Greta Gerwig’s Barbie made history last year, wowing audiences with its pink palette and powerful performances while raking in more than $1 billion at the box office — but that success didn’t come without criticism.
As a film with a very clear feminist message, some critics argued that Barbie — and the scene where America Ferrera’s Gloria delivers an inspiring monologue about womanhood — oversimplifies feminism. Ferrera, 39, vehemently disagrees.
“We can know things and still need to hear them out loud. It can still be cathartic,” Ferrera told The New York Times in an interview published on Monday, January 1. “There are a lot of people who need Feminism 101, whole generations of girls who are just coming up now and who don’t have words for the culture that they’re being raised in. Also, boys and men who may have never spent any time thinking about feminist theory.”
In the movie, Ferrera plays Gloria, a Mattel employee and mother who aids Margot Robbie’s Barbie in her quest to save Barbie Land from patriarchy. Ferrera’s scene-stealing monologue has been generating Oscars buzz ahead of the 2024 awards season.
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong,” Ferrera, as Gloria, tells Robbie’s character in Barbie. “You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!”
The speech resonated with many women, and Ferrera argues that it served an important purpose — even if it may be “basic feminism.”
“If you are well-versed in feminism, then it might seem like an oversimplification, but there are entire countries that banned this film for a reason,” Ferrera told The New York Times, seemingly referring to Vietnam and Kuwait’s bans of the movie. “To say that something that is maybe foundational, or, in some people’s view, basic feminism isn’t needed is an oversimplification. Assuming that everybody is on the same level of knowing and understanding the experience of womanhood is an oversimplification.”
Ferrera also revealed that Gloria’s iconic speech was actually born out of collaboration between herself and Gerwig.
“The text evolved a little bit. Greta asked me, ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you would say? Write it in your own words. What would you add?’ Not every director starts out by inviting actors to rewrite their work,” Ferrera said. “There were many versions that we did. We ended in tears. It ended in laughter, it got big, it got small, and I was able to do that because I really trusted Greta to know what would be right for the film.”
Barbie is now streaming via Max.
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