I can't believe I'm writing about Barbie

But, Weird Barbie spoke to me

We needed to be out of the house Monday night and could not figure out what environment would allow us to come close to laying down without spending a hundred bones.

Thank God we remembered movie theaters! The options were Barbie or horror, so Greta's film won. I loved the internet explosion of pink when the film was released, but I've always had a complicated relationship with Barbies.

One Christmas in the early 90s, an extended family member gave me one, and I tore her head off right after opening the box and got my butt handed to me so fast for the audacity to disrespect an elder and not be grateful. She wasn't my cup of tea.

Barbie was "perfect" if you like nails on a chalkboard and boy did she irk me.

We all loved America Ferrera's monologue, did we not? Barbie is face down in the dirt after her picture-perfect image gets shattered. Her expectations of who she is supposed to be are in the process of shifting and America is basically like, oh sweetie, this is what it's like being a woman in the world. It touched me.

In recovery, step one is coming out of denial — waking up to the reality that we are not perfect, will never be perfect, and that, in fact, the idea of perfection as an internal standard is ruining our lives and relationships. It keeps us dishonest, hiding, pretending, and performing, trapped in cycles of self-rejection and disappointment.

It's why Weird Barbie spoke to me. She's always in the splits, wild-eyed and wise, unbothered by the big lie of perfection. She's accepted herself, built a beautiful house, and opened it up for people in the middle of waking up to reality. Her home is a refuge for people asking, "Do you guys ever think about dying?"

One of my favorite writers and thinkers, Matt Williams, says that a creator's job is to sensitize the tribe. We're walking around all the time, desensitized to our own needs and desires, to the needs and desires of others, but we are so powerful when we wake the hell up.

The spectacular writing of America's monologue and the use of those insights and truths to sensitize the Barbie tribe, one by one, blessed me. They'd numbed out on Ken's and forgotten who they were. As individuals and collectively, they began to break the norms of Barbie Land and Human Land. They opened the doors wide for people formally rejected or forgotten, like Allen and Weird Barbie and the Barbies and Kens, to live together in community without presenting as perfect or forcing a dominant norm.

Acceptance won the roost.

We can't make anyone change. We're incapable of saving, fixing, or changing others because we're not in control. The illusion of control is so seductive because it makes us feel secure. But control does not foster connection. Perfection does not establish proximity.

Accepting reality as it comes, accepting people as they are, and welcoming your own flaws and imperfections not as a sign of weakness or failure but as a sign of strength. We are flesh and blood, human, and that is as God intended. We discover love's power to heal and, restore, and lift us up when we accept our humanity instead of rejecting it. And when we are lucky enough to be loved by people who take us as we are and love us as we grow, we experience God with skin on. They prove that he is here with us, working with us, caring for us, not because we've pulled ourselves together but because life has pulled us apart.

Weird Barbie's owner was like me in the early 90s. Painted her face, cut her hair, put her in perma-splits. Instead of hating herself, she accepted that she'd been through some things and leaned into what she could not change. We've all been through some thangs. Perhaps people didn't take the care they should have with our hearts, minds, or bodies. We may have had to isolate until others were more open to our wild and weird selves. Maybe the residue shows on our face; maybe it doesn't.

Photo credit: Glamour UK, Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Either way, I vote we stay weird and build houses of refuge for people who need to find a soft place to land on their journey from perfection to acceptance—a revolution of communal connection that reorders society. Why not us?

I can’t believe how much we loved Barbie. I hope you did, too. And I hope you remember your presence is so powerful. You can make change where you are just by being your authentic self — your willingness to take up space gives others permission to do the same. Thank you for who you are. 

Love to love you,

Ash

P.S. Why did none of you bother to mention that Issa Rae was in this film???? I would have gone on opening weekend…