The Barbie Movie Is WOKE and UNWATCHABLE ⧸⧸ Conservative Mom Movie Review
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Summary
In this episode of Conservative Mom Movie Reviews, I review the new movie, "Barbie: A Feminist Dream House". In this episode, I break down the plot, the wokeness meter, and whether or not you should take your kids to see this movie.
Transcript
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I did it. I saw Barbie. So you don't have to. And when I say so you don't have to,
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I don't mean in the cliche version of you don't have to. I mean, I legit don't want you to have
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to suffer through this film. Welcome to a new series on my channel called Conservative Mom
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Movie Reviews. My plan is to review movies that you might be interested in taking your kids to
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from a conservative mom's perspective. I want to share whether or not this is going to be a good
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idea for you to share with your kids, whether it has woke nonsense or whether it's even a good
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movie. Let me know in the comments, do you only want to see movies that are new, that are coming
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out? Or should I go back and review some old children's movies, some old movies that maybe
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you're interested in watching with your kids? I'd love to hear your opinions and thoughts in the
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comments. But let's talk about why we're really here, which is the Barbie movie. I went to see
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Barbie last night by myself because I could not bear to put anyone else through it. I knew going in
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that this was not going to be my cup of tea, but I did this for you. So in today's review,
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I'm going to break this down into three parts. One, is it watchable? Two, the wokeness meter. And three,
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should you take your children to see it? So let's quickly break down the plot. We open in Barbie
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land. It's a feminist utopia. All of the women are in charge and all of the men are second-class
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citizens. All of a sudden, our main character, stereotypical Barbie, that is literally her name,
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stereotypical Barbie, starts to have an existential crisis. Thinking about death, waking up with bad
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breath, burning her waffle, having flat feet, and getting cellulite. And of course, this is a
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malfunction in Barbie land. So she has to go figure out what is causing it. Well, it turns out that the
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little girl who is playing with her is causing her to have this crisis. And so she has to go to the
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real world to find the girl, make her happy again, so she can be happy again and normal. And you might
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think this is going to be similar to Enchanted, where the princess in the cartoon goes to the real
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world and discovers that there's so much more to life than just being in a cartoon, and ends up
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learning some lessons about what real life is about. But no, that's not what the main part of
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this movie is about, although it does try to pretend that that's the point. Really what happens is
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Barbie and Ken go to the real world, and Ken discovers patriarchy. Literally, it's called patriarchy.
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He brings it back to Barbie land, takes over. Barbie and her girls have to win back Barbie land
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for feminists. And at the end, for some reason, Barbie decides to go back to the real world because
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she wants to be a real girl. Now, the question, is it watchable? I wanted this to be watchable. So what
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I'll say is, there are plenty of movies out there that are woke or that have a totally different
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political viewpoint than I have. And I still enjoy watching them. They're funny, they're interesting,
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they're girly, whatever it is, I still enjoy watching it. And honestly, I was curious to see
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if this was going to be that kind of a movie. A movie I didn't agree with, I couldn't, you know,
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back or stand behind, but could enjoy watching. It was not. It simply was not. And there's a few
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different reasons for why this was not watchable. The plot, the characters, and honestly, the design.
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The design in the movie was beautiful. Of course, everyone couldn't stop talking about how it was a
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giant set, a giant version of what we've all played with as little kids, as little girls.
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But the truth is, that as a concept gets really boring after like the first scene. Because we're
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just seeing the same sets over and over. And it really feels more like a Broadway show than it does
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a movie, which I have no issue with Broadway shows. I have no issue with musicals. But the thing about
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this movie, the thing that made it stand out, the reason that it would have been fun would be the
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visual aspect. And it gets stale after you've seen it once or twice. Because okay, cool. It's a Barbie
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dream house. We get it. Now that's all it is. And I'm ready to move on. So even though the sets were
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cool, even though the costumes were fun, it really didn't go beyond that. Now talking about the plot,
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the issue with the plot is that it was so scattered. They were trying to make so many different
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points because this is a feminist diatribe that nothing was stayed on long enough to actually
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have full impact. There's a mother and daughter in the film. The mother is the woman who was playing
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with stereotypical Barbie, the reason that she has this existential crisis. The mother and daughter
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are not doing well. They're not connecting anymore. And there's no apotheosis for that relationship that
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makes sense. It just kind of happens too quickly because it's one of a million points that the
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director, Greta Gerwig, is trying to get across, is trying to make. And it's just, it makes nothing
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potent. Everything is fleeting. Everything feels empty. Nothing actually gets through to your emotions.
