greta gerwig writes for white women—as she should
What can we do to get Black feminist filmmakers the money, resources, and access to be able to make acclaimed films about Black girlhood?
Thank you for joining me in the Inner Parlour today. This is a subsection of my newsletter, Lilith’s Muse, where we’ll have deeper conversations in a smaller setting. So please, take a seat by the fire. You are in good company here.
My outfit for Barbie? A pink mini dress with Barbie across the chest that I snagged, pre-pandemic, from a Forever21 Barbie collection (a store I’d sworn off of, but couldn’t resist the siren call of cute Barbie themed outfits). I wore slip-on, beachy white sandals that looked like Barbie shoes, carried an oversized structured white bag, and went to watch the film in an independent Philadelphia theater full of other queer women as part of a queer women’s event (and then ran to the bar for the afterparty after).
While I’d followed, with semi-interest, the development of the Barbie film, I expected very few things from the movie itself. I didn’t go to Barbie expecting to see myself reflected on the screen. Honestly, I went to Barbie with every intention of receiving White Feminism 101. Mainly because that’s Greta Gerwig’s entire vibe.
The criticism I’ve heard about Barbie that feels like it deserves the most weight—because, really, I’m not interested in speaking to anyone who thinks it is “anti-men”—is that it isn’t intersectional. The feminism it represents is basic, an exploration of how women are expected to be everything, and how crushing the weight of that expectation is.