friends about those films they said they either hadn’t heard of them or just hadn’t seen them - probably due to the subject being superheroes or nerdy fantasy that typically doesn’t draw in a large female audience or show up on their algorithm. Barbie was able to ride this particular perceived absence of girly, nostalgic, easy films. Girls were forthright with their protests of historical navel-gazing maleness and their cry for thoughtlessness, for ironic Bimboism as a means to defend this very natural desire.
Bimboism began its rise on TikTok, where big-eyed and often blonde users took to their phones to make viral audios about how little they wanted to think in the name of reclamation. They didn’t want to be miserable about the state of the world or women’s place in it, they wanted to indulge in feminine products and male-gaze-friendly aesthetics without acknowledgement of the male gaze itself pooping the party. It was a capitalist dream. It was plastic-wrapped and sexy feminism that wasn’t going to read your essay critiquing it. Because if it was fun how could it be bad? More importantly, if something pissed misogynists off, how could it be bad?
This is why I believe Bimboism snuck its way into white feminist circles: it annoyed men. It did not decentralise them, it did not reverse patriarchal power structures, it did not change the way men perceived big breasted blondes - but it did annoy them. Bimboism was a result of predominantly white baby feminists burning out from criticism on all sides. When you begin to dip your toe in the pool of social justice from a point of privilege, it’s very easy to fall in and panic when you can’t feel the bottom. Suddenly, countless innocuous moments in your life as a girl and woman are revealed to have been instances misogyny and rape culture levied at you by the people closest to you. Your mother’s refusal to eat dessert, your father’s discomfort around your period, your first boyfriend’s porn addiction and how it affected your first time, your classmates laughing at your hairy arms. With the help of whiteness and conforming more to patriarchal beauty standards, hot white women seek a cave to weather the storm of reality in. Look at Lobotomy Chic, the rising aesthetic appropriating not only a 50’s housewife’s world but the medical procedure performed customarily on young black and brown people in that period.
I saw a growing defensiveness spread in women online and in girls around me as feminist realities become more known throughout social media. This defensiveness manifested itself mainly around typically female hobbies and interests. Because of Taylor Swift’s heavily broadcasted and often cited history of hate, a lot of her fans are very quick to deem someone misogynistic, as if Taylor is the epitome of girlhood and feminist universality. Similar to the ‘I am like the other girls’ resurgence, a pride in being annoying has taken hold of baby white feminists. Teenage girls now want to surrender to traits such as being a hater, being loud in public, bringing up crystals to test strangers, pretending not to know who Christopher Nolan even is - or knowing anything at all. It’s a small, harmless, and cotton candy form of revenge everyone is subjected to. To play into stereotypes so that you have control over them is nothing new, nor is it revolutionary. Just as the Barbie movies barely scratches the surface of what it should have, but can be defended so immediately, before it has even been watched. Because it’s fun.
Bimboism promised power in the form of a secret intelligence and awareness these women possessed but did not use. It is intrinsic in this ironic Bimbo culture to think of yourself as an Elle Woods, as Marilyn Monroe and being ‘actually very smart’. An enjoying of stereotype performance without losing an inner knowing that you could stop whenever you wanted; posts about playing dumb to men exclusively because they’ll assume you are dumb anyway began to circulate rapidly. At least when the party was over that guy would leave thinking he knew what kind of girl he was talking to when he never would. And it’s not just because it’s fun. Girls were to understand - whether explicitly or implicitly - that the oppressive systems were unbeatable, and that choosing to turn and face it was better than being bent over from behind.
The reason I am critiquing a phase that 1) is a result of patriarchy beginner’s burnout, 2) performed by young women, is because of Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie’s success. The message to corporations has been sent in crystal definition: there is an accepted level of universality in white girlhood that can be commodified. That writing feminism on a crate of sweatshop products does not rouse suspicion or moral quandaries. That women are finally ready to stop thinking, or have stopped wanting to give any other impression. At least, the women privileged enough to have the luxury of adopting aesthetics of ideologies without relying on them to survive.
I feel comfortable in my initial discomfort at the Barbie marketing explosion and the discomfort that lasted the entire run-time in the theatre itself, especially since the release of Bottoms (2023). For me, Bottoms possessed what Barbie, ontologically, just could not. It was campy, it was hilarious, genuinely diverse, and it tackled the subject of feminism in a way that felt real without making fun of it. Director Emma Seligman seems to be much better hands to hold us in than Mattel wearing Gerwig’s face Hannibal-Lecter-style. But most importantly, Bottoms was not linked to aesthetic in the same way. Sure the actors are hot, but the pinkness and femininity Barbie and Bimbos claimed to reclaim, indicate a straight-forward guide to a performance. And when you know the starter-pack costume you need to be a feminist, feminism itself can be sold to you. Even from a sweatshop where women are regularly abused and tormented.
A consensus has formed in the wake of Barbie, that although it was shallow, it did have a wider reach than any feminist-marketed movie to date. That although Gloria’s monologue about the plight of being a woman could be found on Tumblr back in 2012, it was cathartic to those who were actually hearing it all put to words for the first time. It helped boyfriends understand their girlfriends better, mothers and daughters finally talked. It truly did have some effect in introducing people to the surrounding concept. But, that’s why Mattel approached Greta Gerwig. She’s an amazing writer with a great deal of understanding of the human condition and there’s no one better to anthropomorphise a product. As for why the film was made and bounced from female director to female director in the first place, was to sell more dolls attached to an aesthetic. Which it did.
So let’s just shelve the issue of ‘fun’, because movies are still very fun if you don’t rely on your social media to tell you about them. When there is a widespread reaction to artistic output of any kind, when there is a movement against or for an art movement, it is incredibly important for us to know who is encouraging it. Who is benefiting? Who’s funding it and with what profits? Who is causing the national pink shortage, really? Because it’s not a bumbling Will Ferrell and his boardroom of idiots. Are we making our existence as feminists and women extremely convenient and to what end? Let’s not normalise cognitive dissonance when it comes to the representations of us. Let’s demand more than white girlhood and vague gestures and abandon the search for universality in billion-dollar budgets. At the very least, let’s allow ourselves the displeasure of calling something we enjoyed propaganda and appropriation when we see it and breathe through that tension in a conversation.