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Now I will say, you can see something where a character cries on screen. It can be two minutes
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long. And if it has the right music, it'll make you cry. So you'll think, ah, I had an emotional
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response. But if you actually sit there and take it in and watch it for what it is, you'll realize that
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there's no there there. As well, there are two parallel storylines that absolutely do not cohere.
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The storyline with Ken, the patriarchy, and the real world does not cohere with the fact that Barbie
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decides she wants to become a real girl, a real woman. Because in the story, the real world is
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portrayed as this horrible patriarchy where women are treated horribly by literally everyone. When the
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Barbies reclaim Barbie land from the patriarchy, from Ken, it's back to being a utopia. The men are
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still kept down as second class citizens because apparently that imitates what women are like
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going through in the real world. And the women get to be in charge. Like that's their thing. Barbie
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fought for this amazing utopia. Now she wants to be a real woman in the real world when she's been
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there and knows that it's not good. The director and writer want to have their cake and eat it too.
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That humanity, being a person, being alive, all of the struggles of that are so important and so
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beautiful and more than being a doll. But at the same time, the real world is disgusting. Nothing
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in here is good. You as a woman will always be a second class citizen. You will always be a victim.
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That does not work together. You cannot have both storylines where feminism, utopia, women getting
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everything they want is amazing, is right up against Barbie not wanting that and actually wanting to
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be a real girl. Which is just an added on ending to give the people what they want. Last but not least,
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let's talk about the performances. People are going to say up and down the wazoo that Ryan Gosling was
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amazing, that Margot Robbie was amazing. Everyone was fine. Like it didn't stand out. The story was not
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good enough for the actors to do well in it, to prove themselves. The plot just didn't give them
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enough to work with. Ryan Gosling is always funny and they gave him horrible lines and it was so
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stereotypically silly. And I get that that's kind of the point, but it was so stereotypically silly
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that it wasn't funny. Margot Robbie, fine, but her character was so poorly developed that it didn't
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make sense the character changes she was making. Again, going back to how the plot was so scattered
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and every point was too short to actually be made. So, is this movie watchable? No. I don't think it's
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fun. Like you want to think it's fun? Watch the preview. You want to watch a clip of it? Sure. But
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sitting through two hours of this movie? No thank you. Part two, the wokeness meter. On a scale of one
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to ten. How woke is this movie? I am going to give this movie a ten. Any movie that talks about the
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patriarchy this much, that portrays women as being second-class citizens in the real world this much,
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that literally has a monologue about how women can never get anything right, it must be a ten.
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I've got to talk about something I think is so important about the point that Greta Gerwig is
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trying to make in this film that I think really falls flat that I don't think a lot of people are
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talking about. So, the comparison between the two worlds is the real world is patriarchal,
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women are oppressed, and in Barbie Land, women get to do everything and men have literally nothing to
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do. Here's the problem. Barbie Land has no children in it. They don't have babies. Men and women in this
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scenario are actually sort of interchangeable. So, men and women really don't have differing
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responsibilities in that world. The idea that in the best possible version of the world, women
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wouldn't have anything holding them back from holding all of these positions and men would do
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nothing doesn't make sense because in the real world, women who are not in the workplace find their
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fulfillment at home, find their fulfillment with raising children, and choose not to be in the
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workplace and choose not to go to the highest level of their careers. Where in Barbie Land, the men have
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nothing to do, that is not parallel to women who are not in the workplace because they have children
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they want to take care of. Do you see how those don't compare to each other? It's not that the men are
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at home with the kids. It's that the men have nothing to do. And I will also say that the dream
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for a lot of people is to not have anything to do and have their whole lives provided for.
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That they don't have to have work to find meaning. That work itself does not equal meaning. In the
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real world, men and women have different roles because men and women are different. In Barbie Land,
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men and women are the same, which is why they have a trans woman playing a Barbie. The movie literally
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starts with an attack on motherhood. There's a quote, baby dolls and motherhood is only fun for a while.
