What about Ordinary Barbie?
On Paying Attention to our Real Life in the Real World.
In the introduction to Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World, she writes of a priest who invited her to speak, and when she asked what he wanted her to talk about, the priest replied, Come tell us what is saving your life right now.
Taylor writes further: What is saving my life right now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.
Honestly? For me? One of the things saving my life right now is the discussions I’ve been having about the Barbie movie and real life in the real world. So here we are.
Many thoughtful things have already been written about Barbie, and I’ve hesitated to add to the conversation. Still, I can’t shake the need to discuss the viral obsession with being an Ordinary Barbie.
The movie explores an idea that women, in particular, are very familiar with — the pressure to be two opposite things simultaneously. A human character, Gloria (America Ferreras), gives an incredible (and emotional) monologue about some of the expectations that women face. She says: You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also, you have to be thin … You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people… I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.
Gloria later offers the idea of creating an Ordinary Barbie, after the premier people quickly began uploading photos and videos of themselves to TikTok and Instagram as Ordinary Barbies.
Now, y’all know I love talking about the ordinary, but something about the idea of being Ordinary Barbie just doesn’t settle right. It says — pick your kids up from school, but in a cute outfit; be a doctor but look good in a crop top on your morning run; live your life, but be sure you look put together doing it.
As one article I read puts it: “The trend emphasizes self-love to let normal women know they are all Barbies in their own way whether or not they meet conventional beauty standards or expectations of society. [Ordinary Barbies] shine bright by excelling in ordinary aspects of life.”
I’M SORRY, WHAT? Even as an Ordinary Barbie, I have to shine and excel? I have to glow? I wanted to love the idea and even jotted down: What about an Ordinary Barbie? thinking I might write something here — but when I returned to the words, I saw through them.
You see, Ordinary Barbie shines bright — but what if she is a teacher, not teacher of the year? Or a writer with 35 subscribers on Substack? What if life circumstances have kept her from shining, or she doesn’t feel like it?
Ordinary Barbie is expected to excel in the ordinary aspects of her life — but what if she doesn’t like cooking? or her job? or her kids? No matter how hard you try to change the narrative, Barbie still has a (literally) unattainable body and wears matching stilettos with every outfit.
Ordinary Barbie still lives within a culture that holds “conventional beauty standards and expectations,” and now she is being asked to recreate Barbie into something new. Something ordinary (but let’s be honest, still perfect). Maybe it’s simply time to throw out the baby and the bathwater. Even if the baby is fun and progressive, and the soundtrack is fantastic.
Taylor offers us a different kind of invitation in our ordinary lives: My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them… trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.
When I saw Barbie last Tuesday, I dropped my kids off at school and summer camp, and, in the only pink shirt I own, met my husband for a 9:30 a.m. showing (as one does). It was fun, and it felt special, but it was ordinary.
Real life in the real world is ordinary. And so instead of polishing ourselves (as Ordinary Barbie asks us to do), maybe we choose to be present to our life. Maybe our ordinary lives become a doorway where we glimpse what has been called the “really real.” Maybe when we pay attention, we can begin to ignore all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul.
A Few Links:
I’m reading How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price, and she makes a great argument for how harmful links within an essay can be for our attention span and memory. Price writes: “every time we encounter a link, our brains must make a split-second decision about whether to click on it… every decision no matter how tiny or subconscious, pulls our attention away from what we are reading. This in turn makes it harder to absorb the content of what we are reading—let alone to think about it critically, or remember it later.”
So, for the most part, I’ll plan to leave links until the end. Enjoy!
Parenting in Barbie Land by Amanda Montei has been one of my favorite things I’ve read about the movie.
I do love to discuss our ordinary lives, so here are some essays about Ordinary Time, Ordinary Days, and Ordinary Lives that I’ve written.
You can read (or re-read) Gloria’s full monologue in this LA Times article — it’s worth it!