America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie about how “it is literally impossible to be a woman” is being heralded as the most important feminist monologue of our time.
Take a look.
Now try it this way.
It is literally impossible to be a man. You are so strong and so capable, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we always have to be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.
You have to be ripped but not too ripped. And you can never say you want to be ripped. You have to say you want to be fit, but also you have to be ripped—though nothing’s more important than being tall.
You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because you shouldn’t have to ask. You should just earn it and keep earning it.
You have to be a boss, but you can’t be an asshole. You have to lead, but you can’t be seen as a bully or as insensitive or old-fashioned or “just not getting it.”
You’re supposed to love being a dad, but god help you if you want to stay home with your kids, or take paternity leave.
You have to be in touch with your feminine side but also be the protector.
You have to answer for women’s bad behavior, which is insane—like sometimes literally insane—but if you point that out, you’re accused of not listening, not caring enough, of gaslighting.
You’re supposed to be good-looking for women but not so good-looking that you seem unserious or vain or like you’re overcompensating for something else.
You have to distinguish yourself without seeming like you’re trying too hard. You have to make your accomplishments known without bragging or coming across as desperate.
You have to win at the game while making sure to say that you know the system is rigged in your favor. You have to say this even if it’s not rigged anymore, or at least doesn’t feel that way. Or maybe it is rigged, which means you don’t actually deserve anything you’ve ever gotten. But you got it anyway. Or maybe you didn’t, But in either case, you have to be grateful.
You have to understand that for all this power you supposedly have, you don’t actually have much power when you’re young. You have to grow into your power, and until then, you endure years of humiliation. And still, you have to time things just right because “older” is not the same as “old.” Older can work for a while, but once you hit old, you go back to being humiliated and stay that way until the end.
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never cross a boundary without permission. It’s too dangerous! 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.
(End of speech.)
More thoughts below.
I wrote this yesterday after seeing the Barbie movie. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered to see a new release in the theater, but so many people wanted me to talk
about Barbie on my podcast with Sarah Haider that I knew I had to take one for the team and get myself out to see it. (Sarah’s tradwife/edgelord/motherhood duties keep her homebound and glued to her cognitive-evolution books.)
I expected to hate Barbie, but I actually kind of loved it. (Except for the parts I hated.) The first act is a tour de force; the filmmakers perform the meta equivalent of a triple axel, presenting Barbie Land as a utopia, a joke, and a joke about utopia all at the same time. The rest of the movie is a mess of contradictions and incongruities, loosely tied together with boilerplate feminist pabulum. As such, it’s a perfect reflection of the state of the women’s equality movement. Brava, Greta Gerwig!
Gerwig directed the film and co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, the auteur of some truly great films, including the masterful The Squid and the Whale. I also loved Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, Ladybird, which was nominated for five Oscars and should have won all of them. In other words, the writing team behind Barbie is a powerhouse of sophistication, which makes it all the more ridiculous that the scene that’s getting the most attention is a string of platitudes that the characters in their other movies would roll their eyes at. (There’s a transcript here.)
Actually, “getting the most attention” doesn’t begin to cover it.
As I watched the scene, I found myself playing a silent game of Mad Libs. With just a few words and concepts substituted here and there, a man could deliver nearly the same speech and it would make perfect sense—at least to those who sympathize with men’s struggles. Driving home, I thought about how that speech might go, and then I went straight to my desk and wrote it down. There were at least a dozen other things I should have been doing, but it struck me as both a useful writing exercise and a potentially enlightening social experiment.
Undoubtedly, my version will make plenty of people roll their eyes. But part of me wants to believe that Gerwig is so canny that she deliberately made the monologue as generic as possible so that it could be seen through as wide a lens as possible. After all, the ultimate message of the film is that life isn’t fair for anyone. Actually, that’s not quite right. The ultimate message is that you can choose your own message. And I choose to believe that I wasn’t the only one listening to that bromidic oration and silently rewriting it in my head. The movie deserves so much better than that monologue. Thank goodness for the dance sequences.
Do you have your own version of the speech? Share it in the comments!
This was really wonderful. I haven’t seen the film, but I have heard about the speech and think that your version for men is a necessary addition to the original. The problem is that our culture places unrealistic expectations on everyone and is too ready to condemn people for minor infractions and missteps. We should all strive to be a bit more understanding and forgiving.
But really I also wanted to say that I am going to share your version of the speech with my young-adult son, so thank you.
Not exactly equivalent because I'm not answering "so hard (ok, literally impossible) to be a woman" with the opposite sex perspective, rather with a subset of women, namely mothers. Some might relate, some not, but here it goes:
It's impossible to be a good, or even good enough mother. You're supposed to make a birth plan (Did any cavewomen do that? Are references to cavepeople xenophobic?) but you're also supposed to take it all easy, naturally, but safety first of course. Dare you even ask if breast-feeding is optional, or if bottle-feeding your baby will make it sickly, low IQ and your bonding deprivation is bordering or child abuse? Either you will be nursing for too long or not long enough, you should be worried about toxins in food when (if) you wean the baby, but not so much that your organic food habit reeks of privilege and profligacy.
If you can afford to stay home and waste your education, you're trad (are you married? Trad Wife!) and not a great role model, especially for daughters. If you go back to work, you're missing out on childhood, no two ways about it. If you're a strict mom (roar Tiger!), you're raising robots and crushing the little ones' spirit. If you're a laissez-faire, anti-authoritarian mom, your little ones become lil' tyrants that will crush the nerves of those around them. Either way you'll look pathetic.
More on affordability: if you send your kids to private school, you're an elitist snob and making your kids into the same. If you opt for the not so great city public school, you'll have to deal with a lot more than fundraising calls. Just sayin'. So go ahead, move to the suburbs and be boring.
Let your kids eat everything, incl. snacks and sweets, and they'll get bad teeth and big butts. You can't comment on a big butt or a diet because that's fat-phobic, but if you don't intervene, social media will. On that: Once you give your kid a smartphone, you've allowed ruin forever. Good luck trying to raise them unplugged, with no friends or fun.
How many do you want? Only one? You're creating a spoiled narcissist bound to be lonely, not to mention when you die or require care. Two, especially of the same sex, will bicker and be lifelong competitors. Three's a crowd, traveling gets tricky, almost makes four seem better, but whoa, hold on, four or- gasp!- more, what are you, Alec Baldwin's faux-Spanish wife? Catholic or Mormon? Then we can make fun of you!
Whatever you do, moms, will be wrong and your fault, so on this I have to agree with the Barbie speech. Oh, and if you let you daughter play with Barbies, she will turn out absolutely fine, and if she doesn't, it won't be Mattel's fault but you know whose.