There’s so many things one could say about Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece Barbie. It’s one of the best modern feminist films and has an incredible monologue depicting the contradictions women have to deal with on a daily basis.
However, though the movie focuses on the relationship between Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling), there has been another ship that’s risen those the film’s ranks to take center stage, and that’s the one between Barbie and her human Gloria (America Ferrera).
In the movie, there are several moments in which fans have picked up a certain vibe between the pair that goes past a human and their doll. While shipping non-canon relationships is nothing new (see Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers from Supergirl as the biggest example), it’s still fun to see how such a small part of a billion-dollar-grossing film could take a fandom by storm.
Warning: Slight spoilers for Barbie below!
Barbie and Gloria sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G
For the uninitiated, Barbie travels to the human world to find the little girl who’s playing with her after she starts dealing with thoughts of death and growing cellulite. After seemingly finding a moody teenager named Sasha who blows her off instantly, Barbie figures out that it’s not Sasha who’s playing with her. It’s actually her mother, Gloria.
Gloria meets Barbie and, after figuring out that her darker adult thoughts are throwing her out of whack, vows to set things right and travels back to Barbieland with Barbie and Sasha in order to put things back to the way they were. However, during their time together, Gloria helps Barbie realize how wonderful it is to be a human, and Barbie ends up living with Gloria and her family at the end of the film.
Though the two give off bestie vibes when they first meet, Barbie fans quickly started to dig deeper into their relationship. One of the first posts pointing out that there could be something between Gloria and Barbie came from Tumblr user barbieist, who compared two scenes in which Barbie didn’t allow Ken to sit up front in her Dream Car with her but had no problem with Gloria riding beside her.
Twitter user hagcinema even went so far as to point out that the scene of Barbie and Gloria singing in the car on the way to Barbieland mimics an iconic scene from the popular queer women-led show The L Word.
Naturally, these posts obviously blew up and helped give evidence for the BarbieGloria shippers to go off of. Since then, other fans have made fancam edits and a ton of fan art showing off this adorable relationship and their love for these two gorgeous women.
And before any fun-haters sound off in the comments, yes, we all understand that this isn’t a real relationship and Gloria does have a husband in the film (played by Ferrera’s irl husband, btw!), but it doesn’t matter! Media exists for people to have different interpretations of it, and some of us like to believe Barbie and Gloria are somewhere in California raising Sasha together.
Let! People! Have! Fun!
(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
