- Warning: Spoilers forward for the brand new “Barbie” movie, directed by Greta Gerwig.
- Within the last shot of the movie, Margot Robbie’s Barbie declares, “I’m right here to see my gynecologist.”
- The foolish line manages to poke enjoyable on the actuality of womanhood, with out dismissing or minimizing it.
On the very finish of “Barbie,” the brand new blockbuster directed by Greta Gerwig, our titular heroine is sporting a brown blazer, blue denims, and Birkenstocks.
The toned-down outfit is a far cry from the pink clothes and cowboy hats that saturate the remainder of the movie — meant to represent Barbie’s journey from a “excellent” doll to a lady.
In her real-world garments, Barbie walks into an workplace, radiating pleasure. You may assume she’s there for a job interview. As a substitute, when the receptionist asks what brings her in, Barbie delivers the movie’s climactic last line: “I’m right here to see my gynecologist.” Reduce to black.
It’s a ridiculous, irreverent second that’s certain to shock any viewers. “Barbie” is marketed as a giant film with massive concepts about feminism, gender roles, and existential dread, so that you don’t anticipate it to finish with a joke about Barbie sustaining her vaginal well being. Talking as somebody who’s chronically on-line, somebody who devoured each crumb of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s promo tour, even I didn’t see the punchline coming.
My theater, full of girls and women, erupted in startled laughter. The collective delight made me tear up.
As Gerwig informed USA In the present day, this impact was intentional: “I knew I needed to finish on a mic drop type of joke, however I additionally discover it very emotional.”
Gloria and her daughter Sasha assist Barbie grow to be an actual girl.
Warner Bros.
“Once I was a teenage woman, I keep in mind rising up and being embarrassed about my physique, and simply feeling ashamed in a method that I couldn’t even describe. It felt like all the things needed to be hidden,” she defined. “After which to see Margot as Barbie, with this massive previous smile on her face, saying what she says on the finish with such happiness and pleasure — I used to be like, if I may give women that feeling of, ‘Barbie does it, too,’ that’s each humorous and emotional.”
Certainly, the road works on a number of ranges. Paired with Robbie’s over-the-top supply, it pokes enjoyable on the actuality of being a lady — it’s absurd, to be frank, and sometimes invasive — with out dismissing or minimizing our experiences. Not like so many wisecracks about being a lady, it’s not a quip at our expense. Gerwig is laughing with us, not at us.
In fact, girls aren’t the one those that go to the gynecologist, and never all girls must. However to make use of the movie’s personal simplified binary, the ultimate line is a present for the Barbies, not the Kens.
Regardless of the bodily horror of womanhood — durations, being pregnant, pap smears — we discover aid in group. Going to the gynecologist is a type of in-jokes that we share, the type of factor you like to complain about. Commiserating eases the psychic ache.
The road is made much more potent within the context of Barbie’s journey. Earlier within the movie, she didn’t even have genitals! She gave up her plastic life in Barbie Land, the place day-after-day is an ideal day, for one thing we take as a right: to have a physique that swells and shrinks and bleeds. She has realized that change is what makes life worthwhile, that getting old is a present.
So if a visit to the gynecologist is the worth she has to pay, she’ll do it with a smile.