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Ask your mother. Yeah, ask your mother how much she hated being your mom. Then the rest of the movie
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tries to walk that back as if that wasn't the initial point they made and is trying to throw a
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bone to conservatives and traditional women who want to believe that the left embraces motherhood
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when in truth, they don't. They don't embrace motherhood. They embrace women's choices as long as
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they don't interfere with their goals in feminism and their goals to hate men. So if you want to be
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a mom, that's fine. But if you want to be a mom, that also probably means that you're brainwashed by
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the patriarchy and you don't want more than that. If you want to like men and enjoy men, it's also
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because you've been brainwashed. And the truth is you're really doing so many things just to get
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men to pay attention to you. Motherhood is absolutely despised by the people who make this movie
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and they try to hide behind that by just randomly throwing in little comments like,
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we should have an ordinary Barbie who's just a mom or maybe she's not a mom. As I said in my
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previous video, motherhood is not an equal choice to not motherhood. So this movie obviously believes
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that. I mean, more than believes that, probably believes that not having children is even more
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fulfilling for women. So that's an issue. And I want to address one more thing as far as the
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wokeness meter, which is what is femininity? This movie appealed before anyone knew what it was
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about. It appealed to so many conservatives who were so excited to see a vision of femininity on
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screen. The pink dresses, the beauty, embracing those things. But the fact of the matter is this is
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the emptiest, shallowest version of femininity, right? Femininity that could literally be appropriated
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by men, if they so choose, by wearing dresses and putting on makeup. I am not saying that there is
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not beauty to the outward appearance of femininity. It is so fun. I love it. It's something I embrace
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and I enjoy. But real femininity is about taking care of others, being the kind of woman people can
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depend on, being strong, and building up the next generation of civilization. So femininity is a lot
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more than just pink dresses and pretty blowouts. I don't like that this movie has so enraptured
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women who want to embrace femininity as a costume and have no interest in actually taking on the
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feminine roles that make women so special and different from men. And I'll finish off the wokeness
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meter segment by reading two more quotes from this movie. It is literally impossible to be a woman.
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That is the opening line in a monologue by America Ferreira where she says, we have to be this,
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but we can't be that. We have to be this. You've heard this monologue about a million times on the
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internet at this point. You have to be thin, but not too thin. You have to have a big butt,
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but not too big of a butt. Nobody cares. If you prioritize faith, family, and community,
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the people you spend your time with are not going to put you in these boxes that you are saying are
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necessary parts of womanhood. It's just not true. As a woman who lives amongst an amazing religious
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community with an amazing husband who's having sons, I can't get behind this idea that women are
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just always losing. We're not. Stop putting yourself in stupid situations. Stop taking on things that
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nobody is actually putting on you. Stop prioritizing vanity over just genuine beauty. If you are beautiful
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to your husband, you are beautiful. Done. Solved. And here's the other quote. We mothers stand still
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so our daughters can look back and see how far they've come. They thought that line was so meaningful
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when they wrote it. And I want to throw it in the trash can. Yeah. Being a mom is just so bad
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that we have to hold ourselves back so that you can not be a mother, hopefully, so you can actually
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fulfill your full potential, right? That phrase I hate, fulfilling your potential, whatever that
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means. Being a mother is not living a life half-lived. And if you teach your daughter that, you are doing
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her a huge disservice. Which brings us to part number three. Should you take your children to see this?
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I would actually legitimately ask that you don't. I think this is different than taking your child to
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see something that's just like not super fun. Or maybe has some under the radar woke stuff. This is
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the kind of movie that would demoralize any young woman who doesn't know enough to understand that
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this is trying to brainwash them. If young girls think that they are victims of a society that is run
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by men, and that there's nothing they can do to win, they will ultimately be unhappy. And this whole
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movie, it's about everything that you could do to be unhappy as a woman. And it champions those
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things, right? That was the point. The movie is very glittery and shiny, and so could really make a
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little girl want to watch it again without realizing the lesson and the moral. And the moral of the story
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is not moral. It's the opposite. It also is inappropriate. This movie is too old for little
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girls. Like there are things in it that there are jokes, there are lines that are just inappropriate
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for children, and they should not see that. So on top of, you know, the woke stuff, this movie is also
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just too old for little kids. So I would not bring them. But I would say this is not a good movie for
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your kids. It's not a good movie for you. And I would not recommend going to see it. I want to finish
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off today's video by making one point. The whole premise of the movie is that Ken is only Ken in relation
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to Barbie. Barbie is the toy that people play with, and Ken is just ancillary. I really think
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that the way you played with Barbies is based on how you grew up. So for me, I grew up playing with
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Barbie and Ken consistently. I would get Barbie dressed, but then Ken and Barbie were a couple,
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and so I would constantly play with the two of them, and then they might start a family. I usually
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bought the baby dolls as well, by the way. So what's funny about the idea that Barbie gave women agency,
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because that's the concept at the beginning of the film, is that for someone like me,
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I basically played motherhood with my Barbie, but the Barbie stood in for me, and then her baby
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stood in for my baby, as opposed to having a baby doll of my own, which is kind of funny,
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if you think about it. So I just want to finish with that, because I didn't relate to the concept
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that Ken was just random and didn't have a relationship with Barbie. Barbie and Ken were
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married when I played with them as kids. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. How did you play
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with Barbie when you were little? Did you play with Barbie and Ken, or was it just Barbie?
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So that is my Barbie movie review. Thank you so much for watching, and let me know in the comments
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what you'd like me to review next. See you next time. Bye!